Lecture: “My Life With Dante: A Tale of Two Books”

Professor Joseph Luzzi presents “My Life With Dante: A Tale of Two Books”

How does an 700-year-old writer still resonate in this moment? Please join us for an event that will explore the ongoing fascination of the great Italian poet and philosopher Dante, as Bard professor Joseph Luzzi connects Dante’s status today as a global literary icon to the debates about him in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. While writing his two latest books, Luzzi noted an unexpected dialogue that ensued between the works: Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Biography (Princeton University Press, November 2024) and his translation of Dante’s Vita Nuova (Norton/Liveright, December 2024). He will talk about translation as both a practice and a metaphor, the often-overlooked power of storytelling in scholarly works, and the uncanny ability of literature to represent a kind of home to the severely displaced and even persecuted.

Joseph Luzzi is the Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature at Bard College and an award-winning writer, teacher, and scholar of Italian culture. His recent book, Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance was shortlisted for the 2023 Phi Beta Kappa Society’s Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize and was selected as a New Yorker Best Book of 2022. He lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Note: Unless specifically noted as being streamed or recorded, the lectures in the lecture series hosted by the Dante Society of Westerly are live events only and are not recorded. They are neither streamed online nor available afterwards as recordings.

Lectures are free and open to the public.