Categories like feminine and masculine can constrain as much as illuminate. But there is no denying that women and female entities play a major, often surprising part in Dante’s journey through the Divine Comedy. Saints including Beatrice, Lucia and Mary,…
This piece is published by The Idler. (Use code, “dantemv”, to get £10 off my Divine Comedy course at The Idler and click here.) If there were one big lesson that Dante learns as he struggles through hell and up…
Use this code, “dantemv”, to get £10 off my Divine Comedy course at The Idler via this link. The year was 1274, May Day to be precise. The young lady Beatrice was walking the lovely streets of Florence and she…
Dante’s journey is all about erotic love, through ugly possessiveness, and powerful passions, to the realisation that love is usually experienced as an ignorance about what we desire, to which he awakens. The Divine Comedy is, therefore, a crucial resource…