Talk:Divine Comedy

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Just wondering..

Is Hell's description within this work cannon to Christianity? Actually, let me rephrase that to avoid a discussion, is Hells description within this work the same as within the Bible? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.171.239.69 (talk • contribs) 04:37, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

The answers to both of your questions are no. The Bible contains no real description of hell, so imaginative writers (including Dante and Milton) and theologians have been relatively free to imagine what it might be like—or indeed to reject the notion of a local hell entirely. Deor (talk) 05:10, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

The philosophic basis for Dante's hell is Aquinas' merger of Christian theology and Aristotle's philsophy, and contains numerous ideas not in the Bible. CharlesTheBold (talk) 05:33, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

The poem is an allegory: Dante is not necessarily implying that he thinks Hell is actually organised this way. I've been thinking that perhaps the article lead needs to reinforce this, with wording like: "The poem is an allegory: on the surface it describes a journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven; but at a deeper level it represents the soul rejecting sin and turning towards God" or something similar. -- Radagast3 (talk) 08:02, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I've added something along those lines. I hope it clarifies things. -- Radagast3 (talk) 00:22, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

It probably ought to be pointed out in more clear terms that no modern Christian since at least the 19th century has taken the Divine Comedy seriously from a theological perspective. If you want the modern Christian version, read The Great Divorce —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.193.112.148 (talk) 02:31, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

That seems like a dubious claim: I, for one, have had conversations with theologians who did take it seriously. I repeat that it's an allegory, not to be taken as a literal description of Hell. The theological content of the Divine Comedy is orthodox Catholic theology (e.g. Trinity, Incarnation (Christianity), Seven deadly sins), and still valid for Catholics today. Much is valid for Protestants as well. The cosmology has dated, but that's another story. -- Radagast3 (talk) 02:51, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Radagast and am certain that on any given day there are many Christians taking Dante's allegory seriously (as allegory and as mystic vision, of course, not literally). Just to throw out a quick example, Moevs' excellent book The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy was published by Oxford UP in 2005 in a series sponsored by the American Academy of Religion. I hope no one will accuse me of confusing "modern Christians" with religious scholars, but it makes the point that the serious religious content of Dante's work remains a subject of discussion (it's harder to find WP:RS for its use devotionally, of course). Wareh (talk) 15:06, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Wait wait, you're telling me Catholics actually believe that hell has seven specific circles, specifically reserved for people who have committed the seven deadly sins? I mean, certainly Christians believe in the trinity, the incarnation and that the seven deadly sins are, in fact, sins, but none of that had anything to do with Dante. We don't get those ideas from the Divine Comedy. Really, what I meant was that no one takes the details of the Divine Comedy seriously. People who look for symbolism enough will usually find it, but no one seriously believes that you can escape hell by progressing through seven circles and sliding down Satan's leg! --134.193.112.148 (talk) 07:00, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

The doctrine of the seven deadly sins doesn't come from Dante, but Dante does a good job of explaining and illustrating the theology of sin. I think what you mean is that no one takes the surface level of the Divine Comedy seriously, because it is, after all, an allegory. And, if you read closely, you'll see that the Purgatorio is divided according to the seven deadly sins, but Dante's Hell is not. -- Radagast3 (talk) 07:31, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Things to do

We can still use some additions to the Thematic concerns section of this article, for themes which run across the whole poem. Political concerns are the obvious big one, but I don't feel I know enough about Italian history to write such a section myself. Dante's view of the Church would be another possibility. -- Radagast3 (talk) 07:39, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

It would be nice to have the original Italian version alongside English quotations.--93.48.151.158 (talk) 12:04, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

We certainly do that in Papé Satàn, papé Satàn aleppe, an article focussed on precise wording; but in most cases I don't think it would help the typical reader much. -- Radagast3 (talk) 12:33, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Primary Topic of Commedia?

see Talk:Commedia#Primary topic if you are interested in this topic. (John User:Jwy talk) 22:59, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Reading of Divine Comedy

I added a link to my web site with the full reading of the Divine Comedy, but moderators think that it is unappropriate advertising or personal promotion. I am aware that the page is my own web site, but it is not a commercial web site, and even if I have a professional preparation as actor, actually I work as programmer. I added the link because this full reading is a huge work that I think would be appreciated by wikipedia users. The quality of the readings is almost professional, better of other free readings that I found on the Internet. To be compliant with Wikipedia, I add in the page footer the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 logo. Everyday I have hits on that page form Google, from all the world. As I complete all the readings, I just would like to share it with Wikipedia users. The Divine Comedy is composed by 100 poems of 140/150 lines each, so the whole work is 620MB in size. This is the reason why I directly linked my page instead of upload each single MP3 file in Wikimedia.

If the presence of my name in the link is annoying, I may prepare a "special page" where my name appears only in the url (as the domain name), but as the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 states, I have the right to be aknowledged as the author of the reading. To avoid that my initiative appears as a form of personal promotion, I hope that somebody else would listen to my recordings and judge they worth the link in the "Divine Commedy" voice. Iacopovettori (talk) 14:50, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting that someone else listens to the recordings and adds the link (Iacopo Vettori reads the complete Divina Commedia in Italian, MP3), so that it won't be "self-linking"?

That seems reasonable, although there may still be people who object because (a) it's a personal website and (b) the instructions are in Italian. Has Italian Wikipedia accepted the link? -- Radagast3 (talk) 22:51, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I hope that somebody else will add the link. If it may help, I can do a customized english page without all the images and menus that appear in all the rest of my web site. The use of a personal web site is due to the format of files MP3 and the dimension of all the files, (100 files of 6 / 7 MB each) that will need a lot of work to convert and upload in Wikimedia. Currently, I added the link in Italian Wikipedia and Spanish Wikipedia. They let there the link. Maybe nobody has noticed it yet, but I hope that at least the italian editors had valued it as a good quality source. I did the job with this intention. Iacopovettori (talk) 23:13, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

If the instructions were in English, I would add it. -- Radagast3 (talk) 00:32, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I prepared a very sober page in english, just the titles and the CC BY NC SA 3.0 with the relative fields. You can check it at address http://www.iacopovettori.it/recitazione/commedia/en/Default.aspx . I hope this will be consider acceptable by other editors also. Many thank for your suggestions. Iacopovettori (talk) 01:57, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Looks good to me. I have added the link as a useful resource; there seems to me no valid reason not to have it. Personally, as an English reader, I find it very interesting to find out how the original sounds: thank you for making this available. -- Radagast3 (talk) 09:14, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your appreciation. -- Iacopovettori (talk) 09:36, 30 July 2010 (UTC)