Universal History: The Greatest Work of Western Literature - with Richard Rohlin

In this week’s episode of Universal History, Richard Rohlin and I give an introduction to Dante’s Divine Comedy, discussing its historical and political context, Dante’s motivations and his point of view, and why the Comedia is the greatest work of Western Literature.

Join us for the first course on the Divine Comedy, starting May 8th. Dante’s Inferno: https://www.thesymbolicworld.com/cour...


Timestamps:
00:00 - Coming up
01:09 - Intro music
01:34 - Introduction
05:33 - Dante's personal story
05:54 - Who is Dante?
09:12 - Dante and Italian
11:08 - The politics at the time
13:44 - The Investiture Controversy
15:49 - The Protestant Reformation
16:39 - The spiritual and the temporal
18:38 - Dante's position
22:09 - Dante's exile and crisis
23:08 - The Divine Comedy
24:32 - 3 Sources
25:01 - Beatrice
26:52 - Aeneid
27:42 - Greek and Roman myth in Christianity
29:25 - The Judeo-Christian apocalyptic tradition
31:05 - A hierarchy of guides
34:49 - Paradiso
36:10 - The Inferno
39:11 - Apocalyptic texts
42:39 - The image of descent
44:25 - Limbo
47:20 - Dante's POV
51:35 - Viewing sin
53:35 - Sin in Purgatorio
57:19 - Paradiso
57:55 - Final remarks

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My intro was arranged and recorded by Matthew Wilkinson.