The Department of Italian Studies presents

Dante 2021 Lecture series

Dante’s  Commedia: An audacious ‘cammin’
Diana Glenn, Australian Catholic University

In the Commedia, Dante fulfils a dual goal by attaining a high order of spiritual and lyric maturity. At the same time, the Commedia breaks new ground in its suffusion of individual narratives and localised tales within a universalised meta-narrative that takes in all creation and the end of days; a vision of reconciliation achievable through a spiritual revitalisation, and articulated by an exul inmeritus bereft of his former civic identity and now become a universal citizen. Dante’s status as an exilic poet operating outside conventions enables him to reformulate poetic discourse on his own terms, to cross borders and to push at the margins of authorial practice in order to reveal untold stories of salvation and damnation through the narratives of ordinary and extraordinary folk recounted in the first person with, in the case of some characters, the revelation of deeply-held personal tales and obsessions. The Poet’s simultaneous particularity and universality of approach is unique. It captures both a localised sense of place, as well as taking the reader on a journey to the boundless reaches of the cosmos, calling on his remembered experience of real-life events and personalising the poetic journey in a way that is unprecedented for its time. 

About the speaker

Diana  Glenn is currently National Head of the School of Arts at the Australian Catholic University in North Sydney. She was formerly Dean of the School of Humanities and Creative Arts at Flinders University and has been very active for many years in performing arts circles and organisations promoting creative arts practice. She is an award-winning tertiary educator and has presented her research locally and overseas at conferences and symposia. She is the author of Dante’s Reforming Mission and Women in the Comedy (2008) and has published numerous scholarly articles nationally and internationally. She has jointly edited the volumes, Dante Colloquia in Australia (1982–1999) in 2000, Flinders Dante Conferences 2002 & 2004 (2005), Imagining Home: Migrants and the Search for a New Belonging (2011), The Shadow of the Precursor (2012), ‘Legato con amore in un volume’: Essays in Honour of John A. Scott (2013), and with Graham Tulloch, Border Crossings (2016) and Italian Identities (2020). Her latest publication, La seconda casa, is a commemorative volume, co-authored with Daniela Cosmini, tracing the 70-year history of the South Australian Italian Association. 

Join online via Zoom

For more information, contact: Associate Professor Francesco Borghesi – francesco.borghesi@sydney.edu.au

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