The Department of Italian Studies presents

Dante 2021 Lecture series

Dante’s Journey from Paradise to Hell
Vrasidas Karalis, The University of Sydney

Since its completion the Comedy has created the central axial European language of poetic presentation, by incorporating dialects and hegemonic discourses through the visual imagination of his verses. This talk addresses certain aspects of Dante’s reception in European literature starting from the 20th century all the way back to the 15th. It delineates the different aspects of his work as perceived by a number of European writers, such as Osip Mandelastam, TS Eliot, Nikos Kazantzakis, to Victor Hugo, Byron and Shelley exploring the universal language he established in his effort to poetically embody the invisible and the ineffable – a language nevertheless not so un-political as one would imagine, since Karl Marx himself based his revolutionary Capital on the Inferno. The talk will investigate the perplexing ways in which Dante work still remains at the core of European culture, despite the questions and the challenges raised by the confused representatives of hegemonic political correctness. 

About the speaker

Vrasidas Karalis holds the Chair of Sir Nicholas Laurantos in Modern Greek and Byzantine Studies at the University of Sydney. He has published extensively with special emphasis on Byzantine historiography, Modern Greek political life, Greek Cinema, Balkan culture, European Union and Greece. He has translated Patrick White’s Voss and The Vivisector, as well as well Michael Dransfield’s poems into Greek. He has also translated modern Greek poetry into English, by Nikos Karouzos, Kiki Dimoula, Andreas Angelakis etc. He is the editor of Modern Greek Studies (Australian and New Zealand.) His main publications in English include, A History of Greek Cinema (Continuum 2012), Realism in Greek Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2017), Recollections of Mr Manoly Lascaris (Brandl & Sclesinger, 2007), The Demons of Athens (Brandl & Schlesinger, 2013), Reflections on Presence (re.Press, 2016). He has also edited the collections Cornelios Castoriadis and the Project of Radical Democracy (2013), Martin Heidegger and the Aesthetics of Being (2008), Power, Justice and Judgement in Hannah Arendt (2012). He has been the recipient of awards in translation and nominations for his critical work. He is currently working on the work of the cinematographers George Miller and Theo Angelopoulos. 

Join online via Zoom

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

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