(Note: This is a recording of a previously live webinar. To access the recorded video afterwards, log in to your House of Humane Letters account, click “Dashboard,” then “Orders,” then click the corresponding order. There will be a link that says “View Recording.”)

This webinar taught by Dr. Jason Baxter will introduce (or reintroduce) readers to Dante’s Inferno by focusing on how the moral urgency of Dante’s collapsing world led him to attempt a daring form  of poetry which he thought could save the world. In particular, we’ll focus on how Dante’s Franciscan understanding of history led him to recycle a Boethian sense of poetry’s transformative power. But we’ll also talk about why the poem is so gritty and rough, and how Baxter’s new translation will try to tackle all of this.