Quaderni d`italianistica : revue officielle de la Société canadienne

Amilcare A. lannucci
Dante, Television, and Education
Introduction
The
entry on television in the Enciclopedia dantesca, written in
Dante has not been well-served by the
the early 1970's, notes that
medium. The
relatively
few
arid attempts to televise
with limited success (Antonucci). This
is
him have met
surprising, since the textual
Comedy are in many ways similar
those of television. But perhaps this was not as evident then as
is now. (And even now it is probably not evident to everyone.)
characteristics of Dante's Divine
to
it
Whatever
the case, this belated realization
may,
in part, explain the
recent interest in "translating" Dante from print into video.
In the past
few years there have been three such
A
efforts.
one-
hundred part series on the Divine Comedy, produced by the Diparti-
mento Scuola Educazione of RAI TV, was shown
The other two
time.
Four Television
ferno
in
in Britain
Televisual
Channel
has a thirty-four part series on the In-
Media Centre
Commentary. They
is
complete
University of Toronto has
at the
produced two half-hour programmes
A
1988 on prime
production. So far only the pilot on Inferno 5
Finally, the
(1985).
in
are in various stages of elaboration.
in its
Dante
's
Divine Comedy:
are "Dante's Ulysses and the
Home-
Tradition" (1985) and "Vulcan's Net: Passion and Punishment"
ric
A
(1987).
third
programme on "Dante's Universe"
and more are planned.
Of
am
I
the three projects, the
involved
RAI and
ductions are explicitly educational
is
under way,
in the latter enterprise.'
the University of Toronto prointention, although the
in
RAI
venture also aspires to "avvicinare un largo pubblico a La Divina
Commedia^' On
is
the other hand, the University of Toronto initiative
not even intended for broadcast:
and
dents
it
directed specifically at North
is
who
are
coming
most ambitious
in
to the
scope
is
poem
is
designed for the classroom
American undergraduate
for the first time.
the British
A
W
ditalianisiica
Volume
X. No. 1-2.
1989
stu-
far the
Dante, which carries
the signature of a talented avant-garde director, Peter
QUADERNI
By
Greenaway.
Amilcare A. lannucci
2
Tom
well-known painter and recent
Phillips, the
translator
with Greenaway.^ In
it
among
they attempt,
and
il-
programme
lustrator of the Inferno, shares the direction of the pilot
other things, to translate
Dante's plurilinguism (Contini) into the language of television, and,
to a great extent, succeed.
Their aim
in the institutional sense at
any
if
is
obviously not didactic, not
but this
rate,
programme
too could,
properly introduced and contextualized, be used effectively in the
classroom.
Is this legitimate?
literary text? If
what way can
I
it is,
it
Is
appropriate to use television to teach a
it
then
why
How
is it?
can television be used? In
be integrated into an overall pedagogical strategy?
limit the following discussion to Dante's
Divine Comedy and the
three television projects mentioned above.
Dante's Audience Then
In his Life of Dante, Boccaccio recounts the following anecdote:
[Dante's] complexion
crisp;
was
dark, and his hair and beard, thick, black, and
And
and his countenance always sad and thoughtful.
pened one day
in
Verona
.
.
.
thus
it
hap-
he passed before a doorway where
that, as
"Do you
women were sitting, one of them said to the others
man who goes down into hell and returns when he pleases, and
brings back news of those who are below?" To which one of the others
naively answered, "Indeed, what you say must be true; don't you see how
several
.
.
.
see the
his beard
crisped and his colour darkened by the heat and
is
smoke down
there?" (42-43)
Even when Boccaccio puts on
the robes of the biographer or
mentator, he remains a teller of
ryphal, but
it
confirms what
the early diffusion of Dante's
The
tales.
story
is
com-
probably apoc-
we know from other sources about
poem and the audiences to which it
appealed.'*
Dante's
Comedy was,
instant best seller.
The
literate
read
it,
It
in its time,
penetrated
transcribed
it,
what today we would
levels of
all
and passed
manuscript tradition assures us of
this.
amount of
critical literature
it
if
it
on
to friends
it
—
the
from the rank of
one measure of a classic
inspires.
an
This group recognized the
poem's greatness immediately and soon elevated
a best seller to that of a classic,
call
contemporary society.
Dante had hardly
his grave before the first glosses appeared. His sources
is
the
settled into
were tracked
Dante, Television, and Education
down and
and the
listed,
No
were expounded.
and allegorical meanings of
literal
was
verse
fourteenth century, Dante's
3
left
poem
his
unremarked. By the end of the
poem had
generated more commentary
than ViTgiVs Aeneid had throughout the whole of the Middle Ages.
At the same time, those unable
gathered eagerly
to read, like the
So powerful was
other world.
women
of Verona,
news from
public squares to hear the latest
in
the
their belief in the actual, physical
existence of hell, and so persuasive were Dante's words in conjuring
up
that world, that they accepted fiction as fact.
The
popularity of Dante's
which allows
ture,
to
it
speak
and culturally, as well as
poem
to
derives from
its
polysemous na-
audiences that are different socially
historically,
from the
educated and pedantic. Built into the poem's allegory are
sible readings, all of
By
this
I
do not mean
which flow naturally from
to
meanings may be made.
women
which
is
would
not "aberrant,"
suggest.''
They
if
nor
is
their reading
are highly
competent
not sophisticated "read-
Within the context of an oral performance of the Comedy, they
would bring
is
bound-
is
In terms of the text's intentionality, the
of Verona's decoding
as "naive" as Boccaccio
pos-
the literal narrative.
text delineates the terrain within
decoders of oral modes of communication,
ers."
many
imply that the Comedy's polysemy
and structureless. The
less
most
illiterate to the
to the
poem
a
knowledge of
constructed and an understanding of
which
the imagery with
its
it
textual conventions suffi-
make sense of it and derive pleasure from the experience.
why Boccaccio tells us Dante was not displeased by their
reaction. He realized that, by taking his words as literal truth, they
cient to
That
—
is
—
had grasped the poem's ethical and didactic message, which
is
remove
guide
them
his
the living from a state of misery in this
to a state
Comedy
of [eternal] happiness."
to
"to
Indeed, Dante had written
in Italian rather than Latin, and in a simple style rather
than a complex one, "so that even
understand
and
life
women
[i.e.
the illiterate]
would
(Epistle 13).
it"
Dante and Oral Culture
The Comedy's
distinctive textual characteristics
from and inserted
an important
role.
qualities, listed
into a popular culture in
And, indeed,
the
poem
were
which
in part
derived
orality played
possesses
many of
the
by Fiske and Hartley, typical of oral modes of com-
—
Amilcare A. lannucci
4
munication: dramatic, episodic, mosaic, dynamic, active, concrete,
social, metaphorical, rhetorical, dialectical.^
To
these
"memorability," the ease with which sections of
heart and recited aloud, as well as the sense of
The
oral reception of the
an "unwritten"
to
text,
of a
it
we must add
its
can be learnt by
"nowness"
it
creates.
poem in segments engenders the feeling of
poem in fieri where the next episode has yet
happen. Moreover, the predominance of contemporary characters
and situations enhances
this
impression of "nowness." Dante meets
Francesca
Francesca, not Iseult or Dido:
temporary.
A
series of "distances"
are thus removed.
immediate.
women
The
text
—bourgeois,
social, spatial,
when
this
In saying this,
all
whom
do not intend
I
to diminish in
poem
it
any way the Comedy's
way
the formal characteristics of literate communication,^
mode. More-
Dante speaks as a scribe and a maker of texts and con-
sistently addresses the reader, not the listener
The
Russo).
Dante would
also possesses, in one
are in tension with those of the opposing oral
over, in
is
must have fuelled among the
next he descended into hell!
status as a textual object. Dante's
or another,
con-
Italian,
and temporal
seems unmediated; the experience
Think of the gossip
of Verona and the speculation about
encounter
which
—
literary nature
been so thoroughly studied
of the
Comedy
that to dwell
on
it
is
is
(Auerbach, Spitzer,
so evident and has
almost superfluous.
Unlike such anonymous poems as Beowulf, the Chanson de Roland,
and the Cid, which grew out of primarily
Dante's
Comedy was
oral cultures (Zumthor),
the product of a self-conscious poet writing in a
sophisticated urban society which boasted a significant reading pub-
However,
lic.
Book,"
it
is
equally true, as
Ahern points out
that "the literate culture of the Italian
in
"Singing the
communes
contained
a very high residue of orality" and that a majority of the population
was
either illiterate or only marginally literate (21). That
not wish to exclude this group from enjoying his
from
it
itself.'
poem and
profiting
confirmed not only by the passage cited above from the
is
Letter to
Dante does
Cangrande but
For instance, the
also
by the
fact that
linguistic texture of the
Dante wrote the poem
poem
in the ver-
nacular, in a relatively simple style, in a frequently sung meter, and
in easily
performable units of approximately 140 verses, argues that
he wanted
to reach a
For Dante, the
wide audience, including even
women
the illiterate.
of Verona's oral reception of the
poem and
Dante, Television, and Education
response to
A
may be incomplete
it
but not inappropriate nor invalid.
more complete response would involve
simultaneous or consecutive) by the
ral reality
of the
competence
it,
soon realized
poem
to give the
this explains
why
1373
in
"non gramatici"
that
twofold reception (either
which
literate, in
Dante's listening public, or
text.
to as
a
would be experienced along with
group within
5
it
poem's au-
the
a slow, reflexive reading
at least a large, intelligent
did not possess the necessary
the full response
it
demanded. Perhaps
group of semi-literate persons (referred
a
in the extant
document) petitioned the Flo-
rentine authorities for a public reading of and
commentary on
the
Divine Comedy. ^^ So began the lectura Dantis tradition, inaugurated
by Boccaccio himself. But from the outset the form became
vehicle for academic closure: learned
many
voices.^'
It is
this
commentary
berg,
which has prevailed. But
larity
not so
which
much
the
to the lectura
Comedy's
tradition, reinforced
by Guten-
poem owes
its
continuing popu-
Dantis tradition as
to the ease
can be inserted into oral culture, from which
it
sprang. Moreover,
it
a literate
the
words engulfed
could be argued that a part of
its
it
with
originally
meaning can
best be grasped through oral performance rather than through silent,
solitary reading.
Walter Ong, citing Havelock, distinguishes the production of meaning and pleasure in oral culture as opposed to literate culture:
... for an oral culture, learning or
communal
thetic,
46)
.
.
.
knowing means achieving
close,
empa-
known (Havelock 1963, pp. 145knower from the known and thus sets up
identification with the
Writing separates the
conditions for "objectivity," in the sense of personal disengagement or
distancing. (45-46)
The
fact that
literate
Dante's
poem
possesses characteristics of both oral and
modes of communication allows
depending on how
group receiving
up equally
it.
to the
it
is
it
to elicit
both responses,
received and the cultural preparation of the
In other
words, the Divine
Comedy opens
immediate, empathetic response of the
itself
women
of
Verona and the more objective, disengaged response of the individual
reader. In the
first
case, the aural impact of Dante's verbal imagery
collapses the distinction between the fictional world being described
and
reality,
and establishes
a close relationship
and the thing evoked. Here, meaning
tion with
and participation
is
in the action
between
the audience
produced through identificaof the
poem and
is
grasped
Amilcare A. fannucci
6
without reflection. Even the moral significance
purpose
is
communicated immediately, since
which are
part of the
consciousness and
memory
of even the
in the struggle for
meaning (and how
the literal images,
and transmitted), the
lost out to the
literate.
much
more
women
at the heart
it
known,
i.e.
women
this
of Dante's
flows naturally from
part of the cultural
of Verona. However,
meaning
is to
of Verona's immediate
be produced
literal
"reading"
abstract, stratified, allegorical discourse of the
dimension of the poem and
In the process, the aural/oral
of what Contini calls the Comedy's "altra polisemia,"
i.e.
the
allusive density of the literal level,'^ have been lost.
Dante's Audience Today
Dante's audience
edy
first
aries.
is
as varied today as
it
was when
Moreover,
it
this public is
poem
made up of
students
who
no longer
in
touch with
tural assumptions, with
literary allusions.
of meaning
recreated?
How
—meaning,
Mediation
its
can
to
necessary, of course.
theological, mythological,
this context,
and
necessary for the production
be precise, which
text, the
is
world of Dante's poem.
the
language, iconography, and cul-
its political,
With an old
into account
significant portion of
typically are required to read
Seven hundred years separate us from
are
A
annotated edition, in other words, as a clas-
in a heavily
sic rather than as a best seller.
We
Com-
continues to enjoy a large public, selling hundreds
of thousands of copies a year worldwide.'^
the
the Divine
appeared, cutting across class divisions and national bound-
is
not aberrant
—
best be
production of meaning must take
and be respectful of both our and the
text's differing
historical situations.
In fine,
what form should the mediation
take, especially for
North
American undergraduate students reading the Divine Comedy
first time? Is the lectura Dantis the most appropriate form? Another
for the
anecdote, this one true! In the main undergraduate course on Dante
the University of Toronto a
Comedy was
prescribed.
students were having
at
few years ago, the Sapegno edition of the
However, we quickly discovered
more
difficulty negotiating
that the
Sapegno's learned
The following year
encumbering edition. The issue is not,
notes than deciphering Dante's naked verses.
we
adopted Grandgent's less
of course, the quality of Sapegno's gloss. Despite
edition appeared in 1955
—
it
its
age
—
the
first
remains one of the most sophisticated
Dante, Television, and Education
and
intelligent
7
commentaries on the market. Rather
is
it
the linguistic
and cultural preparation of our students, as well as which strategy
use as a
first
approach
to
poem.'^
to the
Dante, Television, and Education
Perhaps
pedagogical strategy which
a
more
is
sensitive to our stu-
dents' historical and geographical situation and that of the text, for
The Comedy
is
neither an open nor a closed text (Eco, The Role of the Reader);
it
Let us start with the
that matter, is in order.
is
and
cult,
in
Eco and Barthes
self-reflexive,
discovering
its
originally theorized
complex discursive
way
in the
—
convey
that of reality
succeeds
— and
this impression.
the qualities of an
in
calls,
who
delights
seems
to function at
one
uses standard signifying practices
Although the Comedy exhibits many of
open or writerly
text,
also "reads" easily and
it
communicating meaning and giving pleasure even
Because of
this,
Dante's
its
Comedy
states,
to
elaborate allegorical disis
more
like
what Fiske
with specific reference to television, a "producerly text."
producerly text," Fiske
in
On
one which "reads" eas-
is
It
those unable to appreciate the nature of
course.
multiple, diffi-
production of meaning.
and thus has wide popular appeal.
level only
is
it,
and consequently
strategies
the other hand, a closed or readerly text
ily
or writerly text,
designed for the refined reader
participating in a writerly
to
An open
neither writerly nor readerly (Barthes).
at least as
text.
"A
adapting Barthes' terminology, "com-
bines the televisual characteristics of a writerly text with the easy
accessibility of the readerly" (95).
The problem, of
become less
the "readerly" aspect of Dante's text has
the reasons listed above. Moreover, the text
in a quintessentially literate
This format disregards,
polysemy and
is
and academic form
to a great extent,
the "reading"
course,
is
that
accessible, for
presented to students
—
the lectura Dantis.
both the nature of the text's
competence of
a large part
of Dante's
women
of Verona,
audience, both then and now.
Most undergraduate students today,
are highly
like the
competent decoders of oral modes of communication.
Indeed, they are perhaps more television-literate than book-literate,
and
able, therefore, if pointed in the right direction, to retrieve in part
the aural/oral dimension (largely lost) of Dante's
that
simply reading the
poem
poem, something
aloud can no longer hope to do.
As
Amilcare A. lannucci
8
McLuhan and
others since
shown, television
television, the
him (Ong, Schwartz,
have
Fiske, etc.)
primarily an auditory-based medium.'^ Watching
is
eye functions
like
an ear,
put it in the more
Hodge and Tripp's
"You sorta listen with
or, to
colourful language of a nine-year-old child in
research project on children and television:
your eyes" (41). Through television,
not only
some of
the Divine
may
it
be possible
Comedy's contents
(its
to
recover
iconography, for
mode
instance), but also to re-experience, in part, at any rate, the
in
which
the
poem was
received by a large segment of
its
original
audience.
keep saying "in part" because the
I
electronic society
that
it
based on and derived from
is
orality
essentially different
is
produced by today's
from the
literacy.
traditional kind in
Walter
Ong
calls
it
"secondary orality":
With telephone,
and various kinds of sound tape, elec-
radio, television
tronic technology has brought us into the age of "secondary orality." This
new
orality has striking
tique, its fostering of a
moment, and even
erate
its
resemblances to the old
communal
sense,
its
use of formulas. But
and self-conscious
in its participatory
mys-
concentration on the present
it
is
essentially a
more
delib-
based permanently on the use of writing
orality,
and print, which are essential for the manufacture and operation of the
equipment and for its use as well. (136)
Although
I
have stressed the similarities between the "reading" com-
petence of the
women
of Verona and today's students,
important to note the differences,
Although
and our students.
it
tellectually, the great majority
may be
Dante's
to
literate
true that, culturally
read,
mode
(in its
also
and
in-
they are closer
contemporaries than they are to the
them. However, unlike the
hostile to the oral
is
and many even derive
last analysis, therefore,
Verona: the possibility of a twofold reception of the
to
it
abuse Dante, television,
of today's students are formed more
by television than by books, they can
pleasure from the act. In the
we
lest
litterati
new
women
poem
is
of
open
of Dante's time, they are not
electronic form, of course). This
places today's students in a unique position to apprehend and to appreciate the Comedy''^
of the
literal level
extraliteral senses.
the
new
complex polysemy, both
the "altra polisemia"
and the more formal, structured polysemy of the
The former,
I
believe, can best be grasped through
orality of today's electronic
media, television in particular.
Dame,
Television,
and Education
9
Dante on Television
So
far
I
my
have concentrated
attention
and self-conscious use of television,
recreate in
it
on how, through
may
some measure an experience of
Whether or not
on how effectively the medium
the text's allusive
in
this is achieved,
is
used.
a deliberate
in theory, to
poem which promotes
the
meanings contained
the production of those
literal narrative.
be possible,
however, depends
Understanding Media,
In
McLuhan
noted that "merely to put the present classroom on
would be
like putting
that is neither" (289).
mentioned
earlier
movies on TV. The
I
and
shall
now
TV
a hybrid
turn to the three television projects
briefly discuss each.
Despite the big budget, the
RAI
production
declared intentions of the undertaking, as
make Dante
unsatisfactory both
is
(One of the
and as a commercial venture.
as an educational tool
is
would be
The Lectura Dantis Televised
1.
to
result
I
have already noted, was
accessible to as wide an audience as possible.)
bookish television:
vised. Directed by
sum,
in
Marco
little
more than
Parodi, each canto
is
It
a lectura Dantis tele-
introduced by Giorgio
Petrocchi, the project's academic co-ordinator, and then read by a
famous actor (Albertazzi, Sbraglia, Salerno).
tary
is
provided
in
an
artificially
Finally, a
commen-
constructed dialogue between two
established scholars (e.g. Baldelli, Borsellino, Pasquazi, Petrocchi,
The interpretative readings are too theatrical for
the medium; the commentary is basic, but still too learned for the
intended audience. Its presentation is both awkward and uninspired.
Tartaro, Vallone).
Furthermore, the introduction and debate are set
Biblioteca Vallicelliana in
academic tone of the
affair,
audience even further.
Comedy. As
and
little
and serves, of course,
The production
language of television nor
in the
Rome, which accentuates
is
it
to distance its
sensitive neither to the
to the telepotential
a classroom aid,
magnificent
the distinctly
language of Dante's
can be used to impart information
more: however, the information could be conveyed better
through the more traditional pedagogical genre of the formal lecture,
with a few slides thrown
in.
is a hybrid that is neither.'^
RAI
has put the book on
TV:
the result
Amilcare A. latinucci
Fig.
1.
The Castle of Memory
d'amours.
in
a manuscript of Li Bestiaires
Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale
early 14th cent.).
Ms.
fr.
1951,
f.
1
(French,
Dante, Television, and [education
Fig. 2.
Dante and
his
poem. Fresco by Domenico
Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence (1465).
11
di
Michelino
in
12
Fig. 3.
Amilcare A. lannucci
View of
Florence. Detail from the
"Madonna
della Miseri-
cordia" fresco in the Orfanotrofio del Bigallo, Florence (1352).
Dante, Television, and Education
13
wn>
.1
lim.i
t"t
111
Anin
Er
.iiiciv
Fig. 4.
.il
lumtni' inolrp conflvrn
^VklMIV
I
a
UiÇll.lIV iT iMul.]
f'liov ficrimoli .ip.v
.i(
fbl.i^rifv
lat.
209
yv:t.}
c-lv .iT> .iln-i pJ.'uTi.i
Luna and her
Estense, Ms.
l.i
influence.
De
:
sphaera.
(Italian, 15th cent.).
Modena, Biblioteca
14
Fig. 5.
f.
234v
Amilcare A. latinucci
Cathedral Ship.
New
(Italian, 15th cent.).
York, Pierpont
Morgan Ms.
M
799
Dante, Television, and Education
15
i
Fig. 6.
\
Purgatorio
2.
The
ship of the souls.
Laurenziana, Ms. Strozz. 152,
f.
Florence, Biblioteca
31v (Florentine,
ca.
1335-1345).
16
Fig. 7.
Amilcare A. lannucci
World map. Ebstorf, Germany. Destroyed 1943
(ca. 1235).
Dante, Television, and
Education
ntf- ^'?r^
'" '
eatr4;'ce::i'
"^'""^^"P^ of Brunetto Latini's Trésor. Oxford
""-- '''^ ' '^ «^
^^^'e (Italian;
""'
--^-
Amilcare A. lannucci
18
Fig. 9.
of
St.
God shows Death to the fallen Adam and Eve in a manuscript
De civitate Dei. Paris, Bibliothèque Ste Geneviève
Augustine's
(French, 15th cent.).
9
Dante, Television, and Education
Dante, from Illumination to Tt'levision
2.
A
1
remarkable illumination
of Richard de Fournivai's
an early fourteenth century manuscript
in
Bestiaires
/./
d'amours shows Lady
Mem-
ory standing before a castle with two doors, one bearing the image
of an eye, the other that of an ear (figure
One can
1).
enter the
house of Memory, Richard explains, either through the door of sight
(painting) or through the door of hearing (speech):
For when one sees a story painted, whether a story of Troy or of some
men who were
other thing, one sees the deeds of the brave
times as
And
they were present.
if
so
it
hears a tale read, one perceives the wondrous deeds as
them taking
place.
means,
is
that
And
since what
is
past
made
is
by painting and speech, therefore
two things one can come
it
if
there in past
For when one
with speech.
is
one were
to see
present by those two
is
clear that by these
remembrance.'^
to
Painting and speech not only generate images in the mind, but also
retrieve
images already stored
there.
Dante's iconography of damnation and salvation, familiar to his
first
audiences, has today largely been
ilar to the
Following a process sim-
lost.
one described by Richard de Fournival, the University of
Toronto project attempts
to reconstruct televisually this
which Dante's powerful verbal imagery would
of his contemporaries.
iconography,
trigger in the
minds
does so using manuscript illuminations
It
and various other visual images,
all
of which, even those from late
sources, belong to Dante's and his original public's cultural patri-
mony and memory. Manuscript
because they are small
miniatura
them
low
—
flat,
—
illuminations have been privileged
the Italian term for illumination
and often
ill-defined, all characteristics
ideally suited to television, with
definition.
The
TV
flattens, foreshortens,
its
is,
in fact,
which make
small screen and relatively
image, and especially one thus delineated,
and blurs distinctions, creating the impression
of simultaneous presence
in a
manner akin
to that
of oral-manuscript
culture.'**
The primary purpose of
series
is,
the University of Toronto
Dante video
therefore, to reposition the student historically in a pre-
humanistic setting and
that the visual
experienced.
make him
self-conscious of the process, so
and oral contexts of the Comedy may be
The
historical repositioning
the following operation. First, the student
I
is
critically re-
propose corresponds to
removed from
in front
of
Amilcare A. lannucci
20
Domenico
Michelino's famous representation of Dante (1456) in
di
Santa Maria del Fiore (Florence). This well-known painting, which
has become synonymous with Dante, shows the poet in the fore-
ground holding
viewer.
The
Comedy open
his
left
hand,
in his
its
pages facing the
foreground and the background are occupied by the
three realms of the afterlife; to the right
a
is
view of Florence domi-
nated by Brunelleschi's majestic cupola (figure
2).
Once
has been deprived of this anachronistic perspective, he
its
the student
is
offered in
place the crowded confusion of the splendid, foreshortened rep-
resentation of Florence in the
(1352)
manner
"Madonna
in the Orfanotrofio del Bigallo in
della Misericordia" fresco
Florence (figure
In this
3).
the three-dimensional "visual" space of the Renaissance
replaced by the
"acoustic" space of the Middle
flat,
Gutenberg Galaxy
19),
is
Ages (McLuhan,
which our new electronic environment,
to a
great extent, recreates.
The technique used
make
to
the
programmes
is
straightforward:
the images (mostly miniatures, as already indicated) are projected
onto one or more screens, filmed, and then edited
ate the illusion of
motion and
commentary. The
script is read
coherent narrative and
to construct a
by a professional narrator
not appear on screen. Finally, original music
tive
order to cre-
in
and imagery thus reclaimed are used
is
who
does
added. The perspec-
to illustrate
key aspects of
Dante's poem, whether they be thematic, structural, or other.
Most of
the images are necessary to recreate the context and
the narrative.
Some
of the context-building illustrations are taken
from illuminated manuscripts of
the Divine
Comedy. However, these
manuscripts yield relatively few images, since Dante's early
tors rarely dedicated
more than one
Furthermore, illuminations from
ceptions, seldom take us
Meiss, and Singleton
in
or
two miniatures
this source,
below
to
illustra-
each canto.
with a few notable ex-
the surface of the text (Brieger,
Illuminated Manuscripts).
In other words,
these pictures can often provide the divisione but seldom the ragion-
ata cagione, to use Dante's
hand, there are
which serve
own
critical categories.
some images, deriving from
the other
a precise, exegetical function, clarifying especially the
"altra polisemia" of the literal narrative.
gramme,
image of
On
a variety of sources,
the
first in
the
moon
I
shall use the
Ulysses pro-
the series (1985), as an example. Consider the
in Inferno 26, usually interpreted in
terms of the
Dante, Television, and Education
poem's formal
allegory,
as a
i.e.
21
symbol of Reason, unilluminated
by Grace. However, the traditional iconography of the goddess Luna
suggests other, more allusive, interpretative possibilities which obviously have
some bearing on
Luna was
the episode's significance.
the protector of sailors and patron of folly.
She was also closely
sociated with Fortune, and hence tragic reversal. Indeed, she
represented as balanced on wheels, as she
illustration
(despite
from the
its late
De sphaera which we
source) because of
its
is in
used
is
as-
often
a fifteenth century
in the
programme
beauty and clarity (figure
4).
Less often, an image can illuminate the more formal, structured
polysemy of Dante's
Christ's passion,
is
The Cathedral Ship
text.
ship (figure 6) which transports the saved from the
Tiber to the shores of
is in
turn
Mount
is
metaphorically the
poem
and Dante's ship, for
programme
is
the thirteenth century Ebstorf
the figure of Christ
is
symbolic space, Christ's
meaning
is
mappa mundi
T and
the
Ulysses
this sort in the
(figure 7),
actually superimposed on the
world, divided according to the familiar
In this
that matter,
All four carry a similar cargo:
itself.
Perhaps the most obvious image of
which
the
established between Noah's Ark, the Cathedral Ship,
the celestial boat of Purgatorio 2,
in
mouth of
Purgatory.'^ Since the Cathedral Ship
modelled on Noah's Ark, a clear iconographie and typo-
logical link
saved.
by
(figure 5), driven
almost certainly the model for the angel-propelled
known
pattern (figure 8)."°
The
feet are placed at Gibraltar.
evident, and dramatically brings into focus the Ulysses'
episode's dominant metaphor. To be saved, one must stay within the
bounds. Spiritual limits are defined
lars
in
geographical terms. The
Pil-
of Hercules stand as an imperative: do not overstep the bounds!
Ulysses does:
he follows the setting sun, symbol of Adam's
sails into darkness,
and ends
in
fall,
shipwreck. At the tropological level,
Ulysses' example warns Dante's Christian audience of the perils of
spiritual transgression."'
Although much of
this
information could be delivered
in
an
il-
lustrated lecture, televisual presentation of the material adds consid-
erably to the
way meaning
is
produced and grasped.
Words and
pictures are only part of the meaning-generating strategy in these
televisual commentaries.
A
erate meaning: these range
complex
series of other factors also gen-
from the angle and motion of the camera
to the tone of the narrator's voice,
from the graphics
to the
sound
Amilcare A. lannucci
22
For example, music contributes significantly
track.
of meaning. The Ulysses programme
count of various "sea" journeys.
It
is,
among
starts
production
to the
other things, an ac-
by contrasting the circular
homeward-bound Homeric hero to the linear trajectory
of Dante's Ulysses. The latter's last, doomed voyage is then com-
pattern of the
pared to the successful journeys of Aeneas, the purgatorial souls, and
Dante himself. Each has
its
music. For instance, the musical themes
of the two Ulysses emphasize their differing destinies: one creates
which sug-
a sense of closure, the other of opening, but an opening
gests from the outset the inevitability of shipwreck. In contrast, the
of Purgatorio 2
celestial ship
which
a motif
The
steady militaristic beat of
sails to the
recalls In exitu Israel
de Aegypto.
other televisual commentaries in the series are similarly fash-
"Vulcan's Net: Passion and Punishment" (1987)
ioned.
of love and war.
Its
archetype
is
theme
traced to the adultery of
Venus
it
and Mars, called by Ovid "the best-known story
nally,
"Dante's Universe" (now
retells the
against the broader
story of Paolo and Francesca, setting
in all
heaven." Fi-
in preparation) illustrates
how Dante
poem
uses the Ptolemaic universe as a structuring device to give his
shape and meaning. The stage upon which his Comedy unfolds
is
the cosmos.
A Postmodern TV Dante
3.
The
British
A TV
Dante's
pilot
on Inferno 5
is
less philological
than the University of Toronto programmes, and takes the opposite
"The good old
approach, making the past contemporary:
ways
is
a blank for
new
things."
So begins
text al-
the Greenaway-Phillips
metavideo, which deliberately sets out to bring the writerly aspects of
Dante's text into the open, skilfully using
it
to experiment, at times
parodically, with the "linguistic" conventions of the
result is an entertaining,
exercise which
is
sequence
in the episode.
we move from
the
to a realistic description
low grotesque
realistic
style of the
Minos
of the infernal storm to an epic
catalogue of famous lovers, and finally,
the episode,
medium. The
televisual styles, an
not dissimilar in spirit to Dante's conscious mixing
of styles or plurilinguism
In Inferno 5
postmodern collage of
in
from the language of the dolce
the Francesca part of
stil
language of prose romance (Poggioli),
nuovo
all
to the
more
within the frame
Dante, Television, and Education
23
How do Grcenaway and Phillips handle these shifts
They translate them into contemporary filmic or televisual
equivalents. They use Fellinesque imagery for Minos and the sinners,
of chronicle.
in style?
a televised
southern
weather warning about an approaching tornado
USA
for the bufera infernale,
style of British television
in the
documentaries
and the
the
in
distinctive, snapshot
for the epic catalogue.
Then,
Francesca segment, they play with the conventions of romance,
repeating, for instance, Francesca's crucial "Lancelot" speech three
times, each in a different tone.
The
first
programme,
part of the
whirlwind dies down
until the
and the two condemned lovers step forward, moves
We
feverish speed.
at
bombarded by hundreds of repulsive sounds and images, held
are
together by quick cuts. Moreover, the screen
often broken up, thus
is
multiplying the infernal imagery and reinforcing the overwhelming
sense of moral disorder and chaos.
Greenaway and
visual techniques,
Through these and other
Phillips
manage
tele-
to restore to the
episode's setting and contrapasso a rawness which time and com-
mentary had largely subdued.
While today's students might be shocked by the raw and
explicit
imagery, they would certainly appreciate the hectic pace of the pro-
gramme. Televisually
literate,
they regularly practise the
of "zap-
art
ping" or "systematic switching" (Palmer 79), which allows them to
construct a viewing experience of fragments. This video might even
make them aware
stylistic
that
Dante does something very similar with the
codes of his time, which he juxtaposes and fuses with
arming ease, moving from the grotesque
at will.
to the
The Greenaway-Phillips video contains
insights into the
workings of Dante's
text,
which
dis-
sublime and back
a
number of other
are expressed not
only through the rapid accumulation of images but also through the
techniques of the
medium
itself:
the use of black and white, colour,
computer graphics, odd camera angles, sound
effects,
and so on.
THE LUSTFUL, the video opens with a visual word
LUSTFUL becomes LUST and then US, a nice tropologi-
Subtitled
play:
ca! touch.
Sometimes words
translated into images: they
words themselves. When
struct the pilgrims'
power
way,
are so powerful that they cannot be
must be rendered
Virgil
warns Minos
in the
(vv.
22-24) not
for their journey "is willed
are one," his authorial voice speaks
imagery of the
where
to
will
from the pages of
ob-
and
a book.
Amilcare A. lannucci
24
More
spectacularly, the
word
LOVE
is literally
the screen each time Francesca utters
(v. lOOff.) in
Her face
which she attempts
fills
in fire
famous
onto
tercets
with Paolo.
to justify her adultery
sockets.
The scene
is
disconcerting in
Francesca burns and dies
tive accuracy:
becomes
sin
branded
in the three
the screen while flames burn through her skull-like
mouth and eye
The
it
the punishment.
in the fire
This idea
of
its
interpreta-
passion.
illicit
brought into dra-
is
matic focus, again through the imaginative use of televisual devices
in the three versions
Through
two
toward
titudes
(v.
121ff.)
poses and the colour of the light which bathes them
their
in the first
of Francesca's "Lancelot" speech
renditions, Paolo
their passion,
and Francesca convey differing
at-
seemingly out of step with one other.
Francesca's tone as she speaks the lines reveals
first
unconscious
passion and then urgent, seductive entreaty as she seeks to embroil
the viewer in her
own moral
downfall. In the background, the silent
Paolo conveys internal struggle as Francesca delivers her lines the
first
time, and then anguished
second sequence, Francesca,
with her hands. In the
shame
as she repeats them.
like Paolo, tries to
In the
cover her nakedness
both are devoid of emotion.
final rendition,
The colour has disappeared, and Francesca
delivers her lines in a
flat,
commencontrapasso. The
matter-of-fact tone. Repetition turns passion into routine, a
tary
on both the nature of
lust
and the episode's
soundtrack underscores the point.
ground
it
we
From time
hear the words "and more and more
turns out,
is
part of verse 130,
which
more and more our eyes were forced
In the
tempt
to
Tom
time
to
.
.
."
back-
in the
The
refrain, as
Phillips translates,
"But
to meet."
second version of the "Lancelot" speech, the lovers'
at-
cover their nakedness recalls the medieval iconography of
the temptation of
Adam
and Eve and
den of Eden. Furthermore, Paolo
and vulnerable, perhaps a reference
is
their expulsion
from the Gar-
portrayed throughout as slight
to the traditional interpretation
of
Adam's weakness and the Fall as male rationality capitulating to female seduction. ^^ The typological link between Paolo and Francesca
and Adam and Eve suggested by the lovers' poses is made explicit
As Francesca pronounces
in the final images of the programme.
"The book was Gallehault, a gothe famous "Galeotto" passage
between" the camera focuses on her sensuous mouth (the colour
—
—
has been fully restored) which, with the pilgrim's swoon,
is
turned
Dante, Television, and Education
25
become a vaginal image and then the V of Eve. Thus
programme begins and ends with a visual play on words a device which certainly would have pleased Dante, who, as we know,
vertically to
—
the
loved puns and word-play.
Conclusion
I
have perhaps overstated the use and usefulness of television
teaching. If
I
have,
it
is
because television
medium with
both to create "new
is
in
so often treated as an
inferior cultural
inferior textual characteristics that
potential
things" and (more importantly, from
its
our perspective) to illuminate "old things" has been underestimated.
Perhaps
this is
due
to literate culture's uneasiness with television
and the new electronic
threat to
its
values.
perceives as a
it
the case, television can,
an effective teaching tool, especially
all
which
orality in general,
Whatever
if
it
is
I
believe, be
integrated into an over-
pedagogical strategy, anchored by the more traditional teaching
genres of the formal lecture and seminar."^^ For Dante specifically,
it
can be useful
in recreating
recovering certain messages,
lusive
polysemy of
an experience of the
in particular
the literal narrative.
Comedy and
in
those contained in the al-
Sometimes
it
can even help
us penetrate the more formal hierarchical polysemy of the allegory.
In the
hands of sensitive directors
medium can even
like
Greenaway and
Phillips, the
bring into focus the writerly aspects of the
text,
exposing Dante's discursive strategies and metaliterary discourse.
Bringing television and other electronic technology^"* into the class-
room
is
also an important gesture toward the present and our stu-
dents' cultural formation.
Even today
the Divine
enjoyed as a best seller rather than tolerated as a
to
happen,
we must
provide a commentary,
Comedy can be
classic.
But for
at least initially,
this
which
does not overwhelm students but provides them with just enough
information to produce meaning and pleasure. Peter Greenaway and
Tom
Phillips incorporate the
commentary
and parodie way. From time
tradition into their video
windows open up
to explain some detail or other.
He is allowed to say only what is absolutely necessary. Then his
voice starts to fade; finally the window closes and he disappears.
in a brilliant
to
time
on the screen and an expert appears
There are symbolically and ironically three such authorial
Dantist, a classicist,
and an ornithologist.'^
figures: a
Amilcare A. latinucci
26
One final anecdote
Panorama contained a
It
proclaimed
bold
in
The Christmas 1988
to conclude.
issue of
FAX machine.
PRENDETE UN LIBRO E TRASMET-
full-page advertisement for a
print:
TETELO SUBITO DOVE VOLETE. The book
be sent was La
to
Divina Commedia, complete with an image of Dante figured on one
my
of the open pages. The ad struck
fancy for two reasons:
first,
Dante with the book, which
that our electronic society associates
continues to be an object of authority and reverence; and secondly,
that this
wires.
from
monument of words should be transmitted across telephone
was with this very machine that I transmitted this paper
It
Rome
you
to
Toronto today.
in
^^
University of Toronto
NOTES
1
In addition to writing the scripts,
my
conception of each programme
realized.
is
They
and directed by Michael Edmunds.
Centre of the University of Toronto
2 Quoted on
of the
in the
in the
who
is
an offshoot
objectives and intended
its
in
an
article
broadcast: "Speriamo in un largo pubblico, anche di esperti,
di studenti, a cui
project on
con
la
massima semplicità spiegheremo
The book mentioned above,
It
which
it
is
based,
rather simple
is
contains a biography of the poet, a brief
multimedia
affair.
It
il
contenuto
like the
and straightforward
It
is,
canto,
however,
comes with an audiocassette with readings of
anthologized cantos by AJbertazzi, Sbragia, and Salerno,
TV
con-
in
summary of each
and an anthology of ten "famous" cantos with commentary.
a
Media
co-ordinated the academic side
following statement, cited by Giulia Borgese
e l'importanza dei singoli canti."
cept.
produced
Corriere Cultura, which appeared just a few months before the pro-
grammes were
anche
are
are available through the
even more explicit about
is
sure that the overall
both English and Italian versions.
television project. Petrocchi,
of the undertaking,
audience
in
make
The programmes
Per conoscere Dante, which
the cover of Petrocchi,
RAI
role is to
the ten
who performed
this
task in the television production.
3 Phillips' translation
that there will
Greenaway,
a
new
is
used, as are
be a change
in a recent
in
some of
his illustrations.
personnel and
in
look
However,
in future
it
seems
programmes.
interview in La Repubblica (Porro), speaks of
work on
translation and construction of a set in preparation for the shooting of
the series,
which
will take at least three years to complete.
will not be dramatizations in the strict sense of the
actors for the major characters (as
is
The programmes
word, but will include
the case for Paolo
and Francesca
in the
Dame,
and Education
Television,
The English
already completed Inferno 5 scgmenl).
Dante; Sir John Gicigud
4 On
Bob Peck
actor
first
of these two important
articles, in
Dante's audience into four groups according
They
"literacy" (21-22).
indocli; 3) the volgari e
which Ahcrn divides
degree of each group's
to the
are 1) the idiotae or illitteraii; 2) the semi-literate or
non
vernacular
litierati (i.e.
"unschooled artisans and craftsmen," could "haltingly decipher
simple accounts and
documents,"
group of pure
first
like the
Comedy,
the
like
poem through
illiterates.
group too was,
this
together, included
When
receive the
and the
illiterate
poem
came
that
who
text
only had access to
These four groups, taken
one another
concerns
could,
it
two groups can be merged
Italian.
me
complex
in
paper
in this
is
that
between those who could on'y
literate, i.e. that
orally and those
complex written
to a
social classes and related to
and paradoxical ways. The distinction
between the
it
in effect, illiterate:
were capable of reading
all
of sale,
bills
can, for our purposes, be collapsed
it
oral recitation. Likewise, the last
into one, since both
and 4) the
literate only);
Since the second group, composed mainly of
litterati (i.e. also Latin literate).
into the
will play
to portray Virgil.
John Ahcrn, "Singing the Book" and "Binding the Book,"
this subject, see
but especially the
scheduled
is
27
if
poem
they chose, receive the
either through a public oral performance or through a private, silent reading
of
it.
paper
shall return later in this
I
complex question of double
to the
reception on the part of the literate.
5 The term belongs to Umberto Eco who,
sione?", argues that
when
there
is
between the encoder and the decoder of
"aberrant,"'
i.e.
the
message
pubblico
in "II
television, given the great social
the Letter to
Cangrande
male
alia televi-
a text, the
decoding
will often be
will be deciphered according to the cultural
of the receiver rather than those of the sender.
As
fa
a significant social or cultural difference
This
is
and cultural range of
its
{Epistle 13.10) suggests, and as
"Singing the Book" (32-34), Dante wrote his poem
in
codes
especially true of
such a
audience (266).
Ahem
way
argues
that
be received both orally and through silent solitary reading, thus making
cessible to the widest possible audience. This, of course, does not
Comedy immune
However,
the
to aberrant readings,
women
encoded
both the
at
it
ac-
make
the
which occur regularly and frequently.
of Verona's "reading"
they draw from the poem,
in
could
it
not of this kind: the message
is
literal
and the tropological
level,
is
in the text.
6 Boccaccio's characterization of
important distinction
"sophisticated"
in
their reading
competence brings
Model Reader. Although
Eco's "naive" Model Reader,
this
that this
mode
mind Eco's
the
women
of Verona most resemble
category does not entirely explain their
uation, since they are very competent decoders of oral
messages
to
The Role of the Reader between the "naive" and the
communication and
sit-
the
of communication privileges. For Eco's application
of his Model Reader theory to television (which
is
our special concern
in this
paper), see "L'innovazione nel seriale" (135).
7 The only
characteristic of oral
communication
listed
by them
that
Dante's
Amilcare A. latinucci
28
poem does
not possess in any measure
is
Comedy
the "ephemeral," since the
is
obviously a written document, also intended to be received by a sophisticated
reading public (Fiske and Hartley 124-25).
8 These
are,
always according
Fiske and Hartley, narrative, sequential, lin-
to
permanent, individual, métonymie, logical, uni-
ear, static, artefact, abstract,
vocal/'consistent' (124-25).
9 Indirect confirmation comes from
the reaction of the litterad of his day, like
Giovanni del Virgilio {Eclogue 1.6-13) and
who
with Petrarch himself,
way
10 For
as to appeal to the "ignorant
of the humanists, starting
later
Dante for writing the poem
criticized
mob"
in
such a
Cf. Vallone,
Ahem,
in the four
sonnets
{Familiares 21.15).
Lungo 163-69.
the text of the petition, see Isidoro del
"Singing the Book" 33.
11 The experience, according
{Rime la
Parte,
Boccaccio's
to
own
testimony
of the poem, was not a
to his public reading
122-25) dedicated
completely satisfactory one. The form was too academic for his public, which
he refers to as "questi ingrati meccanici" (123.13). Those
Boccaccio for opening up the poem
to
to the
worry about. The lectura Dantis format, despite
fundamentally antithetical
that
12 The
women
of Verona's
since
it
in cui
is
literal
its
longstanding tradition,
"altra polisemia,"
si
elementi vicini e assai spesso
in
stratificano e
i
medesimi, siano punti
di
component of
la
Tommaso Di
and
is
is
literal level
we may
of
al
prezioso
come
add, the aural/oral
continuing popularity of Dante's Divine
Zanichelli school edition of the
Comedy, prepared by
competitive market
in
which
that the
new Pasquini-Quaglio
the
Sapegno (La Nuova
their
Italia)
own. Perhaps even more
edition of the
poem
(Garzanti),
intended primarily not for the schools but for the general public, sold
over 30,000 copies during roughly the same period (Borgese). Dante
abroad too, as several papers
di
'idea
Salvo, sold 180,000 copies in the three year period 1985-87,
this in a highly
which
Un
his
the allusive literal level has been left largely unexplored.
and Bosco-Reggio (Le Monnier) editions held
significant
gli
duplice natura di
But commentary on the
this erudite focus,
statistics to indicate the
The new
Comedy.
che
reticolati
(not to mention the allegorical levels) "si è tradizionalmente
'comico' " (120). Because of
13 Just a few
si
"Tal copia associativa,"
svolto secondo la linea puntualmente erudita spettante così
al
it.
dell'autore,
numerosi
one of the most penetrating pages of
Dante, preziosa e 'comica'" (120).
poem
memoria
accumulano, facendo
di Dante, "è fomentata da quella che culturalmente è
Dante's
rise to
which, of course, contains a great deal more
e sistemi, per solito implicati e non svolti" (119).
Contini goes on to say
is
result
"reading" must be located within the range of
the product of "la fulminante ricchezza della
esperienze e letture
criticized
communication, with the paradoxical
has to a great extent excluded the very group which gave
it
Comedy's
the
to oral
who had
"vulgo indegno" (123.3) had nothing
at the recent international
sells
well
conference on "L'opera
Dante nel mondo: edizioni e traduzioni nel Novecento," organized by the
Centro Bibliografico Dantesco (Roma 27-29 aprile 1989), indicated.
Dante. Television, and Education
14 For second or subsequent approaches
lo the
29
Comedy, whether
in the
context of
a senior undergraduate seminar or at the graduate level, an annotated scholarly
edition like Sapegno's
paper
I
which
am concerned
in
only preferable but necessary. However,
is nt>t
rather with the students
North America usually occurs
in
first
the junior years of university.
15 For the eye/ear dichotomy, see The Gutenberg Galaxy,
applied to tele-
later
vision in Understanding Media. See also the recently published
Media, which elaborates the distinction
McLuhan's son
reconstructed by
16
My
Laws of the
This posthumous book was
further.
Eric, using his father's notes.
ment of McLuhan's seminal work on media, see
and lannucci's McLuhan e
in this
contact with Dante's poem,
the essays in
For a reassess-
De Kerckhove
metamorfosi dell'uomo.
la
RAI production
negative assessment of the
shared by most Italian Dante
is
scholars and television commentators. See, for example, Beniamino Placido's
entertaining review in
17
I
La Repubblica.
who
use the translation of Kolve,
Chaucer and
critical edition
studies the passage and the miniature in
Imagery of Narrative (24-26). For
the
oi Li Bestiaires d'amours
the original, see Segre's
(5).
18 The manuscript culture of Dante's time, as Chaytor, McLuhan {Gutenberg
Galaxy), and others have noted, was still intensely oral in nature. It was com-
mon
But more important for our purpose, the
for manuscripts to be read aloud.
manuscript page,
in
contrast to print with
sion, lacks visual definition.
its
bold intensity and uniform preci-
has a diffuse texture and cluttered appearance,
It
often containing text, gloss, and image simultaneously.
19 The
of the Cathedral Ship (figure 5)
illustration
tury Italian manuscript
(New
Therefore, this picture, too,
is later
raphy (Kolve 297-358), of course,
actually represents the Ship of the
crucified Christ
tied to the
mast
who hangs on
in the
is
taken from a fifteenth cen-
York, Pierpont Morgan Ms.
famous
is
much
older.
the mast.
6),
it
the
This striking image recalls Ulysses
to see
The correspon-
first
Ulysses as a Christ-figure.
than of the second
illustration also brings into focus the cross-like posture
Purgatorio 2 (figure
234v).
f.
was chosen because
It
siren episode of the Odyssey.
(To Dante he was a figure more of the
in
799,
Church being driven (metaphorically) by
dence led some eariy Christian allegorists
man
M.
than Dante's poem. However, the iconog-
Adam.) The
of the angelic helms-
which none of Dante's illuminators shows
explicitly (Brieger 2: 332-35).
20 The Ebstorf map
orbis terrarum),
a rather elaborate version of the
is
common
east at the top, the
"O"
concentrated entirely
in
Dante's time and familiar
traces the
in the
the southern hemisphere of water.
the
boundary of
northern hemisphere.
known worid symbolically
The "T"
T
to
and
O map
(from
him. Oriented with
the
known world, which
The
encircling ocean covers
inscribed in the
into three continents, as the
"O"
example
divides
(figure
8) taken from a manuscript of Brunetto Latini's Trésor clearly shows.
creator of the
likely
enormous Ebstorf map, destroyed during World War
is
11,
The
was
Gervase of Tilbury (Bagrow 48-50), an English professor of canon law
Amilcare A. latinucci
30
in
map
Bologna. The Ebstorf
in the
21 For
a
probably resembles the illustration (now
manuscript of Gervase's Otia Imperialia (written
lost)
in 1211).
more complete scholarly treatment of some of these ideas, see my
The Burden of History," revised Italian version in
"Ulysses' 'folle volo':
Forma ed evento 145-88.
22 Some of
the ideas developed in the video are already suggested in Phillips'
illustrations to Inferno 5
is
and commentary on them (288-89).
precisely the Eve-Francesca typology,
One of these
a common-
which has long been
place in Dante criticism. However, his illustration
is
based on Michelangelo's
representation on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel of the temptation and ex-
Adam
pulsion of
and Eve from Eden,
which
in
the traditional iconography
is
movement of Michelangelo's corpuThe video Paolo and Francesca seem to have been inspired more
greatly obscured by the bold, contorted
lent figures.
by Northern European Renaissance painting:
the various
Adams and Eves
of Lucas Cranach, for instance, which more faithfully preserve the medieval
iconography than Michelangelo's resplendent nudes on the Sistine ceiling.
Figure 9 (miniature from a fifteenth century French manuscript of
tine's
De
civitate
Dei
St.
Augus-
Bibliothèque Ste Geneviève, Paris) provides a
in the
"typical" medieval representation. In
God shows Death
it
to the fallen
Adam
and Eve.
23
I
suggested such a strategy
proaches
24 Such
to
as computers, to
new
tion of the
which
there
Zanichelli Divina
seems
to
be less resistance. The
Commedia
for the schools
with a floppy disk, which contains the text of the
for the rapid search of single
Project" on the
commentary
Robert Hollander
26
A
much
in this
the late
is
poem
Now
tradition.
in
is
latest edi-
comes equipped
plus a
words and rhymes. However, by
ambitious and elaborate computer project on Dante
25 The Dantist
MLA's Ap-
an earlier essay published in the
in
Teaching Dante's Divine Comedy.
programme
far the
most
"The Dartmouth Dante
operation,
it
is
described by
volume.
Kenelm
Foster, O.P., of
shorter version of this paper
Cambridge University.
was presented
(in
my
absence)
at the
international conference on "Italian Literature in North America: Pedagogical
Strategies" held at York University, Toronto,
Canada on March 11-12, 1989.
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