Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Free Course from Columbia University

As we approach the 700th anniver­sary of Dante Alighier­i’s death (Sep­tem­ber 14), we want­ed to fea­ture a time­ly resource: Teodolin­da Baroli­ni, a pro­fes­sor at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, has post­ed online a course for any­one who wish­es to read Dante’s Com­me­dia from begin­ning to end. It fea­tures 54 record­ed lec­tures, cov­er­ing Infer­no, Pur­ga­to­rio and Par­adiso, with each can­ti­ca being read in its entire­ty. Baroli­ni also over­sees a relat­ed web site, Dig­i­tal Dante, where you can find Dante’s text in the Petroc­chi edi­tion with Eng­lish trans­la­tions by Man­del­baum and Longfel­low. Plus the site fea­tures com­men­tary on Dan­te’s text.

Barolin­i’s Dante course will be added to our list of Free Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Free Online Course on Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Botticelli’s 92 Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Alber­to Martini’s Haunt­ing Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1901–1944)

Hear Dante’s Infer­no Read Aloud by Influ­en­tial Poet & Trans­la­tor John Cia­r­di (1954)

Physics from Hell: How Dante’s Infer­no Inspired Galileo’s Physics

Watch L’Inferno (1911), Italy’s First Fea­ture Film and Per­haps the Finest Adap­ta­tion of Dante’s Clas­sic