Welcome to the Lectura Dantis Andreapolitana
(the St Andrews Lectura Dantis)
Next meetings
9th meeting Friday 9th March 2012
Inferno Cantos 32-34
Meeting programme
10th meeting Friday 4th of May 2012
Purgatorio cantos 1-3
Parliament Hall, South Street
Open to the Public
A Lectura Dantis ('reading of Dante') is a public reading and explanation of all 100 cantos of Dante's Divine Comedy canto by canto. The tradition of the lectura dantis goes back to the 14th century with Boccaccio's series of public lectures on Dante which he began in Santo Stefano di Badia in Florence on the 23rd of October 1373. The modern lectura takes the form of a series of public lectures, with each canto of the Commedia discussed by a different scholar, and continues today in a variety of places and settings.
Part of the tradition is to use a title in Latin which includes the name of the place where the lectures are given, for example, the Lectura Dantis Neapolitana in Naples, the Lectura Dantis Turicensis in Zürich, and you can probably work out where the Lectura Dantis Californiana took place and the Lectura Dantis Romana continues.
Here in St Andrews, the Lectura Dantis Andreapolitana (LDA) is organised by Robert Wilson and Claudia Rossignoli of the Italian Department of the University's School of Modern Languages. It will be the first complete lectura dantis of its kind held in the UK and is open to everyone - all members of the university and the public.
The LDA began in 2009, and now meets four times a year. Each meeting normally covers four cantos of the Divine Comedy. The day, always a Friday, has two lecturae in the morning and two in the afternoon, and concludes with a round table discussion. The day is free and open to the public and scheduled with breaks between lectures so that if you are unable to make all of them you can come and go throughout the day.
The lectures are given by speakers from the UK and abroad. We have brought and will continue to bring to St Andrews well-known scholars in Dante studies, whilst those in St Andrews are experts in other relevant disciplines such as Mediaeval History, Philosophy, and English Literature. A full list of speakers is here on the website.
All lectures are video recorded and we are in the process of making them available on the website so that you can listen again to those you particularly enjoyed, and catch any you may have missed.
Sponsors
The organisers would like to acknowledge the generous financial assistance provided by our sponsors:
