The Divine Commedy goes online and is explained with the first MOOC produced by the Institute of Italian Studies at USI

On March 21st the Institute of Italian Studies at the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) will launch its first MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) dedicated to Dante Alighieri’s Divine Commedy. The free online course is entitled “From time to eternity. An introduction to Dante’s Commedia”, and features a selection of top contemporary Dante scholars, namely Carlo Ossola (Director of the Institute of Italian Studies at USI), Piero Boitani, Corrado Bologna, Mira Mocan and Lino Pertile. The scientific director of the project is Stefano Prandi.  

The course caters to a wide and diverse audience, such as university students, high school students, Italian language and literature teachers and lecturers, and to anyone who is interested in casting a first glance at the Commedia or wanting to learn more about it.

The project is also an invitation to experiment with a new approach to Dante’s poem, by providing elements that will enable to place it in the cultural and historical context of the Middle Ages, and to understand Dante’s “intellectual journey”, from his early works to the achievement of his masterpiece.

The educational objective of MOOC is to explore and understand the overall journey-vision narrated in the Commedia by analyzing the structure of the poem, its main characters, and its expressive, stylistic and metric resources. Moreover, the course will outline the intellectual and literary evolution of the “Supreme Poet”, focusing on the main philosophical and religious concepts assumed in the Commedia: the theory of the virtues and the political interpretation, the prophetic role, and the relationship between poetry and theology.
 

To enrol in the MOOC, free of charge:
https://iversity.org/en/courses/all-eterno-dal-tempo-la-commedia-di-dante 

Video presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yauvgSLkFlg