2021 marks the VII centenary of the death of Dante Alighieri. The vast work of this poet and thinker of encyclopedic cultural interests and extraordinary artistic power is inscribed in the collective memory of the West and beyond, to such an extent and depth that the task of contemporary criticism coping with Dante’s tradition is to transform into hermeneutic intelligence the intuition, as evident as demanding, that claims Dante as a classic of humanity, author of every one of us.
The Dante’s Days of 2021 will convene scholars, lovers of literature and the general public around the Florentine poet, through a series of initiatives of different profile. The opening of the celebrations will take place with the inauguration of an exhibition: Dante’s Visions. Botticell’s Inferno, in which a choice of manuscripts and rare editions of the Divine Comedy, from the Vatican Apostolic Library, the Gulbenkian Museum, the National Library of Portugal, the J.V. de Pina Martins Collection (deposited in the School of Art and Humanities of the University of Lisbon), will be presented to the Portuguese public. By contributing to explore the editorial history of the Divine Comedy as a fundamental dimension of its cultural fortune over the centuries, the exhibition aims to open a window of reflection on more general issues. History and symbolic value of the documentary materials exhibited; the relationship between poetic image, artistic iconography and religious symbolism; inscription of the poetic word in collective memory by means of its material transmission through manuscripts, printed books and digital media, will be discussed at the opening of the exhibition by Cardinal José Tolentino Mendonça, Archivist of the Vatican Apostolic Archive and Librarian of the Vatican Apostolic Library, and by João R. Figueiredo, professor of the School of Arts and Humanities (University of Lisbon).
The Dante’s Days 2021 will continue, on 25 September, with an international colloquium, Dante. A Poet for Our Time, in which internationally renowned specialists will discuss the poet’s topicality in various respects. Dante’s extraordinary ability to make of (linguistic, poetic, cultural) innovation a source of tradition, precisely thanks to his ingeniously innovative use of classical and religious tradition, will be highlighted. The impact of the Divine Comedy on world culture, including Portuguese culture, will be explored, while Dante’s link with the ecclesiastical and political context of his time will also be analysed.
In the week of September 27 to October 3 (dates to be confirmed) there will be a film series inspired by Dante's work, “Divine Comedy, a cinematic poem”, co-organized with the Cinemateca Portuguesa.
In the autumn of 2021, a series of conferences, Lessons on Dante, will be organized, in which several specialists, from Portugal and other countries, namely from Italy, will illustrate fundamental aspects of Dante's work.
In the same period, at the Gulbenkian Foundation, a series of events collateral to the exhibition will be held, with artists and exponents from the world of culture.
The scientific contributions produced by the scholars involved in these multiple initiatives will be collected in a publication which, in addition to summarizing the work done within the framework of this project, claims to open new horizons of interest and research around Dante’s poetry in Portugal.
A catalog will integrate the exhibition, providing a historical-phiological introduction to the exhibited works.
| Period | 23 Sept 2021 |
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| Event type | Conference |
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| Location | Lisbon, PortugalShow on map |
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- Dante Alighieri
- Italian literature
- Renascense
