Yale Professor to Discuss Dante's 'Inferno' Jan. 25

Dr. Giuseppe Mazzotta, chairman of the department of Italian at Yale University and the Sterling Professor of Humanities for Italian, will deliver a lecture on the Italian poet Dante at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 25, in room 100 at Morrison Constitution Hall on the Baylor University campus. The lecture, "Dante's Quest: Inferno I and II," is sponsored by Baylor's Honors College and the department of philosophy.
"He is one of the more electrifying and dynamic speakers I have known, especially when he is taking questions from the audience. And his erudition is massive," said Dr. Robert Miner, associate professor of philosophy in the Honors College.
A native of southern Italy, Mazzotta grew up in Toronto and received his doctorate from Cornell University in 1969. He joined the faculty that year, moving to Yale in 1983.
He has written a number of essays about every century of Italian literary history. His books include Dante, Poet of the Desert: History and Allegory in the Divine Comedy; The World at Play in Boccaccio's Decameron; Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge; The Worlds of Petrarch; The New Map of the World: The Poetic Philosophy of Giambattista Vico; and Cosmopoiesis: The Renaissance Experiment. He has also edited or co-edited several books, such as Critical Essays on Dante and Master Regis.
The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, call 710-7689.