Baylor University Great Texts Program Hosts Seminar by Yale University Sterling Professor

October 3, 2011

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Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta, The Sterling Professor in the Humanities for Italian at Yale University, will present "Dante's Exile and the Path of Salvation: Paradiso XV-XVII" at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 6, in the Alexander Reading Room of the Honors Residential College, 1413 S. Seventh St., on Baylor University's campus.
Mazzotta will speak about the central cantos of "Paradiso" and how Dante discovers, through his despair, the spiritual and poetic means for his ascent to Paradise.
"Professor Mazzotta's approach to the Divine Comedy reveals why Dante remains so very much a poet for our time," Dr. Phillip Donnelly, associate professor and director of Great Texts, said of the lecture. "(And) how to transform personal exile into pilgrimage is arguably the most urgent question facing our rootless culture."
Mazzotta has been teaching at Yale University since 1983 and serves as chair of the department of Italian Language and Literature. He has also taught at Cornell University and the University of Toronto. He has written numerous scholarly articles and several books, including: Dante, Poet of the Desert; The World at Play and the Decamron; The Worlds of Petrarch, Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge; The New Map of the World and Vico's Poetic Philosophy; Cosmopoiesis and the Renaissance Experiment and Dante at the Frontiers of Thought.
The seminar is part of the Honors College's "Fall 2011 Lecture Series" and is free and open to the public. A reception will follow the lecture.
For more information, visit the Honors College or call (254) 710-7689.
by Carmen Galvan, student newswriter, (254) 710-6805