Unsinning the Soul:
Dante’s Purgatorio
The Purgatory is in many ways the most human of the three sections of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Unlike the Inferno, where souls are frozen in their eternal punishments, or the Paradise, in which they have transcended ordinary human experience, the individuals in the Purgatory are grappling with the consequences of their transgressions and hopeful of moving upward to a state of release from their torments – a mirror image of the human condition.
The organizing principle of the Purgatory is the Seven Deadly
Sins, and as Dante, guided by Virgil, moves through each level
representing one of the Sins, he himself is engaged in a profound self-examination of the condition of his own soul, in preparation for his ascent to Paradise. We will spend our five sessions discussing the entire Purgatory. No knowledge of the preceding Inferno or the subsequent Paradise is required.
“NOW I SHALL SING THE SECOND
KINGDOM, THERE WHERE THE SOUL
OF MAN IS CLEANSED, MADE WORTHY TO ASCEND TO HEAVEN.”
Dante Alighieri
LEADER
Donald Whitfield is on the staff
of the Great Books Foundation in Chicago and is a veteran Toronto Pursuits seminar leader. He
has been returning to Dante for many years.
BOOK
Participants are required to obtain the specified editions in order to facilitate the group’s ability to find and cite portions of the text during discussion.
Dante Alighieri. Purgatorio
Trans. Jean Hollander and Robert Hollander, Anchor Books – A Division of Random House, Inc. (2004)
ISBN-13: 9780385497008
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