Abstract
Undergraduate students in the United States of America are increasingly less religious, and this decline in religiosity is felt not only at secular colleges and universities, but also at those with a religious affiliation. This article seeks to answer the question of how one can effectively teach the Christian vision in Dante’s Commedia to undergraduates who have little or no religious formation. The methods I have used to teach freshmen in core Humanities courses have differed somewhat from the methods I have used to teach upperclassmen in Literature electives. For the freshmen, focusing on what I call “humanist theology” has been successful, allowing them to see that the Christianity found in Dante’s epic is not merely a list of rules, but a way of viewing human life that is consonant with their own experiences. Purgatorio is the most important canticle for this method, and the case of Virgil’s damnation is a vital topic. For upperclassmen, finding analogies to Christian Mystery in the fields of mathematics, the sciences, and creative writing has proven fruitful. The main conclusion of this study is that these techniques are useful in presenting Dante’s work to non-religious students without sacrificing the epic’s specifically Christian content.
Highlights
If high school students or undergraduates have read any portion of Dante’s Commedia, it is almost certainly his Inferno
It is in this second canticle that the reader sees even more clearly the nature of sin and virtue, and, more importantly, how Dante begins to complicate the rules of the afterlife through the question of salvation for noble pagans, a troubling case for the character of Virgil
I will begin with teaching Purgatorio to underclassmen, since I have done so much more frequently, and because this freshman introduction to Dante seems to me to be far more vital: the more freshmen who realize that the Commedia is a deep work that has continued relevance, even apart from its faith content, the better! In the first place, I should note that I do not teach Purgatorio entirely without context
Summary
If high school students or undergraduates have read any portion of Dante’s Commedia, it is almost certainly his Inferno. My experiences of teaching Dante to these two different populations—general population freshmen who are required to be in my course, and upperclassmen (largely English majors) who elected to take my course—have led me to think that the path to guiding non-religious students to appreciate Dante’s epic must be found in the heart of the work, Purgatorio It is in this second canticle that the reader sees even more clearly the nature of sin and virtue, and, more importantly, how Dante begins to complicate the rules of the afterlife through the question of salvation for noble pagans, a troubling case for the character of Virgil. Christianity seriously, a great resource for introducing students to the Christian Intellectual Tradition
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