Dante’s Italy

These are difficult times. Days of sickness and uncertainty, of fear and isolation. Possibly also of silence. Weeks that can be devoted to the pleasure of reading. One can still travel, far and wide, in the pages of a good book. Like Giulio Ferroni's L’Italia di Dante, published by La Nave di Teseo, which takes us on "a journey through the land of the Divine Comedy". Ferroni, a professor at the Sapienza University in Rome, is one of the most authoritative literature scholars and in this book he explores history and poetry, linking the places of the Comedy with our own contradictory world today. He starts at Virgil's tomb in Naples, and then winds his way through Rome and Florence, the Sannio and Casentino, the Rimini of Paolo and Francesca, Ravenna and the Sicily of Ulysses' adventures, the cities of north-east Italy and, over on the other side, of the north-west, in Turin and the Monferrato, ending his journey back in Tuscany. These are the places of the characters in Dante's works, as seen today, “places in this Italy that I've been through and experienced during my lifetime, with all its beauty and ruin; places of life and poetry, with their substance and habitats coupled with so much poetry and literature." A literary journey, indeed. But also, as Dante shows us, a civil journey through this extraordinary land of ours. A land that is there to be acknowledged, criticised, reformed, and loved. L’Italia di Dante, Giulio Ferroni, La Nave di Teseo, 2020