21st-Century Reflections on the Divine Comedy’s Timeless Message

Professor Catherine Ramsey-Portolano interviews Professor Christopher Kleinhenz, Professor Emeritus of Italian at The University of Wisconsin-Madison, on Dantedì 2021.
This event is organized by the AUR Italian Studies Program in celebration of the Year of Dante, 2021.

Christopher Kleinhenz is the Carol Mason Kirk Professor Emeritus of Italian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he taught Italian literature of the Due- and Trecento, manuscript studies, and art and literature in medieval Italy for almost forty years (1968-2007).

Among his numerous publications are The Early Italian Sonnet, Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia, a translation of Dante’s Fiore and Detto d’Amore, Approaches to the Teaching of Petrarch’s Canzoniere and the Petrarchan Tradition, and the forthcoming Dante intertestuale e interdisciplinare: saggi sulla Commedia, as well as more than ninety articles and book chapters.

Kleinhenz served as President of the American Association of Teachers of Italian, the American Boccaccio Association, and the Medieval Association of the Midwest, and as Editor of Dante Studies. A Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, he has received the Fiorino d’oro from the Società Dantesca Italiana, the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Hilldale Award in the Arts and Humanities, the CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies, the AATI Distinguished Service Award, and the ADFL Award for Distinguished Service in the Profession. 

Dante Alighieri, probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to simply as Dante, was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa is widely considered the most important poem of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language.

Dante is known for establishing the use of the vernacular in literature at a time when most poetry was written in Latin, making it accessible only to the most educated readers. His De vulgari eloquentia (On Eloquence in the Vernacular) was one of the first scholarly defenses of the vernacular. His use of the Tuscan dialect for works such as The New Life (1295) and Divine Comedy helped establish the modern-day standardized Italian language, and set a precedent that important later Italian writers such as Petrarch and Boccaccio would follow.

Dante was instrumental in establishing the literature of Italy, and his depictions of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven provided inspiration for the larger body of Western art. He is cited as an influence on Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton and Alfred Tennyson, among many others. In addition, the first use of the interlocking three-line rhyme scheme, or the terza rima, is attributed to him. He is described as the "father" of the Italian language, and in Italy he is often referred to as il Sommo Poeta ("the Supreme Poet"). 

Dantedì is an annual celebration of Dante that was initiated in 2020.