DIVINE COMEDY REMIX/2; DANTE UNPLUGGED #879036

A poem written in verse that tells a story—teeming with characters, incredibly complex, yet firmly held together by the hand that composed it. A vibrant, imaginative vision of the afterlife, at times even more splatter than Quentin Tarantino! 
The Divine Comedy is a poem, written in verse, in tercets of hendecasyllables with interlocking rhyme. Are you already intimidated? No need! The four words you may not know, or may only vaguely understand, will come back in the final lesson of this essay on Dante’s Comedy. But just to give you a sense of how accessible these concepts are: tercets means that each stanza in the Divine Comedy consists of three lines. "Got it!" my young readers might say. "But what about hendecasyllables? And interlocking rhyme?” Hendecasyllables refer to the number of metrical syllables in each line. In the Divine Comedy, every line has eleven metrical syllables, and the rhyme scheme that links these lines is found in the second line. This same rhyme from the second line is then picked up by the first and third lines of the next stanza, and so on...
Do metrical syllables seem tricky too? We’ll discuss them in the final lesson. But in the meantime, why not take a look at How to Read Italian Poetry? Just one minute a day on YouTube! Either way, we’ll come back to this later.
We all think of the Comedy as a poetic work. And it certainly is. But it also tells a story, a narrative told in verse. This isn’t the most common form for us today, as we usually think of a story as a novel, a TV series, a film, a graphic novel… But the Homeric epics and Virgil’s Aeneid are all stories told in verse. In Italian literature, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, and Tasso’s Jerusalem Liberata, all narrate their tales in verse. These works are fundamental to Italian poetry. That’s why an entire lesson in this collection is dedicated to storytelling in verse.
Why this title? Divine Comedy Remix/2 because this collection is a reinterpretation. This volume is the English translation of the original Italian collection Versi in viaggio. La Divina Commedia come racconto. And it’s /2 because I previously published a short essay under the same title, which contained two more recent lessons.
“Dante Unplugged" is the subtitle of this volume because it reflects my approach as a teacher: bringing Dante’s work to students in a way that bridges scholarly research and classroom learning, making it accessible without losing depth. The book gathers my lessons as a teacher of History of Italian Literature in Italian high schools. Originally it was designed for my students, and now is available for those encountering Dante and his monumental work in secondary school or university courses.
Now, this volume becomes part of the Su Dante / Regarding Dante series, which also includes Divine Comedy Remix. Two Lessons on Dante’s Poem, containing two recent lessons; Versi in viaggio, the Italian version of this volume; and Scrivere su Dante, a reading and writing journey through the poet’s texts.
In truth, I have been working on Dante since I wrote a chapter on him for a History of Literature published by Nuova Italia in the mid-1990s. I still write about him on my website, italianacontemporanea.com, where a dedicated page covers Dante. There, you’ll find insights and readings on his so-called “minor” works, which are only "minor" when compared to the Comedy, an enormous achievement. But calling them minor is just a way of speaking, as works like the Vita Nova, the Rime, the Convivio, and the De Vulgari Eloquentia are invaluable for fully understanding the Comedy, but also significant in their own right. So, is it now clear why Remix?