Pilgrim Readers

In the context of undergraduate education, "Teaching Dante" often means reading selected cantos from the Divine Comedy, most, if not all of them, taken from the Inferno. I suggest, however, that Dante's aims in the Divine Comedy, as well as the particular experiences related in the Inferno itself, cannot be understood from any perspective offered by the Inferno alone. In spelling out my reasons for saying this I offer an approach to the text that includes readings from each of its three cantiche within the sometimes severe time-limitations of an undergraduate course. Central to this approach is the notion that student-readers of the Divine Comedy are called upon by the poem to be not mere observers of the experiences of the poet-pilgrim but to become themselves "pilgrim-readers." In this presentation, this "call" is itself explored through the treatment of "divine justice" within the poem

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