The Divine Comedy explained by a Princetonian

NOVEMBER 13, 2025 – At long last, an event dedicated to Dante Alighieri, in whose honor our Society was founded.
After many years of planning, we are thrilled to announce what we believe will be the most fitting tribute yet: a lecture by Professor Simone Marchesi of Princeton University.

The lecture’s focus is “An American Voice for Dante: The Divine Comedy in and on Translation”.
Dante’s choice to write his Comedia in Italian contains a deep paradox. He knows that the language he chooses is utterly local and in constant change, subject to a fast-pace evolution that will turn it into an incomprehensible idiom in a short while, and yet he stakes a claim to long and transnational success for his poem. In this presentation, Professor Marchesi takes twenty-five years of experience teaching Dante’s Divine Comedy in the US and his research on medieval theories of translation as starting point to discuss Dante’s evolving sense of translation as a practice that can ensure the vitality of his work across time and space.

Professor Marchesi is an engaging speaker—brilliant, eloquent, and deeply knowledgeable, with decades of research devoted to Dante and his works.

Date: Thursday, November 13, 2025
Time: 6 PM – 7:30 PM
Location: Gage Hall, 4 Archdale Street, Downtown Charleston, SC
Refreshment will be served before the presentation.
Nearest parking: Queen Street Parking Garage, 93 Queen Street (400 feet)