I’m working on a Social Science question and need a sample draft to help me learn.

This week, we are going to get a taste of Dante’s great medieval poem, The Divine Comedy. Dante is a medieval European, a Christian — and his poem is a journey through afterlife — a poet’s vision of Heaven, Hell, and Paradise. The journey is to be taken literally: Dante is telling the story of actually visiting the other world, where he encounters a lot of famous people. The poem consists of three parts, and a total of 100 cantos (songs or chapters). You will only be reading the beginning, and then a few selections from later on.

Listen to the lectures, read the selections (the may seem like a lot, but they are from an edition where you have the original, a modern English prose translation, and explanations for each canto), and do the quiz.

Then write a post about one small episode — not a whole canto, just a section of one canto. Start your post by giving it a title, identifying it what part it is from, and which canto — so: Purgatorio 23 — and then 1., describe the section you are talking about; 2., offer any comments or ideas.

You may want to consider how this text relates to our previous three readings: the Book of Genesis, The Odyssey, and Antigone. But in any case, start with something specific.

One note: Ulysses is the Latin name for Odysseus!!