Great Books

To understand the Divine Comedy, it is very important to put it in the context of the other great books. In human history, there have been three great poets. The first is Homer. The second is Virgil. The third is Dante. Homer gave us the Iliad and the Odyssey. By

The Divine Comedy is the most influential work of literature in European history. Why? Because Dante's Comedy will give rise to the Protestant Reformation, as well as the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, the Renaissance — basically modernity itself. The question is, how did Dante accomplish this? He accomplished this

We finished Dante's Inferno today. I'm going to give you an overview of how Dante constructs Hell and explain his reasoning for the structure. First, I will explain Dante's cosmology—how he understands God and our relationship with God. Dante's Cosmology: God,

The Divine Comedy is the greatest literary masterpiece in human history. When Dante wrote it in about 1300, he called it La Commedia. The reason why is that at this time in history, epic poetry was considered "high," or tragic, and it was usually written in Latin. But

Virgil is very much the anti-Homer. The Aeneid is really a response to the Iliad and the Odyssey. Remember, Homer believes that love is the unifying force of the universe. It is a center; it is what gives you life, purpose, and hope. For Virgil, what matters is the

Homer becomes the basis for Greek civilization. This means that all educated Greeks memorized the Iliad and Odyssey. At this point in history, people don't read them; they speak and listen in front of an audience. Homer becomes the infrastructure of their mental worldview, and this leads to

The Odyssey is about a homecoming—about three members of a family, Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus, who after a 20-year separation must come together again and rediscover their love for each other. As we've discussed, all three suffer from depression. Odysseus suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder

The Odyssey is a sequel to the Iliad, and it's a family story—a story about a homecoming. There are three main characters: Odysseus, who is the main character and why it's called the Odyssey; Penelope, who is his wife; and Telemachus, who is their son.

The Iliad is a war of wills. The epic starts with the battle between Agamemnon and Achilles. They're trying to impose their will on each other, and it leads to disaster for the Greeks because Hector and the Trojans are now about to destroy them. The Greeks, led

The Iliad is the foundation of Greek civilization, which is the greatest, most creative civilization in human history. It gave us Plato, Thucydides, Herodotus, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles. Greek civilization is essentially the foundation for Western civilization. The question we will look at is: how is it possible that one