Episode 111 – Time, Memory, Friendship, Poetry, Art

Virtual Memories Show:
Prue Shaw – Time, Memory, Friendship, Poetry, Art

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“It’s a cliche to say that the whole of medieval civilization is there in one book, but that’s true, and you get to understand that more and more as you read it.”

Scholar Prue Shaw joins the show to discuss Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity (Liveright Press). We talk about our favorite parts of the Dante’s Commedia, the poem’s transformation for her over the decades, Dante’s challenge of expressing the inexpressible (especially in Paradiso), the fate of Jews in Dante’s afterworld, and the reasons why we all — poets and non-poets, believers and non-believers — should be reading Dante. Give it a listen!

“I think it’s very indicative that our strongest word of disapprobation in the present moment is ‘inappropriate’. We don’t say anything is wrong or bad, but inappropriate.”

We also talk about readers’ reticence toward starting the Commedia, why the Paradiso is the most difficult of the three books, the strange role of Ulysses in the poem, Dante’s “mercy rule,” why she chose the structure and themes for Reading Dante, the perfect epigraph to her book, which she discovered too late for inclusion, and why I need to get to the Uffizi!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! You might like:

• Peter Kalkavage
• Eva Brann
• Tom May
• David Townsend
• Boaz Roth

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About our Guest

Prue Shaw is Emeritus Reader in Italian Studies at University College London, and the editor of the edizione nationale of Dante’s Monarchia and of a digital edition of the Commedia. Her latest book is Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity (Liveright Press). She lives in Cambridge, England. You can find her extensive bio at her site.

Credits: This episode’s music is Hell by Squirrel Nut Zippers. The conversation was recorded at Ms. Shaw’s home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. I recorded the intro and outro on a Blue Yeti USB Microphone. Processing was done in Audacity and Logic Pro. Photo of Ms. Shaw by me.