Dante and the Power of Satire

A lecture by
Ambrogio Camozzi Pistoja, Harvard University

Dante is one of the greatest satirists of all time. His satire challenged and reshaped moral, legal, and linguistic boundaries. Popes, kings and members of Italy’s most powerful families are placed in his upside-down world. Yet, he managed to get away with it. How did he achieve that? How did he manage to justify the use of a language so violent, and so offensive?

Ambrogio Camozzi Pistoja is Assistant Professor in Romance Languages and Literatures (Italian) at Harvard. He is the author of Vita di Alessandro con figure (Brepols, 2018) and studies the literary, visual and criminal history of insults in Roman and medieval Italian societies.

In ENGLISH.

Organized by Prof. Alison Cornish, “Dante and…” is a series of lectures that focus on Dante’s relevance in today’s world. These lectures feature scholars and experts from many different fields of interest, invited to present their unique readings of the poet’s works.