Dante Alighieri and his Divine Comedy work in a painting by Domenico di Michelino in 1465. (Photo: Wikipedia) Hanoi (VNA) – The Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences (VASS)’ Institute of Literature and the Italian Embassy in Hanoi co-organised a scientific seminar on Italian poet Dante Alighieri on the occasion of his 700th death anniversary.
Scientific reports at the event affirmed the value of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy and his position in human culture as well as Italy’s culture and literature in particular.
On the occasion, the institute together with the Italian Embassy and the VASS’s Social Sciences Publishing House released a new version of the Inferno section in Divine Comedy, which is one of the literature initiatives in the action programme signed by the two Governments in May within the framework of the Italy-Vietnam strategic partnership.
Born in 1265 and passed away in 1321, Alighieri was a great Italian philosopher, a statesman, writer and poet of the Late Middle Ages. He pioneered the Renaissance art movement and made a great impact on the world culture and literature.
In Italy, he was known as a “Supreme Poet”. His epic poem Divine Comedy is considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of the world literature. With 14,226 lines, the work is divided into three parts, including hell (Inferno), purgatory (Purgatorio) and paradise (Paradiso), each consisting of 33 cantos and an initial canto.
Dubbed as a Bible of the Middle Ages, the work played an important role in founding the literary language and cultural identity of Italy./.
