The Italian Cultural Institute, in collaboration with Prof. Andrea Falcon (Department of Philosophy, Concordia University), is pleased to announce a series of talks on the topic of Dante and Philosophy.
Dante (1265-1321) was not a professional philosopher but was seriously engaged with philosophy, and this engagement was essential to his work as a whole. With the help of three guest speakers, we will explore various aspects of Dante’s engagement with philosophy from the Convivio to the Commedia.
Thursday, October 18, 2:45pm
Department of Philosophy, Concordia University, 2145 MacKay (Room S-201)
Event in English
The seats for this event are limited. If you plan to attend, please email Prof. Andrea Falcon andrea.falcon@concordia.ca
In this lecture we will try to better understand the meaning and implications of Dante’s polemics, both in the Convivio and in the Monarchia, against the argument about the violence of the Roman Empire, by considering it in the framework of Medieval readings and rewritings of Augustine’s De civitate Dei. This Dantean polemics has been often been considered as “anti-Augustinian,” insofar this argument can be found in Augustine’s major treatise, but this claim is somehow naïf when examining this work as a whole as well as its reception in Medieval times. Indeed, Augustine had offered also opposite affirmations about the greatness and virtues of Ancient Romans and the role played by divine providence in the history of Rome. Moreover, and as we will see by reconsidering the works of Ptolemy of Lucca, Remigio de’ Girolami, John of Paris, and James of Viterbo, the question of how to understand these pages by Augustine and how to rework his arguments was a key one in the theological-political debate in Dante’s years and deeply rooted in contemporary politics.
Elisa Brilli is Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, Department of Italian Studies and Center for Medieval Studies. She studied at the University of Rome, “La Sapienza” (M.A., 2004) and at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris (joint PhD in Italian Studies and Medieval History, 2009). Before joining University of Toronto, Professor Brilli worked as post-doctoral fellow and junior professor in several institutions: the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence – Max Planck Gesellschaft in 2010-2011; the Université du Québec à Montréal in 2012; the Laboratoire d’étude sur les monothéismes, École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris in 2013 with a fellowship “Fernard Braudel”, awarded by the Fondation de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme; at the Romanisches Seminar, University of Zurich as Ambizione project leader founded by the Swiss National Foundation for scientific research in 2014-2017. Her research interests include Dante, Medieval Italian Literature, Medieval receptions of Augustine’s De civitate Dei, Medieval Cultural History, Text-Image Studies, Manuscript Studies. She is the author of Firenze e il Profeta. Dante fra teologia e politica. Rome: Carocci 2012. She is the co-editor (with P.O. Dittmar and B. Dufal) of Faire l’Anthropologie Historique du Moyen Âge. Paris: Atelier du CRH, 2010, and (with L. Fenelli and G. Wolf) Images and Words in Exile. Avignon and Italy during the first half of the 14th century. Firenze: SISMEL 2015. She is also the main editor of the critical edition Arnold de Liège, Alphabetum Narrationum. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015.