The Kings Who Dodged What They Should Have Done, Part One: PURGATORIO, Canto VII, Lines 82 - 136

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We finally get to see who is down in that beautiful dale in front of us on the lower slopes of Mount Purgatory--and it turns out to be a roster of rulers from the mid- to late-1200s.

These kings have mucked up the European landscape and left it in the mess that Dante finds it. They appear to be repenting their actions. But they were also excessively action-oriented figures, going to war with each other for dynastic and territorial control.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, for the first of two parts on the end of PURGATORIO, Canto VII. This passage is tough--so this first time through it, we'll just fill in the historical details before we turn to questions of interpretation in the next episode of WALKING WITH DANTE.

Here are the segments for this episode:

[01:46] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto VII, lines 82 - 136. If you'd like to read along, print it off, or continue the conversation with me, please go to my website: markscarbrough.com.

[06:00] The passage again, this time glossed with all of its historical detail, a crash course in central and southern European politics of the mid- to late-1200s.

[23:44] The initial interpretive questions we should explore as we try to think through the problems this passage causes COMEDY as a whole and the ways it refocuses the poem Dante's growing political stance.