I welcomed with enthusiasm the invitation to participate in the project of the young dantisti of the University of the Witwatersrand, as described by Chariklia Martalas: “To think critically about how the 21st century would change our views of Dante’s Divine Comedy if we interpret it through creative form.†I like to think of this project as a way, or method, that at once dep…
Although widely beloved for its playfulness and comic sensibility, Chaucer’s poetry is also subtly shot through with dark moments that open into obscure and irresolvably haunting vistas, passages into which one might fall head-first and never reach the abyssal bottom, scenes and events where everything could possibly go horribly wrong or where everything that matters seems, if even momentaril…