I say the Divine Comedy is, I think, as you pointed out at the beginning, I just want to restate,

it's really, really important to our universal history project because it integrates essentially everything

that came before it. It brings in the Greco Roman world. It brings in medieval cosmology and

theology and science and the old Jewish and early Christian apocalyptic traditions and all of

the apocryph it brings all of that stuff in there are giants there are i mean it's all there in the

comedy and what's more is that it doesn't invent but it's probably the best example for modern readers

of the idea that man is a microcosm that every every human being is actually a cosmos. Dante's descent

through the earth and his descent through the spheres is a deeply personal journey. And it's one that

bridges perfectly, I think, the medieval modern worlds, because it shows us how this vision of a

cosmos, this medieval model, is not merely just an external vision of things

that will fall apart as soon as you put it under a microscope or into a telescope or whatever.

It doesn't just adequately describe our experience of reality on a day-to-day basis,

but it is also a map to ourselves.

Music also a map to ourselves. This is Jonathan Pejot.

Welcome to the symbolic world.

Thank you. symbolic world. Hello, everyone. I am back here with Richard Roland for one more universal history episode.

And this week, we are going to talk about Dante's comedy. And the reason why is because as many of you know,

we are getting ready to embark on a long journey through hell, up purgatory, and into heaven.

Richard and I love the comedy so much. And so we've decided to do it as three classes for the

symbolic world, really going into it. And the classes will be longer than the

ones we've done before because we really want to take the time both of us to make our commentary

on this wonderful text, how it is of this powerful map of symbolism, and how much insight Dante

...