Research Symposium

BIO

Adalyn Pickett is a second-year student pursuing a dual degree in Political Science and English (EWM), with a minor in Anthropology. Her interest in studying Dante began with a Religious Ethics course her first semester at FSU, which featured a close reading of Dnate's Inferno, while her appeal to adaptation studies started after taking a Film Adaptation course last Spring. At FSU, she is a research assistant for Elizabeth Coggeshall & Dante Today through the UROP program, a staff writer for FSView, an editorial assistant for the Kudzu Review Undergraduate Literary Magazine, and a writer for the Undergraduate Law Review. Adalyn is also a member of the International English Honor Society and on the zine team at WVFS. After graduation, she hopes to attend law school, pursuing legal interests in family law or international law.

Dante Today: Adaptation Theory Through Dantean Works in Contemporary Culture

Abstract

The Dante Today website co-created by Dr. Elizabeth Coggeshall and Dr. Arielle Saber, compiles modern global “sightings” and “citings” referencing or inspired by the work of medieval Italian poet and writer Dante Alighieri. Contemporary adaptations of Dante manifest in visual arts, written works, digital media, film, products, music, scholarship, and more. Dante’s works are among the most iterated literary pieces, continuing to be adapted into new forms. Before the site was created in 2006, no other digital archive dedicated to Dantean adaptations existed, leaving a significant gap in Dantean studies that underscores Dante’s contemporary influence. Dante Today offers a repository of adaptations along with the classification of their inspiration and medium, as well as a catalog of the creators, year of creation, location, images, links, quotes, and tags. Dante Today was recently redesigned to increase the accessibility and discoverability of sources through enhanced sorting and tagging features. With greater familiarity with Dante-inspired works and the diversity of interpretations, particularly of his poem Inferno, Dante’s sustained effect on modern conceptions of hell and the afterlife is clear. The site acts as a mediation of the breadth of adaptations of Dante and speaks to theoretical concepts of expansion and reception. As Dante Today is an ongoing project, future implications, and further research may produce statistical analysis, exploring frequent trends and distribution of Dante-inspired works across specific decades, continents, or genres, as well as examining how they shape current interpretations of Dante's original texts.

Keywords: Dante Alighieri, Dante Today, Adaptation Theory, Translation, Dante's Inferno