Dante and Islam: On the Center and the Periphery in the Hereafter and in This World

Abstract

Edward Said discovered in the Divine Comedy – a central work of Western Christian civilization – the starting point of the "Orientalist vision" that turned Islam into an epitome of the enemy lurking on the periphery of Christendom, of the outsider against whom the modern European culture was founded and built. For others, led by Asín Palacios, Dante was positively influenced by Islam, and his journey to the worlds beyond was modeled on the Muslim account of the mi‘rāj, the Prophet Muhammad’s night journey. For more than half a century, heated debates have continued as to whether the Comedy is an embodiment of the medieval "clash of civilizations" or, on the contrary, a testimony to a tolerance of religious and cultural differences and receptiveness to the Arab-Islamic heritage that was remarkable for its time. The lecture will examine – between the Scylla of "Islamophobia" and the Charybdis of Dante’s "Islamophilia" – essential aspects of the delicate and still important problem of the relationship between Dante’s world and Islam.

^{The seminar is part of the program "Religion, Center, and Periphery: The Orient in Europe, Europe in the Orient" of the Center for the Study of Religions, supported by the Scientific Research Fund of Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski in 2023.}