Section A17: la dolce vita
In 1319, Dante Alighieri writes a letter to his patron, Francesco della Scala, in which he says The Divine Comedy has a practical purpose: "to remove those living in this life from a state of misery and to bring them to a state of happiness"--a goal that infuses the entire poem. La dolce vita is how Dante three times in Paradise characterizes the state of utmost bliss that awaits those who read or hear and understand The Divine Comedy. Federico Fellini, the director of La Dolce Vita (1960), once said that all of his films sought to find in Dante's The Divine Comedy answers to questions about the meaning of life: "What am I looking for? What am I? What am I waiting for? What do I want?"
Today, the idea of la dolce vita is more likely to evoke a sense that Italians have mastered the art of living, as they have the fine arts, that the fabled beauty of Italy is to be found in the daily life of Italians as well as in its museums and piazzas, opera houses and landscapes. This is the la dolce vita favored by travel agents and restaurants, by Starbucks, Italian government offices of tourism and romantic American films. In the seminar we will study the different faces of the myth of la dolce vita and the beauty of Italy to see what they can teach us about the choices we make about the kind of lives we want to lead. To seek our own answers to Fellini's questions.
This seminar is part of a two course Connection Conx 23008, Italian Culture, Language and Society, which connects the First Year Seminar, Art History 102 or 202 and Italian 200.