Library presents study of Dante’s ‘Inferno’

WASHINGTON — Gunn Memorial Library will welcome back literary scholar Mark Scarbrough to lead a six-week course, “The Grand Descent: A Walk Across Dante’s Inferno,” Mondays from 10 a.m.-noon, April 1 to May 6.

What happens when a man decides to trek across the known universe? If he’s a Tuscan poet in the Middle Ages, he starts the great descent—which takes him into everything that’s known and in turn almost single-handedly creates the Western literary tradition.

After 700 years, there’s still no other walk like this, and certainly no theme or plot to rival this exploration of the nature of all that is.

The required book is “The Inferno,” Signet Classics, Dante Alighieri (translated by John Ciardi). Copies are available for purchase at the Hickory Stick Bookstore.

The reading schedule: April 1 – Introduction; April 8 — Inferno, Cantos 1-4; April 15 —Inferno, Cantos 5-10; April 22 — Inferno, Cantos 11-17; April 29 — Inferno, Cantos 18-27; May 6 — Inferno, Cantos 28-34.

Scarbrough started his professional life as an academic and did his doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin Madison before accepting a job at Saint Edward’s University in Austin, Texas.

After several years teaching, he resigned and moved to New York to write. In New York, he met and married Bruce Weinstein. Together, they have written more than two dozen cookbooks, and have appeared on “The Today Show,” “CBS This Morning” and “The View” and been selected as The Most Influential People of Litchfield County.

This program is free and open to the public. Registration is requested; call 860-868-7586.