The Institute of Anglo-Italian Studies at the University of Malta will be holding a public talk entitled Dante’s Mountains on October 3 by Dante scholar Nick Havely.

The public talk will be held in English at the Faculty of Arts Library, Msida Campus, at 6.30pm, and will be open to the public.

Havely is emeritus professor at the University of York, where he taught courses and written extensively on English literature and Dante.

“Mountains and mountainous landscapes formed a prominent part of Dante’s experience, his writing and the afterlife of his work,” the institute says.

Mountains formed a prominent part of Dante’s experience

The lecture will focus on three related subjects, first beginning by identifying certain mountain ranges as part of Dante’s actual travels during his exile.

This will then lead to the second subject of the lecture, which treats how mountains form a feature of the imaginative landscape in all three parts of the Commedia.

Finally, the lecture will deal with how mountains figure in the afterlife of a poet, who in one 19th-century monograph was called Dante alpinista, and how tracing his footprints (le orme di Dante) across Italian peaks and passes has formed part of his attraction for readers up to the present day.

The lecture will be accompanied by images from the art of Dante’s time, from illustrated manuscripts of the Commedia and from a variety of modern sources.