Oct 19, 2012 9:00 am48 views
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - England, Greece, heaven, hell, Portugal, Poland, purgatory and Russia - all these locales will be on the itinerary Tuesday (Oct. 23) when the Italian studies program at the University of Illinois hosts a Dante marathon. Beginning at 9 a.m., Dante's "Divine Comedy" will be read aloud, in its entirety, following a tradition that dates back to the first circulation of the 14th-century text in Florence, Italy. In a gesture meant to engage the broader campus community, the reading will involve speakers of more than a dozen languages, ranging from the text's original Italian to Arabic, Catalan, Czech, English, French, Galician, German, modern Greek, Hungarian, Mandarin, Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.