Romance Literature, University of Cologne

Dante’s Idea of Rome

This lecture will discuss Dante’s idea of the Roman Empire which not only provides an explanation for the—at first glance—surprisingly important role of the pagan Virgil in the Commedia, but is also a key concept for Dante’s theories of secular and salvation history.

Andreas Kablitz, born in 1957, studied Romance Languages at the University of Cologne with a scholarship of the renowned Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes. In 1981 he began to work as an Assistant at the University of (West-)Berlin, where he received his Ph.D. with a thesis on Lamartine in 1983. In 1994 he returned to Cologne, where - in addition to his professorial lecturing activities - he is now also the director of the Petrarca-Institute, member of the editorial board of the Romantistische Jahrbuch and of the academic comittee of the Fritz-Thyssen-Stiftung. In 1997 he was awarded the Leibniz-Preis of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Although his special research interest of late centers on Dante, his essays cover a wide range of topics from French, Italian and English Literature, featuring Petrarch, Tasso and other authors from the Italian and French Renaissance as well as Shakespeare, Thomas Mann and Oscar Wilde.