When one embarks on a hermeneutical journey of a great text, especially to that of the Divine Comedy, one is bound to confront the puzzlement of interpreting and analyzing the text. Certainly, one must read, and one must also write, in order to make an attempt to understand the text. For the comedy, it is a literary work of pedagogy that presents a well-rounded, cohesive, sets of classical ideas derived from liberal education that ranges from philosophy, mythology, theology, painting, politics, religion, and poetry. If we are only to read the text in our inner voice or out loud to our self, we are treating the text as a form of dogmatic study. I certainly do find the beauty and the challenge of coming to class to explicate my analysis on a particular theme or idea in the cantos. And indeed, whatever one is spewing out onto the open classroom initiates the reciprocation of interpretation, like when different perspectives of textual analysis are being cross-examined. In the open classroom, new ideas are being born, and instructors and students are all contributing their method of how certain implicit elements come into play and building upon each other’s ideas with their proposed textual evidence and explanation.
Lest we forget that the Divine Comedy should be approached in a holistic manner, by this mean, there is equal merit in analyzing each facet of the liberal education. For example, my treatment of the text tends to gravitate to philosophy and mythology. For once, I was fascinated by the iconography of ascension and the cosmos and its underlying philosophical connection to stoicism. And also, I was eager to find if there is any highlighting connection between the theory of social contract put forth by Thomas Hobbes and why Florence was a discordant city-state at that time. These ideas and other similar ones were composed in a collective class journal that every student can read and comment. For one to derive pleasure in one’s writing, is one just to write for the sake of one. However, we must pretend to acknowledge that our instructor and students are an ignorant layman who has never read the text, and whatever experimental interpretation we have must be subjected to the sterilization of lucidity. It is foolish to start to analyze about metamorphosis in depth when the writer hasn’t even begun to give a proper introduction to the term. I must be frank that I’ve committed such mistake of assuming that the audience knows what I am explicating about.
Since this is an open collective class journal, we certainly do want to be considerate by communicating in a way that is effective and contributing. Although we are not writing an academic paper on this forum, we should treat our written delivery of it as such. If we are explicating our interpretation in the class, it is more acceptable to make a mistake on the fallibility and the delivery of the explication. But if are writing about it on the collective class journal, there is less room for errors, and there is no excuse as to the poor development of one’s idea. Therefore, our instructor points out our mistakes sharply before the students notice it. I reckon that some students express a slight annoyance because the comments that the instructor gave might be too much criticism on their grammar or idea development. But I do want to emphasize one point, which is to find the true lesson of what the text means to you in whatever way, regardless of caring too much about performing poorly on the class journal. One should interpret the comedy by, drawing out on any implicit element that might sound outrageous or out of touch. And that we should risk being wrong, rather than not making any thoughtful interpretation at all. As long as there is an innate attraction for that interpretation, finding evidence of it to support the claim will be a job that certainly requires the pleasure of mental stimulation.
