Redefining Faith in Dante’s "Divine Comedy"

Redefining Faith in Dante’s "Divine Comedy" offers a bold reinterpretation of one of the world’s most studied poems. Through close readings of all three canticles, Jason Aleksander shows how Dante’s poem provocatively reconfigures “faith” as a mode of creative and interpretive engagement grounded in the exercise of practical judgment (phronēsis) and intellectual humility. Drawing on Dante’s dramatic depictions of figures such as Farinata degli Uberti, Ulysses, Cato of Utica, Statius, Virgil, and Beatrice, Aleksander shows how the poem both illustrates and actively cultivates the virtues necessary for navigating a fragmented and polarized world.