BMS302H1: Illustrated Dante
FINAL PROJECT [100% FP = 40% of Final Mark]:
What are my options and how should my Final Project look like?
For your Final Project, you can choose from the following TWO OPTIONS:
1) An Exhibition Pitch:
Context of the proposed project – Imagine that we are in 2065 (the 800th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s birth, 1265-2065) and that the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) has just started a contest for university students, inviting them to curate a small section of the Dante exhibition that they are planning to launch in May. To select the curators, they request a project structured as follows.
Structure of your project (double-spaced; 12 points; PDF/Word document) – 3 images + 3 blurbs + pitch. Your document must bring together three illustrations/works of art/visual re elaborations of Dante’s Comedy. Each image must be presented with a blurb (= short description) of 300-400 words max. After the inclusion and presentation of the three images, you must provide the proper pitch (min. 900 – max. 1300 words), outlining:
- How the chosen images relate to each other: are they depicting the same episode from Dante’s
Comedy? If so, how do they visualise Dante’s verses? Are the images three different works visualising Dante’s Comedy made by the same artist? If so, how do they visualise different episodes of Dante’s text, and how do they relate to Dante’s verses?
- Why you have chosen them: why is it important that your proposed exhibition showcases these images? What is the broader context of their production? What will the general audience attending the exhibition learn from them?
- To outline the above points, you must make use (and quote) at least one piece of scholarship.
2) A Script for a Virtual Reality Experience:
Context of the proposed project – Imagine that we are in 2065 (the 800th anniversary of Dante
Alighieri’s birth, 1265-2065) and that the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) has just started a contest for university students, inviting them to help develop a virtual reality experience based on one canto of Dante’s Comedy and at least one existing image visualising it; the VR experience will accompany the Dante exhibition that they are planning to launch in May. To select the collaborators, they request a project structured as follows.
Structure of your project (double-spaced; 12 points; PDF/Word document) – A summary of the chosen canto + at least 1 image (max. 3 images) + 1 blurb per image + script. Your document must bring together a summary of the chosen canto from Dante’s Comedy (min. 400 – max. 600 words), the chosen image(s) visualising the canto, a blurb (= short description) per image of 300-400 words each, and a script transforming the canto into a VR experience (min. 1100 – max. 1500 words). Please, consider that the script you write is the leading document that the IT experts hired by the gallery will use in order to develop the VR experience, therefore it must be very clear and detailed; to achieve this, it must be divided into scenes (like a theatre script) and must include:
- Visual information on the landscape and location, based on both the chosen canto and the chosen image(s) visualising the canto, including changes in the landscape whenever the experience requires it.
- Information on sound effects; for example, if you want to develop a script of Inferno canto 5, you might consider including the sound of a windstorm.
- Event: what is happening in each scene? (e.g., sudden appearance of a given character).
- Activity: what can/should users do within each scene?
- Dialogues: please, include in your script the dialogues happening in the chosen canto (these can also be cut and shortened, in order to make the experience more fluid and engaging for the users).
To understand how your script should broadly look like, please have a look at the document shared on Quercus (this is a draft of the script we used last year to develop a VR experience based on Inferno 1 and 2, within the event “How does it feel? Dante’s emotions today”, 12-21
April 2023: https://iictoronto.esteri.it/en/gli_eventi/calendario/exhibition-and-virtual-experience/;
https://dante.medieval.utoronto.ca/).
DEADLINE, SUBMISSION, and EVALUATION:
When is the Final Project due?
The Final Project is due by April 1, 2024 (NB: no penalty if submitted by April 8, 2024)
How can I submit my Final Project?
You can submit your Final Projects electronically either via e-mail or via Quercus, though
Quercus is preferable. If choosing Quercus, you will submit your projects to the University’s plagiarism detection tool. Normally, students will be required to submit their course essays to the
University’s plagiarism detection tool for a review of textual similarity and detection of possible plagiarism. In doing so, students will allow their essays to be included as source documents in the tool’s reference database, where they will be used solely for the purpose of detecting plagiarism. The terms that apply to the University’s use of this tool are described on the Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation website (https://uoft.me/pdt-faq).
What if I am late?
Late assignments will be penalised 2% for every day of lateness, including weekends. Nota
Bene: there will be no penalty if the Final Project is submitted by April 8, 2024; the penalty starts at 00:01 on April 9, 2024. In case of illness or unforeseen circumstances, please contact me as soon as possible.
How will my Final Project be evaluated?
The Final Projects are evaluated according to the following criteria:
- Grammar and style: 15%
- Structure and clarity: 15%
- Knowledge and comprehension of Dante’s text: 22.5%
- Knowledge and comprehension of the chosen images: 22.5%
- Creative and critical thinking applied to all elements of your proposed project: 25%
RESEARCH TOOLS:
Where can I find English translations of Dante’s works? (see also the Syllabus)
- Dante’s Comedy:
The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, ed. and transl. by R.M. Durling, introd. and notes by R.L.
Martinez and R.M. Durling (New York: OUP, 1996-2011) Good to know: The Durling-Martinez facing-page translation of the Comedy contains the Italian text and a reasonable number of helpful notes. Other excellent English translations of the Comedy include, but are not limited to, those by C.S. Singleton, J.D. Sinclair, A. Mandelbaum, R. and J. Hollander.
- E-resources:
The English translations of the Comedy by both A. Mandelbaum (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1980-1984) and R. and J. Hollander (New York: Doubleday & Co., 2001-2007) are available here (open source): http://www.danteonline.it/italiano/opere_indice.htm; the
Durling-Martinez Comedy is available online via U of T Libraries: https:// librarysearch.library.utoronto.ca/permalink/01UTORONTO_INST/14bjeso/ alma991106126574806196.
- Other useful websites on Dante are:
https://dantenetwork.it
Contents: Dante’s texts, semantic research, Dante’s sources.
https://dante.princeton.edu
Contents: Dante’s texts, English translations, various tools.
https://digitaldante.columbia.edu
Contents: Dante’s texts, English translations, Commentary on the Commedia by T. Barolini, various tools.
http://www.worldofdante.org
Contents: Dante’s texts, English translations, various tools.
https://dante.dartmouth.edu
Contents: Commentaries on the Commedia both ancient and modern.
https://www.dante.unina.it/public/frontend/index
Contents: A census of early illustrated manuscripts of Dante’s Commedia, various search tools.
https://dantetoday.krieger.jhu.edu/
Contents: A crowd-sourced repository for “citings” and “sightings” of Dante and his works in contemporary culture.
How can I do a bibliographic research on Dante?
- Please, start from the Suggested Readings provided.
- You can also consult: http://dantesca.ntc.it/dnt-fo-catalog/pages/material-search.jsf (don’t be afraid: a lot has been written on Dante and here there is almost everything…).
- If you have questions, please feel free to contact me.
Where can I find images, illustrations, contemporary re-elaborations of Dante’s Comedy?
- Please, start from the images provided in the Weekly PowerPoints (on Quercus) and related bibliographic references and links (e.g., in case of digitalised manuscripts).
- You can also consult: https://dantetoday.krieger.jhu.edu/ (see above). Here, you can find useful posts of “citing” and “sightings” of Dante in contemporary culture (music, visual arts, digital media, performing arts, written word, consumer goods, etc.) grouped under a variety of tags (don’t be afraid: Dante’s presence across global media is widespread, and here you can find a lot…). In addition, here you can find a useful list of bibliographic references that may help support the development of your Final Project.
- If you have questions, please feel free to contact me.
Where can I find general information on Dante’s characters, themes, etc.?
- [ENG] P. Toynbee, Dante Dictionary (Oxford, 1898), ed. rev. by C. Singleton in 1968: available online at https://archive.org/details/adictionaryprop01toyngoog.
- [ENG] R. Lansing – T. Barolini (eds), The Dante Encyclopedia (New York, 2000): available online via UofT Libraries https://librarysearch.library.utoronto.ca/permalink/
01UTORONTO_INST/14bjeso/alma991106936334306196.
Where can I discover what ancient and modern commentaries said about a specific line in Dante’s Comedy?
- Dartmouth Dante Project: http://dante.dartmouth.edu/search.php.
GENERATIVE AI POLICY
This course is designed to promote your intellectual development, critical judgement, as well as research and creative skills. You may not use artificial intelligence tools (e.g., ChatGPT and other AI writing assistants) for the writing and editing of the Final Project. However, these tools may be useful when gathering information from across sources and assimilating it for understanding; if you do make use of generative AI in this way (e.g., to produce a summary of an academic article that you will later re-elaborate and incorporate into your original work), you must cite this appropriately. Please, follow the MLA citation format to do so: https:// style.mla.org/citing-generative-ai/. Be aware that such tools often produce incorrect or misleading content, which you will need to verify very carefully.