Amsterdam – March 25 traditionally marks the beginning of the otherworldly journey of Dante’s Divine Comedy. To celebrate, the Italian Cultural Institute of Amsterdam is organizing a Dantedì event dedicated to Dante Alighieri’s masterpiece. At 6:30 PM, the Institute will host a lecture titled “Reading Dante with Andrea Zanzotto: Towards an Ecological Reading of the Earthly Paradise” by Manuele Gragnolati, Professor of Medieval Italian Literature at the Sorbonne, curated by Gandolfo Cascio, Italian Literature lecturer at Utrecht University. The lecture offers an ecocritical interpretation of Dante’s Earthly Paradise, juxtaposed with selected poems from Andrea Zanzotto’s collection Conglomerati. Both authors explore forms of life grounded in sensation, ecological relationships, and the dissolution of boundaries between humans, animals, and plants. By revisiting key episodes of the Garden of Eden in the final cantos of Purgatory, the lecture challenges traditional humanistic readings that emphasize allegory and rational autonomy, showing instead how the Earthly Paradise is also a material and sensory environment, centered on pleasure, corporeality, and immersion in the natural world. Viewed through Zanzotto’s ecological sensibility, Dante’s Eden anticipates a posthuman form of life where ethical renewal arises from intertwining with human vitality rather than transcending it. (9Colonne)