Join us for Valerio Cappozzo's lecture titled "Dante and the Arab World: A Story of a Controversy" at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 6, in Gearhart Hall Room 026.

The lecture is sponsored by the Italian Program, the Honors College, the Department of English, the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program, and The King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies.

Cappozzo is an assistant professor of Italian and director of the Italian Language Program at the University of Mississippi.

The abstract follows:
In the 20th century several notable scholars commented on the influence of Muslim religious literature on episodes in the Divine Comedy, which suggested that the legendary text had Muslim inspiration. However, this topic has always been controversial on both Eastern and Western sides.