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A Jiang Lens evidence brief for this topic, built from source tags, transcript matches, and linked source refs.
A transcript-matched topic anchored by excerpts such as "No, but I tend, I tend to be skeptical of such singular moments. I know that that Dante is an exception to that. And..."
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A transcript-matched topic anchored by excerpts such as "No, but I tend, I tend to be skeptical of such singular moments. I know that that Dante is an exception to that. And..."
He argues that Shakespeare became great gradually rather than arriving fully formed, which is why singular-origin stories misdescribe the actual development of the plays.
Bromwich says The Taming of the Shrew is not one of Shakespeare's truly great plays, because its plot and characters do not yield the same depth of thought even if some details still show Shakespeare's greatness.
Jiang analogizes Virgil's speech to teachers who demand extreme sacrifice by promising future prestige and institutional immortality.
He insists that this inflation of Dante's rank is not an accidental excess but the very arrogance that drives Dante to literary greatness.
Jiang says the beauty of Dante becomes newly audible in Italian and treats that audible beauty as evidence of Dante's greatness.
He argues that appreciating Dante fully requires a kind of arrogance or supremacy claim about Dante's greatness, and he challenges critics to study another tradition deeply enough to prove him wrong with a real rival poet.
Jiang asks why a prophecy of exile, isolation, and poverty can propel Dante just as Aeneas was propelled by the promise of Rome, treating purpose rather than comfort as the decisive question.
Priam's greatness comes from refusing revenge: he kneels to and kisses the hands of the man who killed his sons instead of killing Achilles when he has the chance.
"No, but I tend, I tend to be skeptical of such singular moments. I know that that Dante is an exception to that. And..."
"...done to a theme. You know, details of it show Shakespeare's greatness. But I don't think, I don't think the plot or the characters..."
"...you might have had a teacher who has inspired you to greatness. And what your teacher said to you is, the reason why we..."
"...part. But it's, again, his arrogance that will drive him to greatness. Keep on going."
"Oh, wow. That's beautiful. Wow. Okay. This is why Dante is the greatest poet in the world, okay? You can now hear the beauty,..."
"Okay, so I don't know enough about Indian poetry to comment, okay? But the point I'm trying to make is this. In this classroom,..."
"You will love Dante if you make the effort to appreciate Dante, and I don't think anyone else compares to Dante. Okay? I make..."
"...empire called Rome, and that excites him. That propels him to greatness. That propels him to victory. And now Dante hears, oh, yeah, when..."
"The majestic king of Troy slipped past the rest and kneeling down beside Achilles, clasped his knees and kissed his hands, those terrible, man..."
"Okay, so the contrast, right? Okay, so the contrast, right? Achilles slaughtered many of Priam's sons in battle, okay? And what the majestic king..."
"...by this he is awed by the majesty of priam okay greatness does not come from defeating your enemies it comes from forgiving your..."
"they are conceived the good affections are strengthened by pity indignation terror and sorrow and the exact calm is prolonged from the satiety of..."
A source-grounded reading of a five-hour hybrid workshop that begins with Macbeth and ends by turning Purgatory, free will, tragedy, envy, and generosity into one model of human transformation.
A source-grounded reading of Jiang's central claim: late Inferno is where private vice hardens into social design.
The late cantos become Jiang's sharpest Dante claim so far: faith is not obedience but imagination that helps make truth real, hope is the arrogant wager that exile and persecution can still bear fruit,...
The seminar begins with line-by-line questions and expands into a larger claim: Dante matters because poetry trains imagination, vows turn hope into action, and faith, hope, and love stop meaning obedience and start meaning...
Paradise first appears as receptivity rather than rank, then the lecture widens into vows, memory, resurrection, original sin, and Jiang's culminating wager that God created humanity because perfection alone cannot imagine.
Jiang begins with Gay Talese the master reporter and ends with Gay Talese the man who learns to stare back at shame.
A farewell class becomes a compressed world model: empire is a game with no friends, collapse is survivable if imagination and community survive, AI is funded for control rather than liberation, and the deepest...
The conspiracy story is false as history and true as prediction.
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