Slater Talk with Professor Mary Watt – Dante’s Hidden Camino: A Westward Journey to the End of the World

Dante’s Hidden Camino: A Westward Journey to the End of the World
Monday 2 March 2026, BDR, 4pm tea and coffee, talk 4:30-5:30pm
Professor Mary Watt, Professor of Italian Studies, University of Florida & Slater Fellow 2026

Talk chaired by Castle MA student Isabella Hanger. This is a joint event between University College and the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies

In this talk, Dr. Watt points to a westward itinerary subtly embedded within the narrative of Dante’s Divine Comedy. This “hidden Camino,” she suggests, invites readers to trace a pilgrimage that begins in Jerusalem, moves to Rome, then continues toward and beyond the confines of Dante’s known world. While the poem’s engagement with the pilgrimage to Rome has long drawn scholarly attention, Dr. Watt proposes that Dante presents Rome as only one stage within a broader redemptive trajectory, one that restores the city to its providential course while simultaneously charting a spiritual, political, and cosmic movement westward. Within this expanded itinerary, textual cues hint at a map visible only to those who truly seek it: Santiago de Compostela emerges as the third stage of this triune pilgrimage, a waypoint in a journey that follows the sun and gestures toward the “new world” beyond the ends of the earth.