Between Discordant Shores: Dante’s Francis of Assisi, the Book of Islam and the Orient

(Image: Coppo di Marcovaldo, St. Francis before the Sultan,” Sultan Malek al-Kāmil and his philosophers, Bardi Altarpiece, c. 1260s, Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence.)

Marking the 800th anniversary of St. Francis’s death in 2026, this talk draws on Morosini’s recent study Dante, Moses and the Book of Islam (2024) to explore Dante’s Francis and their shared conception of the Book of Islam and of the Orient. At its center is the Book’s role within the Commedia and in Dante’s representation of Francis, offering a new perspective on the Orient as a geographic space of dialogue rather than dehumanizing alterity.

This perspective, as emerged in Dante, Moses and the Book of Islam, calls for a reevaluation of Dante’s “discordant shores” of Paradiso IX, 85. In Dante’s vision, the Book becomes a bridge between cultures and faiths, a medium of transmission and encounter that links distant shores within a Mediterranean network of knowledge.

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Prior to joining UCLA’s Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies in July 2024, Professor Morosini was Professor of Italian at the Università L’Orientale di Napoli since 2022 and the 2024 Chair of Italian Culture at UC Berkeley.