A TV Dante – Cantos I-VIII (1989) by Peter Greenaway and Tom Phillips – A ›symbolical translation‹ of Dante’s Inferno for television

Abstract

For their film version of the first eight cantos from Dante`s Inferno, A TV Dante – Cantos I-VIII (1989), Peter Greenaway and Tom Phillips developed a completely new and highly innovative adaptation strategy: Based on an earlier illustration cycle and translation of Dante’s Inferno by Tom Phillips, Greenaway and Phillips conceived A TV Dante as a ›new edition‹ of the artist book. For this, they transferred typical book structures in the film and, similar to Phillips’ own symbolical illustration strategy, ›translated‹ the text of the Inferno in a ›symbolical TV language‹. In this article, I will give an overview over the central adaptation principles in A TV Dante.

Keywords

• Inferno
• Peter Greenaway
• Tom Phillips
• Dante and film
• Dante and TV
• Dante illustrations