Lecture 29, describing a literary experiment, 19th International Montessori Training Course, London, 1933

Maria Montessori describes to her students on this London course how she worked with young adolescents and 10-year-olds on a poem of Italy’s greatest poet Dante. The children became fascinated with the Divine Comedy in which the poet relates of his journey through the regions of the dead—Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise. Such high and intricate literature is usually considered as far beyond young children. This poem of Dante is full of philosophy, full of references to historical events, but what the children felt was an utter communion with the spirit of the poem and the poet.