ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes board games and video games related to Dante Alighieri and his works. The 2010 video game, Dante’s Inferno, released by EA Games on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and the 1986 video game, Dante’s Inferno, released by Beyond on the Commodore 64 will be considered. Twilight Creations’ 2003 game Dante’s Inferno and Giochix.it’s 2010 game De Vulgari Eloquentia will also be considered. The games are analyzed in terms of their content, genre, and medium’s style of play and interaction with Dante’s original texts and ideas. Dante’s De vulgari eloquentia will be used as a key of interpretation. On the one hand, with regard to how the game medium and genre translate and transform the original Dantean subject matter and which medium best lends itself to teaching and learning certain subject matter. And, on the other hand, as a means of contextualizing the choice of popularizing and communicating Dantean, literary subject matter through the more accessible game medium: “non solum poetando sed quomodocunque loquendo” (“not only when writing poetry but on every other occasion”) (Dve. I.xv.2).
