Dante’s Convivio is centred around one big metaphor. At an important banquet, all the most important philosophers, historians, politicians, and members of elite society gathered around a table to discuss and share general knowledge of the world. Dante, hidden under the table, collected all the breadcrumbs of knowledge to gather and share with the whole world, not only the elites. His goal was to expand the perimeters of knowledge, not just between intellectuals, but to everyone. Yet, he himself acknowledges that these profound insights can only come to people with certain economic or intellectual prosperity. In Forget English!, Aamir Mufti critiques this universalist ambition by demonstrating that any attempt to construct a "world literature" or universal library is inherently entangled with elite systems of power, language, and institutional gatekeeping. This tension raises two crucial questions: to what extent does the concentration of knowledge reflect unavoidable structural inequalities versus an artificial barrier to genuine access, and how can a global library expand human understanding without inadvertently imposing dominant cultural frameworks on the very audiences it aims to empower?
All members of the Franklin community are warmly invited to join us to debate!