This bibliography is intended to include all the Dante translations published in this country in 1998 and all Dante studies and reviews published in 1998 that are in any sense American. The latter criterion is construed to include foreign reviews of American publications pertaining to Dante. The listing of reviews in general is selective, particularly in the clso of studies bearing only peripherally on Dante.

Items cited from Dissertation Abstracts International are generally registered without further abstracting, since the titles tend to be self-explanatory. Items not recorded in the bibliographies for previous years are entered as addenda to the present list.

Generally, the citation of an individual study from a collected volume representing several authors is given in brief, while the main entry of the volume is listed with full s muiographical data in its alphabetical order. Issues of this journal under the former title Annual Report of the Dante Society continue to be cited in the short form of Report, with volume number.

Special thanks go to the team of associate bibliographers who have assumed responsibility for the annotation of many of the items listed herein. The Society is very grateful to the following scholars for their invaluable expertise and for their continuing contributions to the journal: Fabian Alfie (The University of Arizona), V. Stanley Benfell (Brigham Young University), Jessica Levenstein (Princeton University), Christian Moevs (The University of Notre Dame), Guy P. Raffa (The University of Texas at Austin), and Lawrence Warner (The University of Pennsylvania). (Their initials follow their abstracts.)

Alighieri, Dante. Dante's Monarchia. Translated with a commentary by Richard Kay. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1998. xliii, 449 p. (Studies and Texts, 131)

"Because the Monarchia is deeply rooted in medieval culture, its modern reader requires not only an accurate translation but also extensive explanations. The present work is the first to provide both for English readers. The translation of Dante's Latin here maintains a balance between technical precision and readability; the commentary guides the nonspecialist through a maze of scholastic arguments and authorities, while for the specialist it confronts the critical cruxes of the work, such as its date and purpose, the author's apparent Averroism, and what he thought the emperor owed to the pope." Contents: Preface (ix-xii); List of Abbreviations (xiii-xiv); Introduction (xv-xliii); Dante's Monarchia: Latin text, English translation, and commentary. Book 1 (1-89); Book 2 (90-195); Book 3 (196-325); Appendix: Dante's Monarchia Paraphrased (327-368); Bibliography (369-410); General Index (411-432); Index of Citations (433-449).

Alighieri, Dante. Inferno. Translated into English Verse with Notes and an Introduction by Elio Zappulla. Illustrated by the Paintings of Gregory Gillespie. New York: Pantheon Books, 1998. xv, 314 p.

Contents: Preface (ix-xii); Acknowledgments (xiii-xv); Introduction (3-17); The Inferno of Dante Alighieri (19-308); Select Bibliography (309-312); List of Paintings (313-314).

Alighieri, Dante. "Translation of Inferno, Canto 2." Translated by Seamus Heaney. In Dante's Modern Afterlife: Reception and Response from Blake to Heaney (q. v.), pp. 261-264.

Alfie, Fabian. "For Want of a Nail: The Guerri-Lanza-Cursietti Argument regarding the Tenzone." In Dante Studies, 116 (1998), 141-159.

Examines the theory which posits that Dante and Forese Donati did not author the tenzone, but rather, that a poet of the Quattrocento did. According to this thesis, at some point between 1390 and 1406, a comic poet, probably Stefano Finiguerri nicknamed "il Za," decided to slander a homosexual couple by composing all six sonnets of the tenzone and publishing them. However intriguing this opinion might be, it faces one serious problem: one manuscript containing exemplars from the tenzone, Chigiano L.VIII.305, may have been produced not in the fifteenth century, but around the middle of the Trecento. Alfie examines the codex in an attempt to determine the plausibility of the "Za" hypothesis. He begins by noting that other scholars who have studied the Chigiano codex have independently arrived at similar dates for its completion, c. 1360. He then points out a number of traits which would correspond to the mid-fourteenth-century date of composition: its Gothic handwriting (the chancery minuscule was disdained by the Humanists of the late Trecento), the virtual absence in the manuscript of authors after the 1340s, and, finally, the fact that the manuscript closes with six sonnets attributed to "Franciescho Petracchi," and not to "Petrarca," the melodious pen-name the poet began using between 1338 and 1340. Alfie concludes that these characteristics indicate that the codex was completed far too early for the "Za" theory to work. [FA]

Alfie, Fabian. "Love and Poetry: Reading Boccaccio's Filostrato as a Medieval Parody." In Forum Italicum, 32.2 (Fall, 1998), 347-374.

Proposes a reading of Boccaccio's narrative poem, Il Filostrato, not as a tragedy, but as a traditional, medieval comedy. While much of the study examines that work by itself from this perspective, it does propose that the parodied intertext is none other than Dante's Vita Nuova. Therefore, it performs a reading of Dante's libello to better understand the satiric nature of Il Filostrato. For example, Boccaccio's poem begins with a prose prologue which purports to address the question of whether seeing the beloved lady, speaking of her, or thinking about her, is the highest stage of love. According to Alfie, these three possibilities represent the intra nos, extra nos, and supra nos phases of love. In contrast to Dante, however, Boccaccio's narrator asserts that he had believed that thinking about the woman was the greatest form of love until his beloved began vacationing away from her hometown. Now, bereft of her, he realizes his mistake, and knows that seeing her--the most physical of the three options--represents love's apex. Thus, Boccaccio overturns Dante's hierarchy of values, placing the lowest above the highest. Furthermore, the author of the article notes Boccaccio's repeated parodic appropriation of Dante's language in this passage. Finally, the article closes by asserting that, just as Dante's poetry evolves as he passes through the various stages of love, so too does the Filostrato. As the protagonist progresses from happy to doleful passion, the author includes various lyrical interludes reminiscent of Cavalcantian and Guinizzellian poetry. Here too, however, Boccaccio deploys this language in an ironic manner, illustrating not his indebtedness to Dante, but his parodic distance from him. [FA]

Armour, Peter. "'A ciascun artista l'ultimo suo': Dante and Michelangelo." In Lectura Dantis, 22-23 (Spring-Fall, 1998), 141-180.

While it was a commonplace to compare Dante and Michelangelo in the Cinquecento, and to cite the influence of Dante's poetry on Michelangelo's sculpture, painting, and verse, Armour argues that the presence of Dante in Michelangelo's work is actually slighter than traditionally thought. The explicit visual echoes are in fact few, and the extent of Michelangelo's poetic debt to Dante is difficult to discern, since many of the similarities are reducible to conventions of vernacular poetry, the dolce stil novo, or Christian beliefs. Even if verisimilitude is of primary importance to the work of both Dante and Michelangelo, their conceptions of their individual mimetic capacities and their understanding of the hierarchy of God, nature, and art diverge substantially. Dante's ideal artistic creations exist not in this life, but in the next, while Michelangelo sought to attain to a divine victory over nature in his human art. "For Dante, all human 'arte' strives as far as it can to follow nature ... and so, in a downward process, it is descended through nature from God," but Michelangelo imagined a kind of art that might "conquer the transience of the natural world in the attempt to detect the Ideal Beauty dispersed throughout natural creation ... and to render it permanently visible on earth through art." [JL]

Ball, Christina. "Moonscapes: The Art of Lunar Memory in the Italian Tradition." In Dissertation Abstracts International, 59, No. 4 (October, 1998), 1190. Doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 1998, 268 p.

Contains a section on the "memorable moons of Dante (Paradiso)."

Barolini, Teodolinda. "Dante and Cavalcanti (On Making Distinctions in Matters of Love): Inferno 5 in Its Lyric Context." In Dante Studies, 116 (1998), 31-63.

In this essay Barolini explores the lyric context of Inferno 5, paying particular attention to how Italian poets like Giacomo da Lentini, Guido delle Colonne, Guittone d'Arezzo, Guido Cavalcanti, and Dante himself had framed the issue of desire insufficiently controlled by reason. Pointing to Cavalcanti's "che la 'ntenzione per ragione vale" as the intertext of Dante's "che la ragion sommettono al talento" (Inf. 5:39), Barolini reads Inferno 5 as a response to Cavalcanti: "Inferno 5 constitutes Dante's most synthetic and compelling meditation on love as a death force, on love as a power that does not defy death but courts it, on love as a dark compulsion that--far from leading us toward salvation--keeps us, as Cavalcanti puts it, 'for di salute'." By looking at the views of love evidenced in Dante's own lyrics, the essay also charts the distance Dante had to traverse before reaching the position of the Commedia.

Barolsky, Paul. "Matilda's Hermeneutics." In Lectura Dantis, 22-23 (Spring-Fall, 1998), 199-202.

The figure of Matilda in Botticelli's illustration of Purgatorio 28 visually recalls his earlier depiction of Mercury or Hermes in his painting, Primavera: Matilda and Mercury each extend a hand to the sky in an identical gesture. Barolsky argues that the gesture of Primavera's Mercury, however, itself recalls a section of Purgatorio 28 in which Matilda twice refers to dispelling a cloud from Dante's understanding. In his Primavera, Botticelli makes this figure of speech visible: when Mercury extends his arm skywards, he appears to disperse the clouds above his head so that the sun shines through and is reflected in his eyes. Botticelli thus transforms the figure of speech into an image by representing the very act of "unclouding," and the resultant moment of spiritual illumination. Turning to Matilda herself in his illustration of the canto, Botticelli preserves Mers ec's posture but does not need to render the clouds Mercury dislodges. According to Barolsky, the viewer, familiar with Matilda's allusion to the unclouding of the intellect, does not need a visual cue to be reminded of Matilda's discourse. "The conceit of unclouding the intellect, having originally passed from Matilda to Mercury in the Primavera, has now returned from the god to the 'enlightened lady' who assumes Mercury's or Hermes's hermeneutical identity as the explicator of divine truth." [JL]

Bryan, Richard Alan. "Unity and the 'Way': Dante's Griffin and Chariot." In Masters Abstracts International, 36, No. 2 (April, 1998), 344. Master's thesis, California State University, Fresno, 1997, 154 p.

Butler, George F. "Giants and Fallen Angels in Dante and Milton: The Commedia and the Gigantomachy in Paradise Lost." In Modern Philology, 95, No. 3 (February, 1998), 352-363.

Milton uses the battle between the giants and the pagan gods, recounted in numerous works of classical antiquity, in order to portray Satan and the other fallen angels in Paradise Lost. While critics have noted the numerous classical sources to which Milton's use of the gigantomachy is indebted, they have ignored Dante's Commedia, which proves to have exerted a crucial influence over Milton. The classical accounts of the battle between giants and gods is certainly important, but in Dante--whom Milton knew well--the English poet found the story of the giants subjected to Christian recasting; Dante thus compares the giants to the fallen angels and associates them with Satan's fall. In addition, Milton, again like Dante, eliminates the traditional physical deformities of the giants and makes them anthropomorphic, emphasizing their great size. Finally, each poet uses the giants in order to comment on the political tyrannies of his time. [VSB]

Campbell, Mary Baine. "'Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita': The Palpability of Purgatorio." In Text and Territory: Geographical Imagination in the European Middle Ages, edited by Sylvia Tomasch and Sealy Gilles (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), pp. 15-28.

The Divine Comedy, especially the Purgatorio, is the only medieval account of travel that fully understands its genre and fully exploits the correspondences between travel, love, and narrative itself. Campbell reads the poem as responding to our need for and identification with medias res, the material and open-ended space and time of "life as we know it" and as generically presented in journey literature. She compares the Commedia to the Other World narratives, Holy Land itineraria, and secular travel narratives. Dante is distinctive in his continual emphasis on the body and landscape. Sleep is the ultimately distinctive feature of a material being in this realm, confirming the continuity of Purgatory with our diurnal world. When climbing to the middle cornice of the mountain, Dante falls asleep and dreams of the Siren, a dream that is both nel mezzo of the journey of the poem about the medium of that middle. The Siren functions as the threat of narrative entropy: she is a phantom of erotic, geographical, and narrative satisfactions--precisely what Dante is desperately fleeing. But it was only a dream--death cannot happen nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita. [LW]

Chiamenti, Massimiliano. "Attorno alla canzone trilingue Aï faux ris finalmente recuperata a Dante." In Dante Studies, 116 (1998), 189-208.

Investigates the reasons for the reluctance of many scholars to accept Dante's authorship of the plurilingual poem Aï faux ris. Although the manuscript tradition and the early printed editions speak largely (if not exclusively) in favor of Dante's authorship, some nineteenth-century editors began to express doubts about it, hiding their cultural xenophobia behind pseudo-philological arguments, which were not based on facts. As a consequence, the "canzone trilingue" was marginalized in and often removed from modern editions of Dante's Rime. A close analysis of the poem discloses significant Dantean characteristics that have not yet been sufficiently evaluated (with the exception of studies by Furio Brugnolo and Domenico De Robertis). In addition, Chiamenti focuses on Dante's sojourn with the Malaspina family in Lunigiana, where he would have had occasion to come into contact with transalpine lyrical production, and thus proposes a date of 1306-1308 for the composition of this masterly canzone. [MC]

Curran, Stuart. "Figuration in Shelley and Dante." In Dante's Modern Afterlife: Reception and Response from Blake to Heaney (q. v.), pp. 49-59.

Examines the influence of Dante on Shelley and proposes that "Shelley ... was the best, because the deepest, reader of Dante among major English poets." Examples drawn from Shelley's Defence of Poetry and Prometheus Unbound.

Dante's Modern Afterlife: Reception and Response from Blake to Heaney. Edited by Nick Havely. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. xiv, 270 p.

The essays in this volume are all concerned with the various ways in which authors have been influenced by and have responded to Dante's poem in the period from the eighteenth century to the present. Two of the essays are by American-based scholars--Stuart Curran and William Keach, and these are listed separately in this bibliography under the individual author's name. Contents: List of Plates (ix); Acknowledgments (x-xi); Notes on the Contributors (xii-xiv); Nick Havely, "Introduction: Dante's Afterlife: 1321-1997" (1-14); Part I: Pre-Romantic Prologue. 1. John Roe, "Foreseeing and Foreknowing: Dante's 'Ugolino' and the Eton College Ode of Thomas Gray" (17-30); Part II: Romantic Readings. 2. Jeremy Tambling, "Dante and Blake: Allegorizing the Event" (33-48); 3. Stuart Curran, "Figuration in Shelley and Dante" (49-59); 4. William Keach, "The Shelleys and Dante's Matilda" (60-70); Part III: Victorian Evaluations. 5. Alison Milbank, "Moral Luck in the Second Circle: Dante and the Victorian Fate of Tragedy" (73-89); 6. Ralph Pite, "'The Perilous Depth of Doubt': Dante, Plumptre and Victorian Faith" (90-110); Part IV: Modern Revisions. 7. Matthew Reynolds, "Ezra Pound: Quotation and Community" (113-127); 8. Steve Ellis, "Dante and Louis MacNeice: A Sequel to the Commedia" (128-139); 9. Hugh Haughton, "Purgatory Regained? GQQGe and Late Beckett" (140-164); Part V: Echoes in Post-war Italy. 10. Judith Woolf, "Micòl and Beatrice: Echoes of the Vita Nuova in Giorgio Bassani's Garden of the Finzi-Contini" (167-184); 11. Peter Robinson, "'Una Fitta di Rimorso': Dante in Sereni" (185-208); Part VI: Contemporary Directions. 12. Nick Havely, "'Prosperous People' and 'The Real Hell' in Gloria Naylor's Linden Hills" (211-222); 13. Mark Balfour, "The Place of the Poet: Dante in Walcott's Narrative Poetry" (223-241); 14. Bernard O'Donoghue, "Dante's Versatility and Seamus Heaney's Modernism" (242-257); Part VII: 'The deep and savage path'. 15. Seamus Heaney, "Translation of Inferno, Canto 2" (261-264); Index (267-270).

Dumol, Paul Arvisu. The Metaphysics of Reading Underlying Dante's "Commedia": The "Ingegno." New York: Peter Lang, 1998. xvi, 239 p. (Studies in the Humanities: Literature-Pol-Fals-Society, 35)

Studies the use of the term ingegno in the Commedia, beginning with the passage in Paradiso 4 (vv. 40-42) and its implications for the poem as a whole. The exploration of Dante's concept of ingegno includes an analysis of all the occurrences of this word and its correlative verbal form ingegnare in the poem. Ingegno is held to be a mental faculty, and this concept is examined in relation to the imagination, memory, and intellect. Dumol also investigates Dante's sources for the concept of ingegno in Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, and Siger of Brabant. Contents: Preface (ix-xv); List of Abbreviations (xvi); 1. Introduction: Paradiso 4.40-42 (1-13); 2. The Uses of "Ingegno" and "Ingegnare" (15-44); 3. The Ingegno as Mental Faculty (45-73); 4. The Ingegno and Other Mental Faculties (75-94); 5. The Sources of the Concept (95-12rica6. Dante's Adoption of the Concept (125-169); 7. Dante's Choice of the Term "Ingegno" (171-175); 8. Paradiso 4.40-42 Revisited (177-195); Notes (197-227); Sources Consulted (229-234); Index (235-239).

Esposito, Vittoriano. "Rilettura delle canzoni patriottiche: All'Italia e Sopra il monumento di Dante." In Rivista di studi italiani, 16, No. 2 (dicembre, 1998), 234-242.

Argues for a re-evaluation of Leopardi's civil-patriotic canzoni, including "Sopra un monumento di Dante che si preparava in Firenze," by taking into account the historical moment and the young poet's political state of mind. Together with "All'Italia," "Sopra un monumento di Dante" bears witness to Leopardi's anguish for the oppressed political condition of Italy in 1818. The twelve stanzas of the poem, according to the author, reverberate "with the same civil passion expressed by Dante in the political cantos of his Commedia" (239). [GPR]

Fraser, Jennifer Margaret. "Writes of Passage: Dante, Joyce and the Dynamics of Literary Initiation." In Dissertation Abstracts International, 59, No. 6 (December, 1998), 2008. Doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto, 1997, 219 p.

"Purgatory XXV is the pivot around which this comparative study of Dante and Joyce revolves. With the exception of doctrinal studies, this canto has mostly been ignored; yet, it is central to the Divine Comedy. Statius tells Virgil and the pilgrim about the development of the embryo up until the moment when a joyful Creator breathes in a self-reflecting soul and, in that moment, the embryo transforms into a fante, a speaker. In the preceding canto, the Dantean pilgrim recounts that when he senses the spira of Amor, he takes note and records it as poetry. Juxtaposed in the narrative, the divine spira of the embryo canto, and the divine spira inspiring poetics, together establish the essential contribution Purgatorio XXV makes to the poetics of the Commedia. Through close textual analysis, the ... study demonstrates that Dante's definition of his poetic practice focuses attention on the embryo canto. Dante has constructed his poem so that the final canto--when he encounters God--is superimposed upon the embryo canto where he first encountered God. Thus, the Divine Comedy is a write of passage: the symbolic death at the poem's conclusion corresponds with the return to the womb of Purgatorio XXV."

Gaston, Robert W. "The Renaissance Artist as Dantista: A Reassessment." In Lectura Dantis, 22-23 (Spring-Fall, 1998), 5-44.

Treats the relationship of artists to Dante to probe the competitive interaction between art and text in the Cinquecento. Argues that literary scholars made disingenuous use of the "sister arts" trope to assert hegemony over visual production, although the writings of artists themselves occasionally challenge this hierarchy. Michelangelo, however, is uniquely permitted to transcend the customary boundaries of scholarly disciplines and, as an acknowledged polymath, is celebrated in Dantean terms. The decorations at his funeral, for example, recall Dante's Commedia; in one picture, Michelangelo stands in the Elysian Fields surrounded by the bella scola of great classical and Italian artists. A Florentine, a groundbreaking artist, and an admirer of Dante's poetry, Michelangelo is seen as the culmination of the Florentine renaissance-of-the-arts story begun by Dante. Gaston suggests that "in perfecting this Trecento teleology, however, the Cinquecento scholars clearly extended the sister arts trope beyond its traditional, and perhaps reasonable, limits, through their appropriation and adulation of Michelangelo's poetry." [JL]

Grant, Michael R. "Re-writing the Self in the French Middle Ages: Dreams, Memories, and Other Visions." Dissertation Abstracts International, 59, No. 2 (August, 1998), 506. Doctoral dissertation, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1997, 256 p.

Contains a section that discusses the Divine Comedy and the Roman de la Rose "as models of re-visioning the self in the framework of thirteenth-century vernacular allegory."

Hemment, Michael J. "Dante.com: A Critical Guide to Dante Resources on the Internet." In Dante Studies, 116 (1998), 127-140.

Provides an overview of and brief commentary on several web sites dedicated to the study of Dante.

Iannucci, Amilcare A. "From Dante's Inferno to Dante's Peak: The Influence of Dante on Film." In Forum Italicum, 32, No. 1 (Spring, 1998), 5-35.

Viewing the Commedia as a "producerly text" because of its concomitant broad accessibility and challenging generation of meaning, Iannucci charts the influence of the poem on films from the silent era to the present. In the silent period, filmmakers used Dante's reputation--famous episodes (e.g., Francesca and Paolo, Ugolino), an entire canticle, or the poet's own life--to legitimize the new medium. In the second cinematic period, from the mid-1920s to World War II and its aftermath, Dante's poem was more often used in sound movies as a frame for scripts set in the modern era with an overt moral message (e.g., the evils of unbridled capitalism in Harry Lachman's Dante's Inferno of 1935). The author focuses attention in the third period, post-World War II to the present, on the "holistic" cinematic engagements of major filmmakers with Dante's poetry. He analyzes Dante's presence in, inter alia, Rossellini's Stromboli; Fellini's La dolce vita and Otto e mezzo; Pasolini's Accattone, Mamma Roma, and Salò; Peter Greenaway's and Raul Ruiz's contributions to A TV Dante; and David Lynch's Blue Velvet. [GPR]

Jewell, Alice Karnes. "From Homer to Milton: A Study of Invocations in Epic Poetry." In Dissertation Abstracts International, 59, No. 6 (December, 1998), 2009. Doctoral dissertation, University of Arkansas, 1998, 207 p.

"The invocation to the Muse was a standard feature of many epic poems of the ancient world, and it was used both by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey and by Virgil in the Aeneid. Because of the powerful authority of these two poets in later ages, the invocation to the Muse was carried over into the Christian Age by many poets who wanted to share in the classical epic tradition. The controversy raised by this practice raged throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance among the poets and critics. In the Middle Ages, the poet of The Song of Roland chose not to use the invocation at all and castigates Apollo throughout his poem. But Dante, who uses more invocations than any other poet in this study, chooses the pagan Virgil as the guide for his pilgrim in The Divine Comedy and proudly invokes the Muses and Apollo as well as numerous Christian figures."

Jewiss, Virginia. "Monstrous Movements and Metaphors in Dante's Divine Comedy." In Forum Italicum, 32, No. 2 (Fall, 1998), 332-346.

This study raises the question of the existence and nature of monsters in medieval literature. Jewiss determines that Hell represents the locus par excellence in which to find monsters. Indeed, she argues, Hell is frequently anthropomorphized into a type of monster which devours the sinners consigned there. However, the author focuses on four particular beings within the Inferno in order to examine the various ways in which Dante describes the monstrous. Each of these, she notes, is described as if in motion, as if the viewer observes the process of change, thereby denying a stable, fixed existence to any of them. The first of these is the centaur, Nessus, whom Dante portrays by stressing his dual nature, half horse and half man. The second is the symbol of fraud, Geryon, who is composed of three different beings. Dante describes this creature through several different metaphors which compare him to a swimmer, a boat, an eel, a falcon, an arrow and a beaver. The cumulative effect of these comparisons negate Geryon's fixed identity, as if he were in a constant state of metamorphosis. The third monster is the giant Antaeus, the product of angels copulating with human beings. The last is Lucifer himself whom, like the other giants, Dante seemingly confuses with architectural structures. In conclusion, the author notes that all the monsters in hell are useful to the Pilgrim, and stresses that while humans might find them frightful, they all serve a purpose in God's order. [FA]

Keach, William. "The Shelleys and Dante's Matilda." In Dante's Modern Afterlife: Reception and Response from Blake to Heaney (q. v.), pp. 60-70.

Examines "the extraordinary intertextual moment that has, as its principal points of reference, Dante's episode of Matilda (Matelda) gathering flowers in Canto 28 of the Purgatorio, Percy Shelley's unfinished translation of Dante's episode, and Mary Shelley's unpublished novella Mathilda."

Kensak, Michael Alan. "Dante, Alain De Lille, and the Ending of the Canterbury Tales." In Dissertation Abstracts International, 59, No. 3 (September, 1998), 817. Doctoral dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1998, 202 p.

"In the Manciple's Prologue and Tale, Chaucer parodies the spiritual approach to God which concludes a proper pilgrimage. As they enter heaven, Phronesis and Dante endure mystical experiences born of reverent contemplation and mortal incapacity. From Alain's and Dante's pilgrimages Chaucer gathers the topoi of his Tales' penultimate fragment: the ... lethargy of human limitation, the inadequacy of language, the impotence of Apollo, and man's awestruck silence before an ineffable Deity."

Kirkham, Victoria. "Dante's Phantom, Petrarch's Specter: Bronzino's Portrait of the Poet Laura Battiferra." In Lectura Dantis, 22-23 (Spring-Fall, 1998), 63-139.

In 1560 the poeriedura Battiferra, the wife of the sculptor Bartolomeo Ammannati, published her first book of poetry, a collection that included her poetic correspondence with Italian luminaries such as Bronzino. Around the same time, according to Kirkham's dating, Bronzino executed a portrait of his friend Battiferra, in striking profile, holding a manuscript copy of a book opened to two of Petrarch's sonnets. Kirkham decodes the key elements of the portrait with the help of extensive literary, visual, and archival evidence. According to Kirkham, Petrarch's poems speak to Battiferra's personal similarities to Petrarch's own idealized Laura, proclaim her poetic petrarchismo, and contribute to the ongoing debates over ideal literary models by asserting Petrarch's primacy. Bronzino's choice to paint Battiferra in profile, a pose reserved for royalty and the dead in the mid-Cinquecento, and the sitter's conspicuous aquiline nose, allow the painter to identify Battiferra with Dante as well, as his notable profile was already iconic in the visual arts. Bronzino thus situates Battiferra in the most illustrious tradition of Italian literature, among Petrarch and Dante. Finally, the anachronistic manuscript copy of Petrarch's poem was likely Battiferra's own commonplace book--Kirkham demonstrates the similarity between the handwriting in the portrait and Battiferra's own handwriting as preserved in autograph letters. [JL]

Kleinhenz, Christopher. "American Dante Bibliography for 1997." In Dante Studies, 116 (1998), 209-262.

With brief analyses.

Kleinhenz, Christopher. "Michele Barbi (1867-1941)." In Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline, vol. 2: Literature and Philology, edited by Helen Damico (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), pp. 325-338.

Overview of the life and scholarly achievements of Michele Barbi, with special emphasis on his contributions to Dante criticism and philology.

Kleinhenz, Christopher. "The Visual Tradition of Inferno 7: The Relationship of Plutus and Fortune." In Lectura Dantis, 22-23 (Spring-Fall, 1998), 247-278.

Examines the tradition of artistic representation of Canto 7 of the Inferno, particularly with regard to the depiction of the contrapasso, Plutus, the Archangel Michael, and the Goddess Fortune. Suggests thematic and iconographic links among the presentations of Plutus and Fortune in this canto, which are detailed in the late-sixteenth-century series of drawings by Jean Cousin le jeune, Le Livre de Fortune.

Land, Norman E. "Dante, Vasari and Michelangelo's Pietà in Rome." In Lectura Dantis, 22-23 (Spring-Fall, 1998), 181-198.

Land draws attention to the sophistication and subtlety of Vasari's criticism, focusing particularly on Vasari's masterful account of the complex qualities of Michelangelo's early Pietà in St. Peter's. For example, by relating anecdotes that link Michelangelo to Apelles as he appears in Pliny, Vasari suggests that Michelangelo's talent rivals that of the ancients. By pointing to the difference between Mary's youthful appearance and her son's limp lifeless body, Vasari demonstrates an acute awareness of the spiritual significance of the physical forms. And by evoking Dante's assessment of the sculptures on the terrace of pride--"morti li morti e i vivi parean vivi"--, Vasari reveals his understanding that "naturalism" serves as a means to a spirscril end. Land concludes that Vasari's criticism represents, in fact, spiritual writing, in much the same way that Dante's poetry represents poetic theology. [JL]

La Porta, Cristina. "History and the Poetic Vocation in Sopra un monumento di Dante." In Rivista di studi italiani, 16, No. 2 (dicembre, 1998), 359-375.

A textual and literary-historical interpretation of Leopardi's poem written in response to the 1818 proposal to erect a monument to Dante in Florence. The author discusses "Sopra un monumento di Dante" in relation to a tradition of patriotic Italian writing extending from Dante and Petrarch to Alfieri and Foscolo. Viewing Leopardi's patriotic spirit as "more literary than political" (361), La Porta identifies "cultural memory" as Leopardi's way of exhorting Italy to a better future based on an illustrious past embodied by the Dantean virtues of "literary excellence, political courage, and the championship of the Italian language" (360). In "Sopra un monumento" Leopardi adopts the Petrarchan family metaphor of Italy as mother (widow), fellow Italians as sons, and Dante as "the poet's literary father, the creator of the national language" (366). The poem fulfills its epitaphic function by memorializing the Italian soldiers sacrificed by Napoleon in his Russian military campaign. [GPR]

Lectura Dantis: Inferno. A Canto-by-Canto Commentary. Edited by Allen Mandelbaum, Anthony Oldcorn, and Charles Ross. Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of California Press, 1998. xii, 461 p.

The California Lectura Dantis series was conceived as the critical complement to Mandelbaum's three-volume verse translation of the Comedy (see Dante Studies, 101, p. 193-194; 103, p. 140). This much anticipated first volume provides detailed readings of and commentary on the Inferno. Contents: Allen Mandelbaum, "Introduction: Dante in His Age" (1-8); Letterio Cassata, "Canto I: The Hard Begin" (9-24); Robert Hollander, "Canto II: Dante's Authority" (25-35); Eugenio N. Frongia, "Canto III: The Gate of Hell" (36-49); Manlio Pastore Stocchi, "Canto IV: A Melancholy Elysium" (50-62); Paolo Valesio, "Canto V: The Fierce Dove" (63-83); Maria Picchio Simonelli, "Canto VI: Florence, Ciacco, and the Gluttons" (84-100); Philip R. Berk, "Canto VII: The Weal of Fortune" (101-110); Caron Ann Cioffi, "Canto VIII: Fifth Circle: Wrathful and Sullen" (111-122); Amilcare A. Iannucci, "Canto IX: The Harrowing of Dante from Upper Hell" (123-135); Robert M. Durling, "Canto X: Farinata and Cavalcante" (136-149); Alfred A. Triolo, "Canto XI: Malice and Mad Bestiality" (150-164); Vittorio Russo, "Canto XII: The Violent against Their Neighbors" (165-177); Giorgio Petrocchi, "Canto XIII: The Violent against Themselves" (178-184); John A. Scott, "Canto XIV: Capaneus and the Old Man of Crete" (185-196); Dante Della Terza, "Canto XV: The Canto of Brunetto Latini" (197-212); Susan Noakes, "Canto XVI: From Other Sodomites to Fraud" (213-224); Paolo Cherchi, "Canto XVII: Geryon's Downward Flight; the Usurers" (225-237); James Nohrnberg, "Canto XVIII: Introduction to Malebolge" (238-261); Charles T. Davis, "Canto XIX: Simoniacs" (262-274); Teodolinda Barolini, "Canto XX: True and False See-ers" (275-286); Steve Ellis, "Canto XXI: Controversial Comedy" (287-296); Giuliana Carugati, "Canto XXII: Poets as Scoundrels" (297-305); Tibor Wlassics, "Canto XXIII: The Painted People" (306-315); Joan M. Ferrante, "Canto XXIV: Thieves and Metamorphoses" (316-327); Anthony Oldcorn, "Canto XXV: The Perverse Image" (328-347); Giuseppe Mazzotta, "Canto XXVI: Ulysses: Persuasion versus Prophecy" (348-356); Jennifer Petrie, "Canto XXVII: False Counselors: Guido da Montefeltro" (357-367); Thomas Peterson, "Canto XXVIII: Scandal and Schism" (368-377); Lino Pertile, "Canto XXIX: Such Outlandish Wounds" (378-391); Robert M. Durling, :Canto XXX: Dante among the Falsifiers" (392-405); Massimo Mandolini Pesaresi, "Canto XXXI: The Giants: Majesty and Terror" (406-412); John Ahern, "Canto XXXII: Amphion and the Poetics of Retaliation" (413-423); Edoardo Sanguineti, "Canto XXXIII: Count Ugolini and Others" (424-431); Remo Ceserani, "Canto XXXIV: Lucifer" (432-439); Bibliographical Note and Suggestions for Further Reading (441-448); Contributors (449-452); Index (453-461).

Levenstein, Jessica Diana. "Reading Dante Reading Ovid: The Poetics of Identity and the Metamorphoses of the Commedia." In Dissertation Abstracts International, 59, No. 1 (July, 1998), 162. Doctoral Dissertation, Princeton University, 1998, 235 p.

"Throughout his manifestly Christian poem, the Commedia, Danteelliotiates the influence of his pagan predecessor, Ovid. The focus of the dissertation is Dante's allusions to mythological material drawn from Ovid's Metamorphoses. The thesis attempts to reorient critical discussion by pointing toward moments in which Ovid, functioning as more than a mere foil for the Christian truth of Dante's poem, offers Dante a compelling model that informs much of the artistic self-consciousness of the Commedia. [The author] contend[s] that references to Ovid's poem provide Dante with an arena for grappling with the role of the artist and investigating both the damning and redemptive possibilities of art. The presence of Ovidian figures in Dante's Commedia allows the poet to consider issues of identity and personal and artistic transformation." Individual figures considered include Daedalus and Icarus, Procne and Philomela, Io, and the Pierides and Marsyas.

Lieberman, Hilary. "Art and Power(lessness): Ekphrasis in Campanella's The City of the Sun, Virgil's Aeneid, and Dante's Purgatory X." In RLA: Romance Languages Annual 1997, 9 (1998), 224-231.

Tommaso Campanella's The City of the Sun ostensibly describes a utopian society; a close examination, however, of its use of ekphrasis--in comparison with ekphrastic texts of Virgil and Dante--reveal that the work "is perhaps instead an authoritarian and oppressive dystopia" (224). In The Aeneid, the descriptions of visual art contained in books one and eight are described through the eyes of Aeneas, as reporting his individual perceptions. Aeneas' reactions to the works on Dido's temple in book one and on his shield in book eight are progressive, charting the changes he undergoes in the course of becoming a hero worthy of Rome. Likewise, in Purgatorio 10, the sculptures Dante describes are seen through the eyes of the protagonist, and at a key moment Dante breaks away from Virgil to approach one of the sculptures, thus showing how, as he progresses up the mountain, he moves beyond Virgil's guidance. In the City of the Sun, however, the ekphrasis is presented in the passive voice, not allowing the artwork to be perceived by any individual within the city, creating the image of a city where individual interpretation and freedom is forbidden. [VSB]

Luzzi, Joseph. "Literary History and Individuality in the De vulgari eloquentia." In Dante Studies, 116 (1998), 161-188.

This essay considers the relationship between literary-historical reflection and autobiographical representation in Dante's work, particularly the De vulgari eloquentia. The argument first contends that Dante uses literary history in De vulgari eloquentia as a means for understanding his own individuality and the historical and cultural dimensions of his vocation as poet. The author then explores how this abiding tension between literary history and autobiography in De vulgari eloquentia--and to a lesser extent the Vita Nuova--informs Dante's discussions of his own early poetry in Purgatorio 24 and the encounter between the Pilgrim and Beatrice in Purgatorio 30-31. In highlighting the great extent to which Dante's interpretation of the history of vernacular literary culture influences his spiritual ascent and self-representation in the Commedia, this study emphasizes the De vulgari eloquentia's contribution to our understanding of how awareness of the literary past can condition knowledge of the self. [JL]

Luzzi, Joseph. "The Task of the Translator Revisited: An Interview with Robert Pinsky." In Yale Italian Poetry, 2, No. 2 (Fall, 1998), 95-105.

In addition to his interview with the poet laureate, Luzzi's essay includes an examination of the Dantean influence on Pinsky's poem, "The Ice Storm" (in The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996 [New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996]).

Marchesi, Simone. "The 'Knot of Language': Sermocinatio and Contrapasso for the Rhetoricians in Dante's Inferno." In RLA: Romance Languages Annual 1997, 9 (1998), 254-259.

Studies the episode of Pier de la Vigna (Inferno 13) to explore Dante's complex attitude towards rhetoric. Saint Augustine notes that there are two goals to rhetoric: perfection in eloquence and persuasion toward virtue. In Canto 13, the author uses highly ornate language which not only mimics Pier de la Vigna's poetic style; it also conveys a moral judgment of rhetoric which is devoid of Augustine's second attribute. Marchesi also examines several passages in this episode to illustrate that the condemned poet, the rhetorician who deceived himself with tortuous reasoning, constitutes both the source of the knotty imagery of the wood of the suicides and the convoluted syntax of the poetry of the Divine Comedy. [FA]

Martinez, Ronald. "Mourning Beatrice: The Rhetoric of Threnody in the Vita Nuova." In Modern Language Notes, 113, No. 1 (January, 1998), 1-29.

Studies the intertextualities between the Vita Nuova and the book of Lamentations. The book of Lamentations was written by the prophet Jeremiah after the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchednezzar in 586 B.C.E. While the laments are primarily public, grieving the loss of the Holy City, they also express the private mourning for's ng Josiah, killed several years earlier in a war against the Egyptians. Medieval commentators related the book of Lamentations to the Song of Solomon. The former details the weeping that occurs in this life, while the latter expresses the rejoicing which will take place in the next. The relationship of the sacred text to the Vita Nuova is complex. There are numerous references to that work in the Vita Nuova as well as, of course, a direct citation to mark Beatrice's death. Like Jerusalem, Florence is "widowed" by the death of Beatrice, and in this way, Dante emulates the prophet by linking his private sorrow with a public lamentation. Furthermore, like Jeremiah, Dante positions his text in relationship to the Song of Solomon; he describes writing a sirventese of the sixty most beautiful women of Florence, which recalls the Hebrew king's assertion that one woman represents the favorite of his sixty wives. Most importantly, Dante positions Beatrice as the sponsa whose death leaves Florence as a vidua; she will reappear in Purgatorio 30:11, as a sponsa, in line with the medieval interpretation of the Song of Songs as portraying the rejoicing in the next world. [FA]

Meegan, William John. The Conquest of Genesis: A Study in Universal Creation Mathematics. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998. xvii, 174 p.

Argues that "Dante obtained his basic pattern from the first eleven chapters of Genesis." Contents: Preface; General Introduction; Introduction; 1. A Mathematical Philosophy Used to Organize Works of Art and Literature; 2. Dante Alighieri's Application of Universal Creation Mathematics to Organize La Divina Commedia; 3. The Judeao-Christian Scriptures and Dante Alighieri's La Divina Commedia Challenge "The Documentary Hypothesis"; 4. Conclusion; Appendix; Addendum; Bibliography; Index.

Mozzillo-Howell, Elizabeth Marilyn. "Dante's Art of Reason: A Study of Medieval Logic and Semantics in the Monarchy." In Dissertation Abstracts International, 59, No. 5 (November, 1998), 1566. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1998, 269 p.

"[E]xamines Dante's use of logic in his political treatise, the Monarchy. The thesis presents the formal elements of medieval logic and semantics, as well as historical and theoretical background, as it pertains to Dante's usage. ... Chapter 1 discusses Book I, observing that Dante's text stems from a dialectical tradition. ... Chapter 2 treats Book II, placing it within the context of the theories on consequential inference (1300-1325). To do so, propositional logic is introduced and Augustine's use of conditional propositions is given as an example. ... Chapter 3 examines Book III and Dante's familiarity with Aristotelian fallacies as presented in the Tractatus and medieval textbooks."

Musgrove, Margaret Worsham. "Cyclopean Latin: Intertextual Readings in Dante's Eclogues and Góngora's Polifemo y Galatea." In Classical and Modern Literature, 18, No. 2 (Winter, 1998), 125-136.

Places Dante's and Góngora's use of classical Latin versions of the Polyphemus story in the tradition of debates over genre, levels of poetic diction, and language. Musgrove proposes that the Cyclops of Dante's second Eclogue--based primarily on the Achaemenides episode recounted in Aeneid 3 and Metamorphoses 14--"stands for traditionally violent heroic epic" (131), the epic of war and kingly deeds that the Italian poet eschews for his vernacular epic. Conversely, the Polyphemus of the baroque Spanish poem "carries the ambiguous Ovidian baggage" of Metamorphoses 13 (136), thus combining the Homeric (epic) and Theocritean (pastoral) versions of the Cyclops. Both poets "find ways to continue the classical dialogue over the value of various genres, while making a modern statement about their own langatius" (136). [GPR]

Nohrnberg, James. "Allegory Deveiled: A New Theory for Construing Allegory's Two Bodies." In Modern Philology, 96, No. 2 (November, 1998), 188-207.

This study is a "review article" of Gordon Teskey's book, Allegory and Violence (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1996; see below under ADDENDA). The book argues that allegory constitutes a violent imposition of orderly meaning on a fundamentally chaotic reality, and Nohrnberg charts the varied details, some of which come from Dante, that Teskey employs in order to make his case. Teskey's treatment of Dante concentrates on Inferno 5, where he objects to Dante's turning of Francesca da Rimini into an allegorical emblem of vice rather than treating her as a living, individual woman, resistant to totalizing interpretations of her life. "In the Inferno," however, "the characters are not so much punished for their sins as by them. Francesca lived a life of allegory as much by choice as by chance" (192). [VSB]

Parker, Deborah. "Vasari's Portrait of Six Tuscan Poets: A Visible Literary History." In Lectura Dantis, 22-23 (Spring-Fall, 1998), 45-62.

Interprets the visual clues in Vasari's Portrait of Six Tuscan Poets, commissioned by Luca Martini in 1543, to uncover the literary and cultural issues at play in the painting. "In the choice of sitters and their arrangement, Vasari and his patron collaborated upon an invenzione which offers a remarkably sophisticated and self-conscious account of literary preeminence and genealogy." Dante is notably placed in the foreground of the painting and is the only seated figure. His placement, his gestures, the objects before him, and his physical relationship to the other figures in the painting--Petrarch, Boccaccio, Guido Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoia and Guittone d'Arezzo--all testify to Dante's importance to Martini and his circle. Moreover, his evident preeminence over Petrarch refutes Bembo's contemporary assessment of Dante's inferiority to the later poet and thus constitutes an intervention in the Cinquecento debate over literary standing. Finally, the inclusion of Cino da Pistoia and Guittone d'Arezzo, and the prominent laurel wreath worn by Guido Cavalcanti, emphasize the contributions of these earlier poets to the Tuscan literary patrimony. Vasari and Martini demonstrate an understanding of the ways that literary reputations are constructed. [JL]

Passaro, Maria Pastore. "From Theory to History and Poetry: Dante's Hunt in the Forest of Dialects." In Rivista di studi italiani, 16, No. 1 (giugno, 1998), 104-115.

Provides a succinct overview of Dante's linguistic theories as expounded in his minor works, beginning with the Vita Nuova and Convivio, but focusing on De vulgari eloquentia. The author notes that Dante proposes a new project at the end of the Vita Nuova, one in which he will write about Beatrice in a manner which has never been done for any other woman. But, Passaro asks rhetorically, what would the language of this work be like? In the Convivio, Dante provides a rudimentary definition of the "volgare illustre," a language which would not evolve like the vernacular, but instead would remain fixed and permanent. However, Dante explains this "volgare illustre" more fully in De vulgari eloquentia, wherein he sets out first to demonstrate that it resides not in any one dialect, but in the best of all of them; then he demonstrates how it might be used by various poets once developed. [FA]

Pertile, Lino. La puttana e il gigante. Dal "Cantico dei Cantici" al Paradiso Terrestre di Dante. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1998. 278 p. (Memoria del Tempo, 10)

"Il principio della proprietà intellettuale è sconosciuto al Medioevo, e i testi, essendo tutti in latino, vengono agevolmente saccheggiati, espropriati, interpolati, ricomposti con assoluta disinvoltura e totale sprezzo della cronologia. Di questa altissima e selvaggia intertestualità, in buona parte ancora da studiare, la tradizione del Cantico dei Cantici offre forse l'esempio più vivace e pervasivo. È un fenomeno spettacolare, tanto circoscritto e umile alle sue origini, quanto dilagante e sublime nei suoi esiti ultimi. Un nodo di desiderio infinito alle radici stesse della letteratura erotica romanza, che occorrerebbe inventare se non esistessGQQGà. La puttana e il gigante esplora gli aspetti centrali di questa tradizione, illuminando i modi diversi, spesso del tutto inattesi e sorprendenti, in cui alimenta la fantasia e il linguaggio di Dante dove il poema si fa più marcatamente autobiografico e ostentatamente 'ideologico': i canti dell'incontro con Beatrice, nei quali, coniugando storia universale e esperienza individuale, passione politica e mito di un amore, il poeta scopre e fonda la possibilità stess in ersonale e artistica, della sua Comedìa. Ne risulta un Dante largamente inedito, pensatore e artista meno laico, meno sistematico, meno 'letterato' di quanto non siamo abituati a considerarlo, e invece più religioso, paradossale, irriducibilmente altro da noi...." Contents: Premessa (7-10); Sigle e abbreviazioni (11-12); Prologo politico (13-21); I. Amore e la storia (23-42); II. Un candelabro di nome Jesse? (43-50); III. Aspettando Beatrice (51-86); IV. La ferita d'amore (87-133); V. "Un carro in su due ruote, trïunfale" (135-141); VI. Il grifone (143-162); VII. La pianta (163-196); VIII. Aquilone e Austro (197-202); IX. La puttana e il gigante (203-225); X. Cantica (227-245); Bibliografia (247-261); Indice dei luoghi danteschi citati (265-268); Indice dei luoghi biblici citati (269-271); Indice dei nomi (272-276); Indice generale (277-278).

Picone, Michelangelo. "Theories of Love and the Lyric Tradition from Dante's Vita Nuova to Petrarch's Canzoniere." In Romance Notes, 39, No. 1 (Fall, 1998), 83-93.

Argues that the Vita Nuova is, among other things, a complete discussion on the culturally dominant modes of discourse about love. Indeed, according to the author, the fundamental question of the work is how to resolve the problematic nature of love? The article analyzes two episodes from the libello to demonstrate that this question underlies the work. It begins by discussing the first vision, related in the sonnet, "A ciascun'alma presa." In this passage, Picone notes that Beatrice's action of eating Dante's heart symbolizes fol'amor, thereby illustrating the destructive powers of passion. However, in contrast to that, the last sonnet, "Oltre la spera," represents fin'amor which sublimates the senses in a spiritual passion. Thus, the protagonist of the Vita Nuova moves from eros to caritas throughout the narrative therein. Picone closes the article by contrasting the opera giovanile to Petrarch's Canzoniere. Like Dante's work, Petrarch's collection represents a culmination of the Romance tradition. However, Petrarch does not allow for the sublimation of passion to ultimately communicate a spiritual truth. For Petrarch, there is no moral or religious significance to love. [FA]

Podgurski, Robert. "Where Optics and Visionary Metaphysics Converge in Dante's 'Novella Vista'." In Italian Quarterly, 35, Nos. 135-136 (Winter-Spring, 1998), 29-38.

Examines Dante's understanding and synthesis of the different medieval schools of thought regarding vision. The first of these, that of extromission, posited that the eye sends out rays which return with an image. The second, that of intromission, proposed that objects emit rays which the eyes perceive. The third, proposed by Aristotle, blends the previous two theories, stating that colored objects can be seen when illuminated. Dante seemingly adheres to the different optical ideas, depending on which of the writings one examines. However, in the Commedia, he appears to synthesize intromission and extromission, allowing for intromission--a more passive model--when distant from God, while engaging in extromission, where the eye is more active, in proximity to the divine. [FA]

Puca, Antonella. "The Apocalypse and the Dance of the Stars in Dante's Paradiso." In Italian Culture, 16, No. 1 (1998), 1-10.

Dante's use of the Apocalypse in the Paradiso, particularly in the heaven of the sun, reveals his interest in the last book of the Bible as an interpretive key to the rest of the Scriptures. The imagery that he employs in the heaven of the sun derives from both the Apocalypse and from the mosaics in the Florence baptistry that portray the Last Judgment. Dante portrays former theological opponents as existing harmoniously side by side in the circles of the sun; the dance of those circles anticipates the final wedding between Christ and the Church, a wedding described by the Apocalypse as ushering in the end of time. [VSB]

Pustilnik, Phyllis L. "Dante Alighieri and Lord Peter Wimsey: Dorothy L. Sayer's Two Mysteries." In Dissertation Abstracts International, 59, No. 3 (September, 1998), 833. Doctoral dissertation, The Union Institute, 1998, 116 p.

"Pustilnik sees Sayers as using her twelve mystery novels and three collections of stories to rewrite biblical sections as allegory, by which Sayers takes her protagonist Peter to his Harriet through the same kind of Virgilian progression found in Dante's Commedia, in which work Virgil brought Dante to Beatrice."

Quinones, Ricardo J. Dante Alighieri. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998). xvi, 202 p. (Twayne's World Authors Series, 563)

This revised edition (see Dante Studies, 98, pp. 172-173) contains supplementary text and notes in several chapters, particularly those devoted to the three canticles of the Comedy, as well as an additional chapter, "Epilogue: Dante in Our Time" (173-184), which provides a wide-ranging assessment of recent trends in Dante criticism in North America.

"Remembering Charles T. Davis." In Dante Studies, 116 (1998), 1-15.

Contains short remembrances by (in alphabetical order) Teodolinda Barolini, Marvin B. Becker, William Bowsky, Robert Brentano, Anna Chiavacci Leonardi, Joan Ferrante, Robert Hollander, Rachel Jacoff, Richard Kay, Christopher Kleinhenz, Richard Lansing, Angelo Mazzocco, Edward Peters, Marjorie Reeves, and John Scott.

"Remembering Joseph Anthony Mazzeo." In Dante Studies, 116 (1998), 17-23.

Contains short remembrances by (in alphabetical order) Teodolinda Barolini, Rachel Jacoff, James V. Mirollo, and Carole Slade.

"Remembering Tibor Wlassics." In Dante Studies, 116 (1998), 25-30.

Contains a remembrance by H. Wayne Storey and two unpublished pieces by Tibor Wlassics, Irósdi and Il disdegno di Guido.

Roberts, Renee Magriel. "The Clock and the Rose: Time and Self-Transformation in the Romance of the Rose and the Divine Comedy." In Dissertation Abstracts International, 59, No. 1 (July, 1998), 164. Doctoral dissertation, The Union Institute, 1998, 350 p.

"Chapter 4 explores Dante's Divine Comedy, the medieval summa of time and self-transformation. It includes an in-depth analysis of the first terzina utilizing an original constructivist literary analysis technique that examines the importance of the internal translation process. This chapter also focuses on the border areas, particularly Inferno's dark forest and the final cantos of Paradiso. It compares Inferno to the Rose journeys. The chapter culminates with the squaring of the circle and the themes of the mechanical clock and the celestial rose at the moment of creation."

Scaglione, Aldo. Essays on the Arts of Discourse: Linguistics, Rhetoric, Poetics. Edited by Paolo Cherchi, Stephen Murphy, Allen Mandelbaum, and Giuseppe Velli. New York: Peter Lang, 1998. xxii, 392 p.(American University Studies, Series II: Romance Languages and Literature, 226)

"This collection of previously published e this assembles the most relevant studies on theory of language development and theory of ave;e in specific geographic areas and in general terms. The essays find a common thread and matrix in their reference to the traditional theory of the Arts of Discourse, or Trivium Arts, the core of the Liberal Arts system. The languages most directly involved range from Latin and Greek to Italian, French, and German. The connecting link is the perception that literature grows in a symbiosis of convergent disciplines that affects authors and readers alike." The following essays on Dante are included in this volume: "Periodic Syntax and Flexible Meter in the Divina Commedia [1967]" (59-82) [see Dante Studies, 86, p. 149]; "Dante and the Rhetorical Theory of Sentence Structure [1978]" (179-192) [see Dante Studies, 98, pp. 186-197]; "Dante and the ars grammatica [1990]" (315-326) [see Dante Studies, 107, p. 155]; and "(Christian) Theologians vs. (Pagan)di'slosophers: Another Look at Dante's Allegory [1990]" (335-344) [see Dante Studies, 108, p. 147].

Schildgen, Brenda Deen. "Dante and the Crusades." In Dante Studies, 116 (1998), 95-125.

Arguing against the idea that Dante supported Holy Land crusades, this essay proposes that the Comedy takes Europe as the focus of its crusade polemic. Much of the crusade and pilgrimage literature, informed by a literal exegesis of the Bible, undertook a religious-political mission that sought to pacify the biblical lands and fostered hatred of the people who lived there. Dante has assumed the language of the crusades, but taking on the role of prophet, he transforms their goals into a poetic ethical-political mission aimed against Latin structural and individual corruption. As in Roland and Aliscans, he points to the law as the solution to the crisis created by Latin squabbling and treachery and to the West as the site for future conversion. As in Bonaventure's Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, his iter, that is, pilgrimage and crusade, has given him the chance to see the things of the world for which he takes responsibility as visionary prophet and reformer. Dante registers little interest in Holy Land crusades, but rather focuses on the corruptions rife in his own Latin lands. [BDS]

Scoggins, Dene Dee. "Searching the Stars for Signs of God: Divine Semiotics in Dante, Rabelais, Shakespeare, and Milton. In Dissertation Abstracts International, 59, No. 2 (August, 1998), 482. Doctoral dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin, 1997, 208 p.

Examines "the importance of astrology to medieval and early modern culture" and attempts to "show that these authors contributed to the debate surrounding astrology, accommodating some aspects of astral influence, rejecting others. Dante, for example, establishes astrology as a divine semiotics that opens up the secrets of God; however, he also warns his readers about the dangers of looking too far into the future."

Senior, Diane. "The Authority and Autonomy of the Fiore." In Forum Italicum, 32, No. 2 (Fall, 1998), 305-331.

Argues that the author of the Fiore establishes a subjective self in history as the arbiter of transcendent truth, against the abstract intellectualizations the Roman de la Rose hands down from external authority and tradition. "Tradigione" in the Fiore signifies both tradition and treachery, a betrayal of truth through fixity in the past, through failing to be open to hope and the future. The Italian Poet-Lover's fidelity to the Dio d'Amore represents a faith in the ineffable beyond word and abstraction, reached through entering oneself and through trust in one's own reason; it is a rejection of the "passive receptivity and deceptive manipulation of knowledge at the heart of the Rose," a rejection of abstract or universal Reason as ultimately irrational. [CM]

Shapiro, Marianne. Dante and the Knot of Body and Soul. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. xiv, 226 p.

"Seeks to evaluate in just measure the material, bodily, erotic, and aesthetic aspects of the intellectual foundations of the Commedia and explore the idea of embodied spirit and its poetic consequences in Dante's worldmaking poem. Bodies, be they ghostly, demonic, fleshly, or angelic, are tied up in both literal and figurative knots because of their unstable ontology, an ontology that they share with human language. In each chapter, Shapiro addresses the interconnections between poetic speech and embodied spirit as they develop over the course of the Commedia's three canticles. Instead of regarding Dante as an Olympian poet, her approach emphasizes process, for even a masterpiece may conceal adjustments and shifts in strategy as part of its structure. While much current scholarship has set out to recover the specifically literary dimensions of Dante's enterprise by prising them away from the overriding theological concerns, this work is intended to bring the two together in an integrated vision." Contents: Introduction (vii-xiv); 1. The Knot of Body and Soul (1-44); 2. Infernal Eros and Civil Strife (45-62); 3. Shades and Statues (63-86); 4. Virgilio (87-109); 5. Beatrice, True Praise of God (111-135); 6. The Speeches of Inferno (137-159); 7. The Twofold Representation of the Soul (161-197); Notes (199-220); Index (221-226).

Smarr, Janet. "The Parlement of Foules and Inferno 5." In Chaucer Review, 33, No. 2 (1998), 113-122.

Chaucer's Parlement of Foules is an intertextual work that draws on a number of different texts, including Dante's Commedia; the relevance, however, of Dante's poem for Chaucer's--which is also a dream vision--has not been sufficiently appreciated. In particular, the fifth canto of the Inferno seems relevant for a reading of Chaucer's poem. Dante's canto of condemned lovers serves both as a source for Chaucer and as a guide to interpreting the later poem. Chaucer does not condemn all forms of love, but distinguishes between the carnal passion symbolized by Paolo and Francesca that is inspired by the reading of romances, and a natural love that leads to marriage and offspring. Even the end of the Parlement of Foules, where the narrator awakens from his dream vision and returns to his books, recalls Inferno 5; in Dante's poem, Paolo and Francesca are led into adultery by reading the romance of Lancelot tohowier, but they break off their reading too soon. "Where Francesca 'read no farther,' [Chaucer's narrator] reads on, seeking a better wisdom" (119). [VSB]

Tambling, Jeremy. "Illustrating Accusation: Blake on Dante's Commedia." In Studies in Romanticism, 37, No. 3 (Fall, 1998), 395-420.

An attempt to read Blake's Dante illustrations as cultural productions of the 1820s. The author first considers them in relation to changes of approach to state-control and punishment that were then taking place. The engraved version of number 58, "The Pit of Disease: The Falsifiers," illustrating Inf. 29:50-51, depicts Virgil and Dante as petit-bourgeois property-owners, a background that encourages us to look at the punishments and the crimes in a non-eschatological way, by reflecting that forgery, which is paid for here, was, in the 1820s, a capital offense. Next, Tambling draws attention to the coincidence that Byron died in 1824, the same year Blake began the illustrations; this finds a response in shifts between aristocratic and middle-class sentiment and approaches to punishment. Byron's death acts as a metaphor for the ascendancy of middle-class approaches to morality and for the rule of the bourgeois conscience. The third part of the essay suggests that the illustrations may be seen as strung between the differences evoked by what Byron represents and what Dickens represents. Blake's Dante illustrations, especially that of Paolo and Francesca, are like Dickens's David Copperfield in being aware of the unease the bourgeois has with the sexual. Tambling closes by considering what is modern about these works, what in them implies new awarenesses of subjectivity that were also current in the 1820s, for instance. [LW]

Thompson, Andrew. George Eliot and Italy: Literary, Cultural, and Political Influences from Dante to the "Risorgimento." New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. x, 243 p.

In addition to assaying the importance of George Eliot's extensive engagement with Italy in her works, Thompson studies British attitudes toward Italy in the period leading to unification and the presence of Dante in Italy and England in the first half of the nineteenth century. In particular, he investigates the ways in which Eliot incorporates Dante and the Commedia as well as historical elements and mythical aspects of Italian unification into her later fictional works--Romola, Felix Holt, the Radical, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda. Contents: List of Abbreviations (viii); Acknowledgments (ix); Introduction (1-5); 1. Dante, the Risorgimento and the British: The Italian Background (6-29); 2. George Eliot's Contact with Italian Life and Culture 1840-61 (30-49); Eliot's Italian Exile in 'Mr Gilfil's Love Story' (Scenes of Clerical Life) (50-67); 4. Italian Mythmaking in Romola (68-83); 5. Dante in Romola (84-97); 6. Dante and Moral Choice in Felix Holt, the Radical (98-119); 7. Italian Culture and Influences in Middlemarch (120-144); 8. Gwendolen's 'Other Road': Dante in Daniel Deronda (145-160); 9. Italian Poetry and Music in Daniel Deronda (161-172); 10. Daniel Deronda, Italian Prophecy, Dante and George Eliot (173-195); Notes (196-226); Bibliography (227-233); Index (235-243).

Tomasch, Sylvia. "Judecca, Dante's Satan, and the Dis-placed Jew." In Text and Territory: Geographical Imagination in the European Middle Ages, edited by Sylvia Tomasch and Sealy Gilles (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), pp. 247-267.

Explores the "absence" located in the name of the geographical site, the "Judecca" (giudecca, Inf. 34:117), the medieval Italian name for the Jewish ghetto. This re-etymologization entails a relentless repression of Jewish referentiality that nonetheless returns in distorted form. Throughout the Inferno, by means of strategies of metonymy, Jews are variously represented: in the Judecca, in the mosques (Canto 8), and in the figure of Satan himself, whose "dephallicized body evokes the circumcised penis, a synechdochal symbol of the Jews." Yet, "in trying to recapitulate only Christian wholeness, it [the Commedia] repeatedly manifests what it seeks to avoid." For Jewish presence shows forth at the central location of the cosmos, and Jewish narrative provides the allegorical foundations of the text itself. Lucifer's cannibalism not only inverts the Eucharist, but also evokes the Passover. Dante scholars have ignored this point, and are guilty of a "christianist blindness." Tomasch ends by invoking Barolini's call for a "new formalism" in medieval studies, urging the development of "a stance that will allow us to attend to Dante's narrative strategies as well as to ponder the repercussions of our blinkered praise." [LW]

Trone, George Andrew. "Dante's Poetics of Sacrifice: Violence and the Limits of Prophecy." In Dissertation Abstracts International, 59, No. 6 (December, 1998), 2015. Doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 1998, 213 p.

"[P]robes Dante's understanding of the potentially explosive clash between theology and history by focusing on the violent act of sacrifice. The introduction surveys the appearance of the word 'sacrifice' in all of Dante's works. The rare term is found to refer most frequently to the physical act of pagan worship, although in the Divine Comedy it also designates the spiritual act of Christian sacrifice. The first chapter of the dissertation, 'Sacrifice and Theology,' provides the medieval theological context for Dante's understanding of sacrifice. The sacrificial theories of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas reveal both the historic and symbolic nature of Christian sacrifice, an ambiguous duality which Dante exploits in his poetry." Other chapters are concerned with Inferno 20 and 32-33, Purgatorio 23, and Paradiso 7.

Warner, Lawrence. "Dante's Ulysses and the Erotics of Crusading." Dante Studies, 116 (199ice 65-93.

Dante figures Ulysses as anti-crusader and sodomitical penetrator. Ulysses's rejection of familial bonds for the sake of a journey away from Jerusalem perverts preachers' exhortations that crusaders toward the "fatherland" should not be hindered by love of children, parents and wives. His "trapasso del segno" is akin to what Christians saw as the "sodomitical" Muslim penetration of Jerusalem. Inferno 26's focus upon the motifs of seed, shipwreck, illicit transgression, and living like brutes further suggests an affinity with anti-sodomitical treatises. Dante strengthens these resonances by aligning Inferno 26 with both Inferno 15's portrayal of Brunetto Latini and Purgatorio 26's of the sodomites and "hermaphrodites." Cacciaguida's status as crusader (Paradiso 15-18) is crucial to his widely-acknowledged palinodic relationship with Brunetto, Guinizzelli, and especially U, thes; the teleological rectitude of his attempt to liberate Jerusalem puts into sharp relief these sinners' errancy. Dante, by modeling his own journey after the Exodus in conjunction with Ulysses (Purgatorio 1:130-133), confirms the centrality of crusading ideology to the structure of the Commedia: crusading leaders believed that Moses and Joshua's military mission prefigured contemporary campaigns to re-claim Jerusalem. For Dante, the acts of journeying and recording the word of God are inherently violent, calling upon obliteration of the errant. [LW]

Watts, Barbara J. "The Word Imaged: Dante's Commedia and Sandro Botticelli's San Barnaba Altarpiece." In Lectura Dantis, 22-23 (Spring-Fall, 1998), 203-245.

Focusing on two notable elements of Botticelli's San Barnaba altarpiece--the inscription on the steps to Mary's throne and the fictive gilded reliefs in the roundels above Mary's head--Watts asserts that Botticelli accomplishes two goals: he uses Dante's Paradiso to recast a conventional religious subject and he participates in the ongoing debate on the relative values of painting and poetry. The inscription on Mary's throne cites Dante directly; it reads "VERGINE MADRE, FIGLIA DEL TUO FIGLIO," the first verse of St. Bernard's prayer to the Virgin in Paradiso 33. The reliefs above the Virgin's throne refer to Dante obliquely; they depict the Annunciation in much the same way that the sculpted terrace was said to in Purgatorio 10, and they thus resemble the Annunciation relief in Botticelli's illustration of the canto. Botticelli's representation of Mary in the altarpiece is then elucidated by Dante's own representation of her on the terrace of pride and in the Empyrean. As a result, her humility is underscored and the causal relationship between her humble stance at the Annunciation and her exalted position as the Queen of Heaven is made manifest. Dante's text finally stands as an exegesis of Botticelli's altarpiece, revealing the allegorical significance of Mary in her various aspects. Watts concludes by asserting that Botticelli's use of Dante allows him to present word and image as "analogous modes of figural allusion"; the image can be as polysemous as the text. Botticelli thus challenges Dante's subordination of image to word in the Commedia through Dante's words themselves. [JL]

Weinfield, Henry. "The Noble Epicureans: Variations on a Buried Theme (Dante and Wordsworth)." In Religion & Literature, 30, No. 1 (Spring, 1998), 13-34.

The first part of this essay offers the standard "romantic" reading of the episodes of Farinata and Cavalcante, Brunetto Latini, and Ulysses: in all these cases what resonates is an incipient humanism that cuts against the theological grain and, in Auerbach's term, detaches the figure from its ground. Weinfield finds parallels between Dante's portrayal of these figures and those of Achilles and Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey; the Italian poet's attempt to repress Epicureanism on the ideological level merely intensifies on the poetic or affective level the power of the claim it would seem to have on us. The essay then turns to Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey," arguing that the Epicurean dimension latent in that poem--as manifested, for instance, in the poet's association of pleasure and goodness--is one aspect of a complex response to a religious crisis that assails Wordsworth both in general intellectual terms and, more specifically, through the mediation of poetic tradition. [LW]

Alighieri, Dante. De vulgari eloquentia. Edited and translated by Steven Botterill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. (See Dante Studies, 115 [1997], 274.) Reviewed by:

V. Stanley Benfell, in Italian Culture, 16, No. 2 (1998), 235-237.

Charles T. Davis, in Speculum, 73, No. 1 (January, 1998), 162-164.

Baranski, Zygmunt G. "Sole nuovo, luce nuova": Saggi sul rinnovamento culturale in Dante. Torino: Scriptorium, 1996. Reviewed by:

Peter Armour, in Modern Language Notes, 113, No. 1 (January, 1998), 244-246.

Barolini, Teodolinda. The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992. (See Dante Studies, 111 [1993], 269-270.) Reviewed by:

Madison U. Sowell, in Renaissance Quarterly, 51, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), 612-613.

Biow, Douglas. Mirabile Dictu: Representations of the Marvelous in Medieval and Renaissance Epic. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995. (See Dante Studies, 115 [1997], 278.) Reviewed by:

Paul J. Archambault, in Symposium, 52, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), 117-120.

Botterill, Steven. Dante and the Mystical Tradition: Bernard of Clairvaux in the "Commedia". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. (See Dante Studies, 113 [1995], 212-213.) Reviewed by:

Giuliana Carugati, in Italica, 75, No. 1 (Spring, 1998), 112-113.

The Cambridge History of Italian Literature. Edited by Peter Brand and Lino Pertile. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. (See Dante Studies, 116 [1998], 254.) Reviewed by:

Rocco Capozzi, in World Literature Today, 72, No. 1 (Winter, 1998), 118.

Cavallini, Giorgio. Montale lettore di Dante e altri studi montaliani. Roma: Bulzoni, 1996. Reviewed by:

Massimo Maggiari, in Annali d'Italianistica, 16 (1998), 429.

Cecchetti, Giovanni. Voci di poesia. Saggi di struttura poetica da Dante a Campana con uno studio sulla traduzione. Salerno: Laveglia, 1997. (See Dante Studies, 116 [1998], 219.) Reviewed by:

Raymond Petrillo, in Rivista di studi italiani, 16, No. 2 (dicembre, 1998), 595-599; Joseph Tusiani, in Italica, 75, No. 3 (Autumn, 1998), 456-457.

Costa, Gustavo. Il sublime e la magia da Dante a Tasso. Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1994. Reviewed by:

Salvatore Di Maria, in Italica, 75, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), 255-256.

Dante: Contemporary Perspectives. Edited by Amilcare A. Iannucci. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. (See Dante Studies, 116 [1998], 220.) Reviewed by:

Marguerite Chiarenza, in University of Toronto Quarterly, 68, No. 1 (Winter, 1998-1999), 429-430;

Christian Moevs, in Annali d'Italianistica, 16 (1998), 384-386.

Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies. Edited by Theodore J. Cachey, Jr. Notre Dame, Indiana, and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995. (See Dante Studies, 114 [1996], 320.) Reviewed by:

Massimo Verdicchio, in Rivista di studi italiani, 16, No. 1 (giugno, 1998), 381-383.

The "Fiore" in Context: Dante, France, Tuscany. Edited by Zygmunt G. Baranski and Patrick Boyde. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997. -173below, under ADDENDA.) Reviewed by:

Simon Gilson, in Rivista di studi italiani, 16, No. 2 (dicembre, 1998), 546-549;

Diane Senior, in Speculum, 73, No. 4 (October, 1998), 1106-1107.

Forni, Pier Massimo. Adventures in Speech: Rhetoric and Narration in Boccaccio's "Decameron." Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. (See Dante Studies, 115 [1997], 284.) Reviewed by:

Victoria Kirkham, in Renaissance Quarterly, 51, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), 613-614;

Wayne A. Rebhorn, in Speculum, 73, 2 (April, 1998), 514-516;

Susanne Sara Thomas, in Romance Quarterly, 45, No. 3 (Summer, 1998), 191-192.

Franke, William. Dante's Interpretative Journey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. (See Dante Studies, 115 [1997], 284-285.) Reviewed by:

Steven Botterill, in Comparative Literature, 50, No. 2 (Spring, 1998), 178-181;

Elizabeth Mazzocco, in Rivista di studi italiani, 16, No. 2 (dicembre, 1998), 554-555.

Illiano, Antonio. Sulle sponde del prepurgatorio. Poesia e arte narrativa nel preludio all'ascesa (Purg. I-III 66) (Firenze: Edizioni Cadmo, 1997). (See Dante Studies, 116 [1998], 228-229.) Reviewed by:

James T. Chiampi, in Rivista di studi italiani, 16, No. 2 (dicembre, 1998), 550-553;

Rinaldina Russell, in Forum Italicum, 32, No. 2 (Fall, 1998), 575-577.

Kirkpatrick, Robin, English and Italian Literature from Dante to Shakespeare: A Study of Source, Analogue and Divergence. London: Longman, 1995. Reviewed by:

Sherry Roush, in Comparative Literature Studies, 35, No. 3 (1998), 309-312.

Mazzocco, Angelo. Linguistic Theories in Dante and the Humanists: Studies of Language and Intellectual History in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy. Leiden: Brill, 1993. (See Dante Studies, 112 [1994], 317-318.) Reviewed by:

Robert C. Melzi, in Rivista di studi italiani, 16, No. 1 (giugno, 1998), 384-387.

Mazzotta, Giuseppe. Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993. (See Dante Studies, 112 [1994], 318.) Reviewed by:

Gustavo Costa, in Romance Philology, 51, No. 4 (May, 1998), 517-522.

McLaughlin, Martin L. Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance: The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to Bembo. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Reviewed by:

G. W. Pigman, III, in Renaissance Quarterly, 51, No. 4 (Winter, 1998), 1354-1355; Sherry Roush, in Forum Italicum, 32, No. 1 (Spring, 1998), 263-265.

Palma di Cesnola, Maurizio. Semiotica dantesca: profetismo e diacronia. Ravenna: Longo, 1995. Reviewed by:

Christian Moevs, in Annali d'Italianistica, 16 (1998), 381-383.

Prandi, Stefano. Il 'diletto legno'. Aridità e fioritura mistica nella "Commedia." Firenze: Olschki, 1994. Reviewed by:

Steven Botterill, in Annali d'Italianistica, 16 (1998), 383-384.

Scaglione, Aldo. Essays on the Arts of Discourse: Linguistics, Rhetoric, Poetics. Edited by Paolo Cherchi, Stephen Murphy, Allen Mandelbaum, and Giuseppe Velli. New York: Peter Lang, 1998. (See above, under Studies.) Reviewed by:

Frank Nuessel, in Italica, 75, No. 4 (Winter, 1998), 610-613.

Scott, John A. Dante's Political Purgatory. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. (See Dante Studies, 115 [1997], 296.) Reviewed by:

Steven Botterill, in Comparative Literature, 50, No. 2 (Spring, 1998), 178-181;

Molly Morrison, in Italica, 75, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), 256-258.

Stapleton, M. L. Harmful Eloquence: Ovid's "Amores" from Antiquity to Shakespeare. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. (See Dante Studies, 116 [1998], 258-259.) Reviewed by:

Jonathan Bate, in Shakespeare Quarterly, 49, No. 4 (Winter, 1998), 438-439;

Christopher Martin, in Comparative Literature Studies,ave; No. 3 (1998), 301-303;

Janet L. Smarr, in Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 97, No. 1 (January, 1998), 103-105.

Staten, Henry. Eros in Mourning: Homer to Lacan. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. (See Dante Studies, 114 [1996], 337.) Reviewed by:

John McGowan, in Modern Language Quarterly, 59, No. 4 (December, 1998), 511-514.

Stillinger, Thomas C. The Song of Troilus: Lyric Authority in the Medieval Book. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. (See Dante Studies, 111 [1993], 291.) Reviewed by:

Karla Taylor, in Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 97, No. 1 (January, 1998), 110-112.

Taylor, Charles H., and Patricia Finley. Images of the Journey in Dante's "Divine Comedy." New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1997. (See Dante Studies, 116 [1998], 241-242.) Reviewed by:

John Mulryan, in Cithara, 38, No. 1 (November, 1998), 63-64.

Torrens, James, S.J. Presenting "Paradise". Dante's "Paradise": Translation and Commentary. Scranton, Pennsylvania: University of Scranton Press, 1993. (See Dante Studies, 112 [1994], 302-303.) Reviewed by:

Caron Ann Cioffi, in Speculum, 73, No. 2 (April, 1998), 609-612.

Wallace, David. Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1997. (See Dante Studies, 116 [1998], 244.) Reviewed by:

Catherine S. Cox, in Annali d'Italianistica, 16 (1998), 389-392;

Watkins, John. The Specter of Dido: Spenser and Virgilian Epic. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. (See Dante Studies, 115 [1997], 316.) Reviewed by:

Michael O'Connell, in Renaissance Quarterly, 51, No. 1 (Spring, 1998), 297-299.

Baranski, Zygmunt G. "The Ethics of Literature: The Fiore and Medieval Traditions of Rewriting." In The Fiore in Context . . . (q.v.), pp. 207-231.

Examines the Fiore's literary, e iural, and ethical purposes in the context of the medieval theory of translatio. In contrast to the passive volgarizzamenti of French and Latin texts of the time, which only served to preserve the subordination of the translation, and its linguistic and cultural context, to the authority of the original text and its language and culture, the author of the Fiore aggressively appropriates and reworks the structures and ideologies of French and Provençal literature in order to establish his own authority, and the identity and autonomy of Italian literature, in a polemic against French cultural hegemony in Tuscany. Thus the Fiore establishes its own auctoritas by stressing its genre as translation, while concealing its source; its controlled and parodic gallicisms aim to reverse the established cultural and linguistic hierarchy; it presents itself as a new Ovidian ars amandi, suppressing all reference to Ovid. Like its Ovidian model, as understood in a medieval context, the Fiore has an ethical aim, demanding a moral interpretation beyond the literal sense, a morality "at odds with the behavior of its protagonist." [CM]

Barnes, John C. "Uno, nessuno e tanti: il Fiore attribuibile a chi?" In The Fiore in Context . . . (q.v.), pp. 331-362.

A detailed survey of all the available facts and clues that would help to establish who wrote the Fiore, including all the arguments advanced over the years for the attribution of the Fiore to Dante, and the objectionsen hsed to those arguments. The essay considers first the poem's date and geographical source, its genre and purposes, and accepts the conclusion that its author possessed high literary and intellectual abilities. The "pre-Continian" arguments for Dante's authorship are judged ultimately inconclusive, given the objections raised against them; Contini's own "internal arguments" cannot distinguish the poet's memory from a "collective memory," and are perhaps insufficient in number and quality. Efforts to detect parallels in "deep structure" are too abstract; the most promising direction seems to be careful statistical analysis of "unconscious" linguistic and metrical patterns. The author would ultimately attribute the Fiore not to Dante, but to a writer who has left no other trace. [CM]

Boyde, Patrick. "The Results of the Poll: Presentation and Analysis." In The Fiore in Context . . . (q.v.), pp. 363-378.

Presents the results of a poll in which twenty-four of the conference's participants rated each of thirty-three arguments for and against the attribution of the Fiore to Dante as "very strong," "strong," "weak," "very weak," or "not pertinent." Seventeen of the arguments evoked a consensus of opinion; all the responses are analyzed by various criteria and set out in five tables. In general, the participants were skeptical about the attribution to Dante, leading the author to conclude that the burden of proof still lies with those who are not, and toes ter a list of guidelines for those who wish to engage the question in the future. [CM]

Boyde, Patrick. "Summus Minimusve Poeta? Arguments for and against Attributing the Fiore to Dante." In The Fiore in Context . . . (q.v.), pp. 13-45.

An objective summary of the evidence for and against the attribution of the Fiore to Dante, under thirty-three headings. Twenty-five of the headings support the attribution, with arguments classified elsewhere in the volume (6-9) as "attributions ... to Dante made before 1550," shared "personal and political sympathies," a date of composition "compatible with Dante's authorship," "various relationships ... between the Roman, the Fiore, and the Commedia," "originality and literary quality," "resemblances in wording and phrasing," and "moral stance"; eight deny the attribution, for "dissimilarities in wording and phrasing," "differences in content and attitude," and the "silence to Dante and his contemporaries. Most headings include counter-arguments; most are followed by a synthetic overview of the critical debate. The essay includes a bibliography of critical references and four appendices of different verbal, stylistic, and phonic parallels between the Fiore and Dante's canonical works. [CM]

Brownlee, Kevin. "Jason's Voyage and the Poetics of Rewriting: The Fiore and the Roman de la Rose." In The Fiore in Context . . . (q.v.), pp. 167-182.

Focuses on the Fiore's treatment of Jason, the most insistent classical allusion in the work, as emblematic of the Fiore's own relation to the Roman de la Rose. The Fiore sets up Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece as a figure for Amante's erotic exploit; by manipulating the references to Jason in the Rose, the Fiore casts this exploit, and the figure of Amante himself, in an ironic and negative light. The Fiore thus replaces the Rose's double-author with a single author-protagonist, effectively suppressing the French text's "self-conscious author figure." The Fiore both 'evokes and denies' the authority of the Rose, assimilating and rewriting "the dominant canonical poetic text of the French vernacular in newly Italian literary terms"; indeed the authorial self-naming in sonnet 82 excludes any menti endf the Fiore's predecessors, while the corresponding passage in the Rose presents its authors as "effecting a translatio in a literary genealogy. [CM]

Cahill, Courtney (Joint author). See Hollander, Robert, "Day Ten..." (below).

Cieszkowski, Krzysztof Z. "'They murmuring divide; while the wind sleeps beneath, and the numbers are counted in silence'. The Dispersal of the Illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy." In Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly, 23, No. 3 (Winter, 1989/90), 166-171.

Traces in detail the process whereby the series of Blake's Dante water colors was divided and dispersed among seven institutions in 1918, and the responses such division occasioned. Both accident and design have contributed to the state of affairs in which works now in institutional collections are located in different places and are likely to stay there. The dispersal of the Dante illustrations can be adduced as an example of the principle of entropy applying to art collections and to compound works susceptible to subdivision. It would be anachronistic to criticize the process, and in any case the presence of the Blake drawings in America and Australia has had a substantial influence on the growth of Blake's reputation outside Britain. [LW]

Davie, Mark. "The Fiore Revisited in the Inferno." In The Fiore in Context . . . (q.v.), pp. 315-327.

Seeks to restore the principal phonic and semantic parallels between the Fiore aand he Inferno, especially in Cantos 5, 18, and 23, to their particular context. In general terms, both the Fiore and the Inferno depict a world of "deceit, venality, and exploitation"; in both the corruption of language reflects moral corruption. Dante's emphasis on the purity of his "parlare onesto," in contrast to the sinners, may serve to stress that he has gone beyond the Fiore. The "deliberate negation or correction" that accompanies so many of the Inferno's echoes of the Fiore suggest "that when Dante cites the Fiore, he is citing himself." [CM]

De Robertis, Domenico. "La traccia del Fiore." In The Fiore in Context . . . (q.v.), pp. 187-204.

An essay Patrick Boyde, elsewhere in the volume (204), terms "the single most important contribution to the subject of Dante and the Fiore since Contini first pronounced in 1965." The essay traces new and striking patterns of thought and expression shared by the Fiore and Dante's canonical works (including the Purgatorio and Paradiso), to support at the least Dante's complete identification with the author of the Fiore. Arguing that no comparable parallels can be established between the Fiore and any other author (though he traces echoes also in Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoia, Rustico di Filippo, and others), De Robertis argues both that the Fiore was the "formal element" of Dante's collaboration with Cavalcanti, and that the only possible explanation for Dante's silence on the Fiore is that he is himself its author Durante, and is performing his own damnatio memoriae on the work. [CM]

De Robertis Boniforti, Teresa. "Nota sul codice e la sua scrittura." In The Fiore in Context . . . (q.v.), pp. 49-81.

Examines the singular features of the only manuscript of the Fiore and the Detto d'Amore, including the history of its dismembering, its pagination in two "snaking" columns per page, with two sonnets per column, its small format (almost too small for the Fiore), a page layout that seems to be dictated more by the Detto than the Fiore, and its script. The pagination, which is usually reserved for prose, is indebted to the model of the Roman de la Rose, and is used for poetry most frequently in fourteenth-century manuscripts of the Comedy; the script, a "lettera bastarda" that stylizes the cursive used for practical affairs with features of the littera textualis used for books, is also characteristic of early manuscripts of the Comedy. The author concludes that if Dante were not involved, the identification of the manuscript as Tuscan, ca. 1300-1320, would have been relatively unproblematic. [CM]

The Fiore in Context: Dante, France, Tuscany. Edited by Zygmunt G. Baranski and Patrick Boyde. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997. xxii, 409 p. (The William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante Studies, 2)

Presents the proceedings and discussion of the international conference on the Fiore, held at St. John's College, Cambridge, in September, 1994. "The conference, attended by most of the world's leading experts on the Fiore, examined many aspects of the poem, including textual questions, its cultural context, and its relations with the Roman de la Rose and the Comedy. Above all, it constituted, in the judgment of the participants themselves, the most important discussion of the poem's attribution to Dante since Contini's pronouncement on the question in 1965." The volume contains fourteen essays by the following authors (in alphabetical order): Zygmunt G. Baranski, John C. Barnes, Patrick Boyde, Domenico De Robertis, Teresa De Robertis Boniforti, Kevin Brownlee, Mark Davie, Guglielmo Gorni, Sylvia Huot, Lucia Lazzerini, Lino Leonardi, Irene Maffia Scariati, and David Robey. Each essays is listed separately in this bibliography under the individual author's name. Other parts of the volume include: Preface (ix-x); Acknowledgments (xi); Patrick Boyde, "Introduction" (xiii-xvi); Patrick Boyde, "Discorso di apertura (23 settembre 1994)" (xvii-xxii); Patrick Boyde, "The Questionnaire and Related Materials" (3-12); Final Debate (379-393); Ilaria Cortesi Marchesi, Citations to the Fiore and to Dante's Works (395-401); Ilaria Cortesi Marchesi, General Index (403-409).

Gorni, Guglielmo. "Sul Fiore. Punti critici del testo." In The Fiore in Context . . . (q.v.), pp. 87-107.

Fifty numbered observations or emendations on precise details of Contini's critical edition of the Fiore. Nine, mostly verbal correspondences, bear upon the attribution of the Fiore to Dante; chief of these is an apparent allusion to the first sonnets of the Fiore in Cecco Angiolieri's sonnet Dante Allaghier, Cecco, 'l tu' servo e amico. In general Gorni's textual emendations are more conservative with regard to the manuscript than Contini's. He prefaces his list with general observations on the peculiar editorial problems of the Fiore, and on Contini's editorial practice. [CM]

Hollander, Robert, with Courtney Cahill. "Day Ten of the Decameron: The Myth of Order." In Studi sul Boccaccio, 23 (1995), 113-170.

Contains a number of allusions to Dante.

Huot, Sylvia. "The Fiore and the Early Reception of the Roman de la Rose." In The Fiore in Context . . . (q.v.), pp. 153-165.

Emphasizes the importance of the reception and early manuscript tradition of the Roman de la Rose as the context for Durante's reworking of the poem in the Fiore. For example, such manuscripts already divided the Roman into small units with rubrics identifying the speaker, as the Fiore does; the Fiore's feminization of Bel Acueil into Bellacoglienza also has precedents in Rose manuscripts. After examining similarities and differences with abridged versions of the Rose, some of which are close analogues to the Fiore, the author concludes that sections Durante leaves out, such as the discourse of Genius, leave traces in the Fiore, and that Durante thus probably worked from something close to the "standard text." Like other redactors of the Rose, he "sought to impose unity and brevity" on the poem, and "avoided morally ambiguous or otherwise controversial passages." [CM]

Kleinhenz, Christopher. "Courtly Cooking all'italiana: Gastronomical Approaches to Medieval Italian Literature." In The Court and Cultural Diversity. Selected Papers from the Eighth Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society. The Queen's University of Belfast, 26 July-1 August 1995, edited by Evelyn Mullally and John Thompson (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 343-356.

Contains some references to Dante.

Lazzerini, Lucia. "Il Fiore, il Roman de la Rose e i precursori d'oc e d'oïl." In The Fiore in Context . . . (q.v.), pp. 137-150.

Examines, and counters, the argument (advanced by Arnaldo Moroldo) that the Fiore contains precise echoes of the romances of Chrétien de Troyes and the Roman de Tristan, and that since Dante never mentions these texts, Dante is not the author of the Fiore. The essay examines a number of these presumed echoes, and concludes that they are either commonplaces or reflected in the Roman de la Rose itself. The same applies to the Fiore's presumed borrowings from satirical occitanic troubadours such as Peire Cardenal, though the polemic against clerical corruption, stimulated perhaps also by Pietro di Giovanni Olivi at Santa Croce, is certainly dear to the author of the Fiore, and may have led him to re-work the Roman de la Rose, itself quite engaged with current political and religious affairs. [CM]

Leonardi, Lino. "Il Fiore, il Roman de la Rose e la tradizione lirica italiana prima di Dante." In The Fiore in Context . . . (q.v.), pp. 233-264.

Argues that Guittone d'Arezzo's larger sonnet cycle, which has a narrative line analogous to that of the Roman de la Rose, and like the Roman, the aim of ironically "de-mystifying" the traditional lyric language, functions as a model for the Fiore, a model the Fiore, inspired by the Roman, "hyperbolically" exceeds and dismantles. The author traces many structural parallels between the Fiore and the Guittonian cycle, as well as a subtle but insistent web of allusions; the latter also sarcastically evoke the conversion of Frate Guittone. The corrosive ironic allusions of the Fiore extend to other pre-stilnovo poets, including among others Rinaldo d'Aquino, Giacomo da Lentini, and Chiaro Davanzati. The analysis supports the attribution of the Fiore to Dante. [CM]

Maffia Scariati, Irene. "Fiore Inferno in fieri: Schede di letture in parallelo." In The Fiore in Context . . . (q.v.), pp. 273-313.

Traces the genesis of specific images, themes, and formal structures, and in particular the contrapassi of Inferno 28, 21, and 22 (for the sowers of discord and the barrators), in the Fiore's treatment or appropriation of materials in the Roman de la Rose. Often the contrapasso sy stgs from a metaphoric use of a word in the Roman and the Fiore, which becomes concrete reality in the Inferno. The author also traces a set of descriptive patterns used in the Comedy for the devils, and shows its origin in the Roman and the Fiore. The author concludes that the Fiore is the transitional link between the Roman and the Comedy, and that the Roman mediates classical sources for Dante; the argument also supports the attribution of the Fiore to Dante. [CM]

Robey, David. "The Fiore and the Comedy: Some Computerized Comparisons." In The Fiore in Context . . . (q.v.), pp. 109-131.

Presents the results of a computerized analysis of the vocabulary, rhymes, and accentual structure of the Fiore and of a sample of the Inferno, as well as of some other texts for comparison. The vocabulary of the Fiore is less rich than that of the Inferno or Paradiso, but still "considerable"; in all three texts it is greater in rhyme-position. The "range of rhymes in the Fiore is less than half as large as in the sample of Inferno," and consists largely in verbal or substantival endings; the Fiore's rhyming practice is closer to Dante's lyric poetry. Though the Inferno has fewer non-canonical accentual structures, it has a greater variety of canonical types. The essay includes nineteen tables, and an appendix which analyzes the types and frequencies of rhymes in the entire Comedy. [CM]

Teskey, Gordon. Allegory and Violence. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. xiv, 195 p.

In addition to several allusions to the Divina Commedia in the course of the work, Teskey discusses in greater detail the events of Inferno 5 in Chapter One ("Personification and Capture: Francesca da Rimini," esp. pp. 25-29).

Verduin, Kathleen. "Dante in America: The First Hundred Years." In Reading Books: Essays on the Material Text and Literature in America, edited by Michele Moylan and Lane Stiles (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), pp. 16-51.

Traces Dante's promotion to cultural prominence in America by surveying the American publication history of Dante's works from the 1820s to the 1920s. Volumes discussed include the Works of the British [sic] Poets series (Philadelphia, 1822), the Appleton edition of Cary's translation (1845), the Harper edition of J. A. Carlyle's Inferno (1849), the Longfellow translation (Ticknor and Fields, 1867), and the Norton translation (Houghton Mifflin, 1891-1892). Stressing that both as a literary and commercial commodity, "the American Dante was ... a product of the New England establishment," the essay also cites a "cultural bifurcation" of Dante into elite and popular forms by the turn of the century. [KV]

Williamson, Alan. "Dante Our Contemporary?" In American Poetry Review, 23 (September 1, 1994), 43-53.

This review essay compares two recent English renderings of the Inferno--one by Robert Pinsky (see Dante Studies, 113 [1995], 210), the other by twenty contemporary poets (including Pinsky; edited by Daniel Halpern [see Dante Studies, 112 (1994), 302]) and proposes an interpretation of the Commedia along the lines of a Jungian "Night Journey." Emphasizing the psychological dimension of Dante's journey over allegorical readings informed by theology, Williamson examines three episodes from the Inferno--Francesca, Brunetto, and Ulysses--to show how the poet "is often at his greatest . . . when his feelings seem to strain against the limits of his system" (44). From his comparison of the two volumes, he concludes that while the Halpern collection "will remain an uneven, fascinating museum of contemporary taste," Pinsky's version "is likely to define Dante for a generation, as Lattimore and Fitzgerald did Homer" (46). [GPR]

Schmidt, Gary D. The Iconography of the Mouth of Hell: Eighth-Century Britain to the Fifteenth Century. Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania: Susquehanna University Press, 1995. Reviewed by:

Thomas H. Ohlgren, in Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 96, No. 3 (July, 1997), 434-437.

Teskey, Gordon. Allegory and Violence. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. (See above, under ADDENDA.) Reviewed by:

Judith H. Anderson, in Arthuriana, 7, No. 4 (Winter, 1997), 125-128;

Michael F. N. Dixon, in University of Toronto Quarterly, 67, No. 1 (Winter, 1997-98), 144-145.

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Madison, Wisconsin