American Dante Bibliography for 2001
christopher kleinhenz
[Originally published in Dante Studies, vol. 120
(2002)]
This bibliography is intended to
include all the Dante translations published in
Items cited from Dissertation Abstracts International are generally registered with brief citations from the official abstract. The short notes published in the Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America (http://www.princeton.edu/~dante/ ebdsa.html) are listed without commentary. 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 bibliographical data in its proper place in the 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), Gary P. Cestaro (DePaul University), Cristiana Fordyce (Brown University), Jessica Levenstein (New York City), Joseph Luzzi (Bard College), Michael Papio (Holy Cross University), Alessandro Vettori (Rutgers University), and Lawrence Warner (National Humanities Center, Australia). (Their initials follow their abstracts.)
Studies
Alfie, Fabian. Comedy and
Culture: Cecco Angiolieri’s Poetry and Late Medieval Society.
Contents: Acknowledgements (vi);
Introduction. The Trouble with Cecco: The ‘State of the Question’ and
Difficulties Inherent in a Study of Angiolieri (1-17);
Audeh, Aida. “Rodin’s Gates
of Hell: Sculptural Illustration of Dante’s Divine Comedy.” In Magnificent
Obsession: The Rodin Collection of Iris and B. Gerald Cantor, exhibit
catalogue (
Detailed analysis of Rodin’s Gates of Hell and related sculptures with constant reference to and consideration of the direct associations they have to Dante’s Comedy.
Auden, W. H. “From The Vision of Eros.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 136-143.
Barolini, Teodolinda. Desire and
Death, or Francesca and Guido Cavalcanti: Inferno 5 in its Lyric Context.
“Explores the lyric context of Inferno 5, paying particular attention to how Italian lyric 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’ (from ‘Donna me prega’) as the intertext of Dante’s ‘che la ragion sommettono al talento’ (Inferno 5.39), Barolini reads Inferno 5 as a response to Cavalcanti. Moreover, by looking at the views of love evidenced in Dante’s own lyrics (e.g., ‘Lo doloroso amor,’ the ‘rime petrose,’ ‘Io sono stato con Amore insieme,’ ‘Amor, da che convien pur ch’io mi doglia,’ and ‘Doglia mi reca ne lo core ardire’), the essay reconstructs the complex and arduous ideological pathway that Dante traversed to reach Inferno 5.” [TB]
Boitani, Piero. “From the Shadow of Ulysses to the Shadow of the Argo: Dante’s Dangerous Journeys.” In Speaking Images... (q.v.), pp. 73-93.
Using
the shadow as a metaphor with multiple meanings, Boitani revisits the Ulysses
episode in order to look at Dante’s treatment of myth more generally. The
episode is dense with allusion, to Scripture and to various passages in the
classical canon. Boitani considers why Dante makes use of such a multiplicity
of referents and concludes that Ulysses represents “a very fundamental
stumbling-block for Dante the man, for the whole of Western civilization . . .
and for every human being.” Through Ulysses, Dante is condemning both his own
avid quest for knowledge and his culture’s growing interest in exploration of
various kinds. And in his desire to pursue “egocentric liberty,” Boitani
contends, Ulysses’ story is the story of Everyman. As a figure with such
resonance, Ulysses shadows Dante throughout the rest of the poem, until Dante
can eventually transform Ulysses and go beyond him. Boitani calls this process
“introjection, metamorphosis, and sublimation.” The process picks up speed in
the opening cantos of Paradiso, in
which Dante transforms Ulysses’ voyage into an “Argonautic enterprise” through
what Boitani calls “transumption.” The last mythological image in the poem—
that of
Boldrini, Lucia. Joyce,
Dante, and the Poetics of Literary Relations: Language and Meaning in
“Finnegan’s Wake.”
Boldrini
“examines how the literary and linguistic theories of Dante’s Divine Comedy helped shape the radical
narrative techniques of Joyce’s last novel Finnegan’s
Wake. Through detailed parallel readings, she explores a range of
connections: issues such as the question of
Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Divine Comedy.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 118-135.
Botterill, Steven. “Ideals of the Institutional Church in Dante and Bernard of Clairvaux.” In Italica 78, No. 3 (Autumn, 2001), 297-313.
Bernard
of Clairvaux and Dante appear to share almost identical viewpoints in their
ecclesiological thought. In this article, Botterill analyzes the many
similarities demonstrated by the two authors, and wonders if, despite the
chronological gap, it were possible to identify Bernard’s direct line of
influence on the Commedia. By Dante’s
time, Bernard’s widespread renown as a historical figure, and theological auctoritas had become common knowledge,
thus making it almost impossible to discern a direct influence of Bernard’s
thought in the Commedia. The presence
in
Bregni, Simone. “Paradise, the
“This
thesis considers the relationship between the Comedy and the topos of
Camille, Michael. “The Pose of the Queer: Dante’s Gaze, Brunetto
Latini’s Body.” In Queering the Middle
Ages, edited by Glenn Burger and Steven F. Kruger (
Focuses
on the illustration of Dante and Virgil with Brunetto Latini in the lower
margin of Musée Condé MS 1424 in Chantilly (fols. 113v and 114r) from 1327-28,
which contains the Guido da Pisa commentary on the poem. Dante and Virgil stand
amply clothed on the verso facing a stark naked Brunetto on the recto. Brunetto
extends his right hand toward the pair and holds his left arm akimbo on his
hip. Dante’s gaze is lowered and appears to meet Brunetto’s naked body. Dante
also extends a hand but the two do not touch: the possible point of contact is
buried deep in the crevice of the manuscript binding, which dramatically
separates the condemned sinners from the pilgrim and his guide. Behind Brunetto
a troop of running sodomites is caught in snapshot, their naked bodies—arms,
torsos, buttocks and legs—overlapping and intertwined. Camille aims to debunk
the claims of the many revisionist readers of Canto 15 who have attempted to
de-sexualize Brunetto (and by extension Dante) and argue that Dante used sodomy
here in a broader sense to indicate a sin of language, or political or
religious philosophy, or an exaggerated secular humanism. He provides a useful
brief survey of the revisionists from Pézard to Armour and suggests that their
readings are motivated by “fearful fantasies” of the sodomitic body, of
Brunetto’s body and its perilous proximity to Dante’s own. He adduces the very
physical, material evidence of the
Campbell, Mary Baine. “Wrath, Order,
Casciani, Santa. “Reason, Deception, and Franciscan Spirituality in Inferno 26 and 27.” In Quaderni d’Italianistica 22, No. 2 (2001), 37-55.
In this reading of the Ulysses episode in Inferno 26 and 27, Casciani examines the cultural background to Dante’s work, noting that Gregory the Great had used the symbol of the ocean voyage as a metaphor for human disquiet and restlessness. During Dante’s day, moreover, Franciscan intellectuals challenged the use of knowledge by the logicians from various universities, stressing that God had established limits to human reason. The Franciscans voiced the concern that the quest for intellectual speculation had the potential to lead people away from the true faith. Dante alludes to the position of the Franciscans through the symbol of the Straits of Gibraltar as a metaphor for the proper boundaries to human inquiry. Casciani performs a reading of Ulysses’s monologue in order to determine the exact nature of his sin. She asserts that the phrase at the start of Ulysses’ discourse— “nel mattino”—was a spatial and not a temporal referent. In other words, she suggests that the boat had already been turned back homeward; in short, Ulysses’s orazione picciola was his response to a mutiny. She notes that Ulysses’s speech is deliberately misleading, for he inspires his men to seek knowledge where there is no knowledge, in the hemisphere covered entirely by the ocean. Through Ulysses’s speech, the poet illustrates the abuse of true logic and underscores that philosophical speculation can be justified only when supported by Christian doctrine. [FA]
Cassell, Anthony. “‘Luna est Ecclesia’: Dante and the ‘Two Great Lights’.” In Dante Studies 119 (2001), 1-26.
Examines
the use and origin of the decretalists’ “two great lights” topos (supposedly
based on Genesis 1:16) that Dante refutes in Monarchia 3:4. Noting that the poet allows the famous analogy to
reenter the treatise at various points, he shows that the ending (Mon. 3:16) is quite consistent with the
rest of the text and that the Monarchia
was in fact far more conservative and conciliatory than critics and editors had
previously considered. The canonist topos, used to great power and effect by
Innocent III, Innocent IV, Boniface VIII and Clement V, and many other
prelates, claimed that the temporal authority, as the moon, and the spiritual
authority, as the sun, were merely two lights circling within the great
firmament of the Church. The analogy diametrically opposed the theologians’
traditional exegesis of the Church as the moon that had dominated Church
writings monolithically since Ambrose and Augustine. Cassell documents that
this high-handed papalist reversal began in southern
Chiampi, James T. “‘Freighting Good Merchandise’: Damnation as Maritime Barratry in Inferno XXI-XXIII.” In Rivista di Studi Italiani 19, No. 2 (dicembre, 2001), 1-26.
Examines the repeated maritime metaphors in the discussions of barratry throughout the Comedy (e.g., Paradiso 11, but in particular Inferno 21-23). Such metaphors include the discussion of the Venetian Arsenal and the pitch in which the corrupt politicians are immersed. The author argues that the maritime language is not an innovation on the part of Dante, but is derived from a long tradition of writings on the vice of barratry. Classical sources discussed barratry through the metaphor of the corrupt sailor, who deliberately wrecks the ship and seizes the merchandise within the hold. Similarly, according to the analogy, the barrator damages the ship of state for personal gain. The classical metaphor is consonant with the Christian tradition, for authorities such as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Boethius reiterate it in their own writings. Dante, moreover, repeatedly employs the metaphor in his masterpiece, both in praising the upstanding political leaders in Purgatorio and Paradiso, and condemning the corrupt in Inferno. By analyzing Dante’s various passages on the sin, the author demonstrates Dante’s belief that the barrators have loved a means, money, rather than the end of that means, the highest Good. Therefore, those who succumbed to the sin have entrapped themselves by their choices. [FA]
Ciccarelli, Andrea. “Dante and Italian Culture from the Risorgimento to World War I.” In Dante Studies 119 (2001), 125-154.
Examines the correlation between the intellectual recovery of Dante’s aesthetic world and the historical exploitation of the name of Dante as a national glory from the early Risorgimento to the rise of fascism. The goal is to demonstrate that the recovery of Dante by nineteenth-century Italian culture, except in very few cases, has scarcely to do with Dante’s aesthetic values; the conversion of Dante into an emblem of national unity was mostly tied to political and ethical reasons. In reading the works of the time, it is therefore necessary to differentiate between an instrumental view of Dante as the archetype of national consciousness, and the actual incorporation of Dante’s aesthetic world by Italian writers. Focuses on three fundamental moments: 1) the rediscovery of Dante’s moral example during the romantic period, and his consequent canonization as a Risorgimento icon; 2) the role of Francesco De Sanctis in shaping and transmitting an ethical, rather than a literary, image of Dante to modern Italy; and 3) the debates on or about Dante and Dantism which took place in Florence and Milan in the years prior to World War I. [AC]
Di Fonzo, Claudia. “La ‘diffrazione per istituto’ e la tradizione
dell’Ottimo commento: opus practicum
Di Pasquale, Theresa M. “
While
Milton’s conscious emulation of Virgil is evident both in the trajectory of his
generic choices (from the pastoral of “Lycidas,” for example, to the epic of Paradise Lost), and in the details of
particular poetic scenes (as in the speaker’s failed attempt to embrace his
dead wife in the sonnet “Methought I saw my late espoused saint”), Dante’s
presence in Milton’s poetic struggle proves instructive as well. Looking
particularly at “Methought I saw my late espoused saint,” DiPasquale argues
that “the sonnet’s intertextual relationship with Paradise Lost and with the works of Virgil and Dante suggests a
purgative motion.” The conclusion of the sonnet recalls Dante’s encounter with
Casella in Purgatorio 2: not only do
details particular to the pilgrim’s futile embrace of the singer find their way
into Milton’s sonnet, but Milton’s poem bears traces of the language and
concerns of both the canzone Casella
sings in Purgatorio, “Amor che ne la
mente mi ragiona,” and the canzone
that precedes it in the Convivio,
“Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete.” These two canzoni “provide a rich context for the dream-like experience of
Milton’s sonnet, helping to define what happens when the saint, ‘Brought’ to
the poet by an unseen force, takes flight at his awakening and the return of a
‘day’ that ‘[brings] back’ his night.” Dante’s struggle to perceive the true
meaning of Beatrice at the top of Purgatory then also speaks to
Di Piero, W. S. “Our Sweating Selves.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 344-353.
Doob, Penelope Reed. “Theseus T(h)reads the Maze: Labyrinthine Empowerment/Impairment and Ariadne’s Absence.” In Speaking Images... (q.v.), pp. 167-184 (+ 4 figures on unnumbered pages).
Considers the history of labyrinth stories, from Homer through the early Renaissance, noting the curious absence of women from the mazes themselves. While Ariadne helped Theseus negotiate the Cretan labyrinth, she herself does not enter it and winds up forsaken by Theseus. Doob regards the “irony whereby she whose knowledge of the labyrinth empowers other maze-walkers is herself impaired, diminished, abandoned.” The abandonment of the Ariadne figure is intensified in the later Middle Ages, when the labyrinth is seen also to signify female genitalia, as in, for example, Boccaccio’s Corbaccio; “[w]omen can’t go into the labyrinth if they themselves are the maze.” Doob identifies three exceptions to this tendency of female exclusion from the labyrinth in which women serve as guides through both literal and metaphorical labyrinthine structures: Virgil’s Aeneid, in which the Sibyl guides Aeneas through the underworld; Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, in which Lady Philosophy conducts the prisoner out of his mental captivity; and Dante’s Comedy, in which Beatrice, and guides sent by Beatrice, lead the pilgrim through the mazy afterworld. Ultimately, though, these female maze-walkers are not themselves empowered by their negotiation of the labyrinth, nor, as significantly asexual beings, are they sufficient role models for flesh and blood women. Doob concludes her essay, however, briefly touching on two late medieval texts that do in fact attempt to reclaim female mastery of the labyrinth: Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath Tale” and, most emphatically, the anonymous Assembly of Ladies. [JLe]
Doty, Mark. “Rooting for the Damned.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 370-379.
Duncan, Robert. “The Sweetness and Greatness of Dante’s Divine Comedy.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 186-209.
Dupont, Christian Y. “Collecting Dante in
Provides a portrait of John Augustine Zahm, C.S.C. (1851-1921), who was responsible in large part for assembling the great Dante collection at the University of Notre Dame. The essay examines his “motivations for and methods of collecting Dante” and presents in great detail the growth of the Notre Dame collection, especially the acquisition of much of Giulio Acquaticci’s collection.
Eliot, T. S. “What Dante Means to Me.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 28-39.
Ferrucci, Franco. “Plenilunio sulla selva: il Convivio, le petrose, la Commedia.” In Dante Studies 119 (2001), 67-102.
Proposes
that the date of Dante’s rime petrose
should be assigned to the years 1307-1308, when the poet was often visiting the
Guidi family at Poppi and Pratovecchio in the Casentino, and offers evidence
for this claim. Ferrucci establishes a number of references between the Comedy and the petrose, and maintains that Dante’s writing of the fourth
“trattato” of Convivio was
contemporary to his passion for the “donna
Fitzgerald, Robert. “Mirroring the Commedia: An Appreciation of Laurence Binyon’s Version.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 144-170.
Fleming, John V. “The Pentecosts of Four Poets.” In Speaking Images... (q.v.), pp. 111-141.
Considers the ending of Chaucer’s “Summoner’s Tale” from the perspective of literary iconography. Fleming first articulates an understanding, widely accepted in Chaucer studies, of the scene, in which a squire figures out how to divide a fart into twelve equal parts with the aid of a cartwheel: the entertaining passage “involves a burlesque allusion to the pictorial or mimetic presentations of the Pentecost.” He then analyzes various aspects of the Pentecost theme as it appears in the work of three other medieval poets: Wolfram von Eschenbach, Dante, and Luís de Camões. All three allude to the Pentecost without naming it, and all three seem to make use of both verbal and visual accounts of it. In the fifteenth book of Parzival Wolfram describes a moment of sacred proclamation, and in the sixteenth book he refers to a baptism that recalls Peter’s Pentecostal exhortation to baptism. Dante’s description of the simoniacs, planted upside down with their feet aflame in the Malebolge, takes up and perverts the iconographic vocabulary of Pentecost: the emblematic flames that touch the heads of the Apostles in Acts and in visual exegeses of the story now lick the feet of the pseudo-apostles, the corrupt popes of the third bolgia. Camões more literally engages the pictorial in his reference to the Pentecost. In a passage in the Lusiads in which Bacchus feigns Christian devotion, Camões describes an altar painted with an image of the Pentecost: the twelve apostles, joined by Mary and a dove, gaze at each other, amazed at the sight of the tongues of fire. Fleming links each of these scenes to “The Summoner’s Tale,” but makes clear that “with Chaucer we are seldom dealing with the exclusive alternatives of an either and an or.” Chaucer’s sources, then, for the scatological conclusion to “The Summoner’s Tale” seem to range from the liturgical, to the scriptural, to the literary, to the pictorial. Fleming concludes, “[w]hat we find in Chaucer’s ‘Summoner’s Tale’ is an iconographic style that elides verbal and pictorial ‘sources,’ that combines a respectful use of tradition with a playful and expressive inventiveness.” [JLe]
Gaudenzi, Cosetta. “Appropriations of Dante: XVIII and early XIX
Century Translations of the Divine Comedy
in
“My dissertation crosses disciplinary lines which have traditionally separated Italian literature, English literature, and socio-cultural history. I disclose some of the general factors which made and continue to make Dante’s Commedia so attractive to British readers. I examine the partial and complete versions of the Divine Comedy from the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the first substantial renditions of Dante’s poem into English, and I concentrate on Inferno I-III, V, XXVI, and XXXIII. ... As I discuss the translations chronologically, I trace the processes which eventually led to the first authoritative translation of Dante’s entire Commedia by Henry Cary (1814) and to the British Romantic construction of Dante as an author.”
Gilson, Simon A. “Medieval Magical Lore and Dante’s Commedia: Divination and Demonic Agency.” In Dante Studies 119 (2001), 27-66.
Attempts to demonstrate that a variety of phenomena which medieval writers associated with the magical arts occupies a more extensive place in Dante’s Commedia than many earlier critics and commentators have assumed. It is argued that Dante was influenced by a range of different sources and cultural traditions, and that in his poem he draws not only upon official condemnations of the magical arts but also upon the often unsanctioned realm of popular legend and belief. The essay also surveys the theological, philosophical, and scientific and other traditions that provide the essential context for several areas of magical lore which are found in the Commedia. It then uses this contextual material in order to explore Dante’s treatment of divination in Inferno 20, his earlier use of a necromantic episode in Inferno 9:22-27, and two passages that deal with the powers of demons to occupy human bodies and to interfere in the natural order in Inferno 33:122-135 and Purgatorio 5:109-129, respectively. [SAG]
Halpern, Daniel. “Dante in
Hawkins, Peter S. (Joint editor). See The Poets’ Dante....
Hawkins, Peter S., and Rachel Jacoff. “Still Here: Dante after Modernism.” In The Yale Review 89, No. 3 (July, 2001), 11-24.
Review of some of the most significant adaptations and reworkings of Dante that looks “back at the various unexpected roles Dante has played in twentieth-century poetry.” The works considered are: Eliot’s “Little Gidding” (inspired by Inf. 15 and Purg. 26); Derek Walcott’s Epitaph for the Young (a parody of “Little Gidding”) and Omeros; Seamus Heaney’s Field Work (which contains a translation of the Ugolino episode), Station Island and Seeing Things; Charles Wright’s The World of Ten Thousand Things; and Gjertrud Schnackenberg’s “A Gilded Lapse of Time.” [MP]
Heaney, Seamus. “Envies and Identifications: Dante and the Modern Poet.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 239-258.
Hirsch, Edward. “Summoning Shades.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 395-403.
Hollander, Robert. “‘La concubina di Titone antico’: Purgatorio 9.1.” In the Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America: posted July 31, 2001, at www.dantesociety.org > Publications > Electronic Journal (EBDSA).
Hollander, Robert. Dante. A
Life in Works.
“Through an exposition of Dante’s ... writings, Robert Hollander provides a concise intellectual biography of the writer.... Beginning with the Vita nuova and proceeding chronologically through Dante’s writings, Hollander delineates the major strands of the poet’s thought. He presents the works themselves, discusses their critical reception through the centuries, and addresses issues raised by each text. Hollander, writing for those who have already encountered the Commedia, suggests to these readers how Dante’s other works relate to the great poem and invites them to reread the Commedia with new interest and understanding.” Contents: Preface (ix-x); Chronology of Dante’s Life (xi-xiv); Introduction (1-2); Dante’s Life (2-7); First Lyrics (7-12); Vita nuova (12-40); Later Lyrics (40-45); Convivio I (45-54); De vulgari Eloquentia (54-74); Convivio II and III (74-81); Convivio IV (81-90); Commedia (90-94); Truth and Poetry (94-96); Allegory (97-104); The Moral Situation of the Reader (104-109); The Moral Order of the Afterworld (109-114); Virgil (114-121); Beatrice (121-127); Bernard (127-129); Politics (129-144); The Poetry of the Comedy (144-148); Monarchia (148-167); Late Latin Works (167-180); Notes (181-209); Bibliographical Note (211-212); Index (213-222).
Hollander, Robert. “Inferno XV.29: ‘chinando la mia alla sua faccia.’” In the Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America: posted August 20, 2001, at www.dantesociety.org > Publications > Electronic Journal (EBDSA).
Holmes, Olivia. “Dante’s Two Beloveds: Ethics as Erotic Choice.” In Annali d’Italianistica 19 (2001), 25-50.
The author of this article takes as a starting point the medieval theory that the purpose of literature was to influence ethical decisions: texts should either praise the worthy or castigate the sinful, thereby inducing readers to reject sin and to follow virtue in their own lives. The Letter to Cangrande explicitly inscribes Paradiso in the dichotomy of praise and blame, thus positioning the Commedia within the framework of morality; while the epistle is possibly apocryphal, readership does not need to rely upon it to locate the duality of praise/blame in Dante’s masterpiece. Dante structures much of the Commedia around the diametrical opposition of laus and vituperium by demonstrating the consequences of free will. Indeed, many of the parallels within the work indicate the different possibilities, depending upon the choices of the individuals (e.g., Buonconte and Guido da Montefeltro). Throughout much of his literature, the poet frequently presents himself facing two options, which allegorizes a moral decision. Yet it would be mistaken to interpret Dante’s symbolism as univocal allegory, where images only connote abstract ideas in a one-to-one relationship. Toward the end of the narrative of the Vita Nuova, for example, Dante becomes distracted from the memory of Beatrice by the presence of the donna gentile. In the Convivio, the poet explicates the latter as the personification of Philosophy and not as a flesh-and-blood woman. The selection, therefore, between the donna gentile and Beatrice does not necessarily indicate the choice between good and evil, the author stresses, but a more nuanced moral distinction between good and better. [FA]
Howard, Lloyd. Formulas of
Repetition in Dante’s “Commedia”: Signposted Journeys across Textual Space.
Examines “recurrent linguistic patterns or ‘formulas’ scattered across the textual space of Dante’s Commedia. ... Formulas are usually understood as rhetorical devices that are found in close textual proximity and, because they are intended for emphasis, cannot possible escape the notice of the reader. The formulas...trace[d] in this study are far more difficult to find because they are hidden deep in the structure of the Commedia and at considerable distances from one another.” Contents: Acknowledgments (vii); Abbreviations (ix-x); Note on Text and Translations (xi); Introduction (3-22); 1. Linguistic Configuration as a Clue to the Impossible Made Possible: Inferno 1, Purgatorio 11, and Purgatorio 12 (23-28); 2. The Descent into “l’infernale ambascia”: The Journey and Adam’s Flesh (29-40); 3. Decoding the Parallelism of Three Descents into Dante’s Hell (41-50); 4. Dante’s Wasted Years: What Is He Thinking in Inferno 5 and Purgatorio 31? (51-65); 5. Linguistic Patterns and Internal Structure in Five Cantos in the Inferno: From Political degni to Political Sinners (66-92); 6. Dante’s Fear of the Fire: Unperceived Links between Inferno 15-16 and Purgatorio 26-27 (93-104); 7. Florentine Politicians as Fallible Archers: Purgatorio 6 and Purgatorio 31 (105-115); 8. Virgil and Caiaphas “ne l’etterno essilio” (116-130); 9. The Destination: Dante’s Eyes Fixed and Attentive (131-153); Notes (155-193); Bibliography (195-200); Index (201-205).
Jacoff, Rachel. “The Hermeneutics of Hunger.” In Speaking Images... (q.v.), pp. 95-110.
Ugolino’s
narrative in Inferno 33 is among the most
controversial in the Comedy and has
engendered a range of artistic and critical responses. Jacoff’s essay
recontextualizes the episode within the poem itself and within the discourses
that might affect its implications, paying particular attention to Ugolino’s
vexing final line “Poscia, più che ’l dolor, poté ’l digiuno” (Inf. 33.75). She offers evidence, drawn
both from the poem and from literary and iconographic sources likely known to
Dante, to support a reading of Ugolino’s cannibalism. For example, Dante
demonstrates no sympathy toward any of the sinners in Cocytus; he criticizes
Jacoff, Rachel. (Joint author). See Hawkins, Peter S. “Still Here....”
Jacoff, Rachel. (Joint editor). See The Poets’ Dante....
Kanekar, Aarati. “The Geometry of Love and the Topography of Fear: On Translation and Metamorphosis from Poem to Building.” In Dissertation Abstracts International 61, No. 7 (January, 2001), 2491. Doctoral dissertation, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2000, 304 p.
“Translations across different symbolic media necessarily involve reconstruction and transformation arising from the manner in which meaning is constituted in each medium. Terragni’s design for a monument to Dante, based on The Divine Comedy, raises questions of translatability between literature and architecture that are seldom explored in design or theory. In this thesis, the Danteum is taken as a point of departure in order to illuminate The Divine Comedy as an intersection of linguistic, visual and architectural media. It is suggested that while the project is an attempt to present a poem as a building, the poem itself absorbs into linguistic form cosmological and architectural ideas that were first realized in built form.”
Kerr, John M. “Proserpinan Memory in Dante and Chaucer.” In Dissertation Abstracts International 62, No. 1 (July, 2001), 163. Doctoral dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 2001, 362 p.
“This study examines Dante’s and Chaucer’s elaboration upon the classical and medieval conceptions of the tripartite Proserpina (Proserpina in hell, Diana on earth, and Luna — the moon — in heaven). Each chapter points to various seasonal motifs, but focuses on the vertical chthonic element of the myth, which in medieval commentary situates Proserpina as a goddess of memory. Dante and Chaucer each figure memory as an underworld, with Proserpina reigning over this memorial space. Poetically ‘descending’ to this underworld, Dante and Chaucer encounter the (primarily textual) culture of the past, re-ascending with their own present writing, firmly rooted in, but always changing that which came before. In the Commedia, Dante employs a host of infernal, agricultural, hunting, and lunar motifs from the goddess’s three aspects, incorporating Proserpina into an Augustinian matrix of memory, intellect, and will. In the infernal encounter with Proserpina’s servants (the furies), Dante and the reader must get beyond the level of mere memory and by using the intellect. Purgatorio’s encounter with Proserpinan / Dianan Matelda refines Dante’s memory, and instructs him in the limits of intellect. In Paradiso, Dante meets Piccarda, whose Christian re-playing of the Proserpina myth à la Claudian challenges Dante’s understanding of the will.”
Kuusisto, Pekka Johannes. “From the Center to the Circumference:
Encyclopedic Topologies in Literature from Dante through Modern Science
Fiction.” In Dissertation Abstracts
International 62, No. 2 (August, 2001), 562. Doctoral dissertation,
“This dissertation studies the notion of encyclopedic topologies in such examples where literature and science meet and interact as Plato’s Timaeus, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw and The Anxiety of the Head of Family and other stories of Franz Kafka as situated within Tzvetan Todorov’s structuralist theory of the literary fantastic, and finally in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics and its application in Gregory Benford’s Timescape and elsewhere in modern science fiction. ... I propose a view where literature is understood as historically situated within the encyclopedia, that is, a reading of the literary text as an embedded version — an encyclopedic macrocosm of Dante or Joyce — or as a reflective image — an encyclopedic microcosm of Kafka or James — of an encyclopedia within the encyclopedia. ... In my dissertation, Dante’s Comedy develops the function of the tree-ordered center of the Ptolemaic mentality of Western encyclopedism....”
Lewis, R. W. B. Dante.
Lewis
“traces the life and complex development—emotional, artistic, philosophical—of
this supreme poet-historian, from his wandering through the Tuscan hills and
splendid churches to his days as a young soldier fighting for democracy, and to
his civic leadership and years of embittered exile from the city that would
fiercely reclaim him a century later. Lewis reveals the boy who first
encounters the mythic Beatrice, the lyric poet obsessed with love and death,
and the grand master of dramatic narrative and allegory, as well as his
monumental search for ultimate truth in The
Divine Comedy. It is in this masterpiece of self-discovery and redemption
that Lewis finds Dante’s autobiography—and the sum of all his shifting passions
and epiphanies.” Contents: Special
Sources (ix-x); 1. Dante the Florentine (1-15); 2. Neighborhood Presences: The
Early Years (16-27); 3. Love, Poetry, and War: The 1280s (28-44); 4. The Death
of Beatrice and a New Life: 1288-1295 (45-61); 5. The Way of Politics:
1295-1302 (62-84); 6. The Poet in Exile, 1302-1310: The Comedy Is Begun (85-123); 7. The Middle of the Journey: 1310-1319
(124-160); 8.
Lewis, R. W. B. “Dante the Florentine.” In The Yale Review 89, No. 3 (July, 2001), 1-10.
Brief introductory survey of some major considerations regarding Dante, including the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict, Florentine guilds, demographics and civic architecture, the Black-White split and Dante’s exile, the Commedia’s popularity and Ravenna as the poet’s burial place. [MP]
Lindon, John. “In Memoriam: Marcella Roddewig (1918-2000).” In Dante Studies 119 (2001), 213-216.
Necrology of the late distinguished Dante scholar.
Lowell, Robert. “Dante’s Actuality and Fecundity in the Anglo-Saxon World.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 171-175.
Lowell, Robert. “Epics.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 176-185.
Mandelstam, Osip. “Conversation about Dante.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 40-93.
Mazzaro, Jerome. “Paradiso XX, the Missing Virgin, and Absent Presence.” In Forum Italicum 35, No. 1 (Spring, 2001), 5-22.
In the heaven of justice, David and Trajan are named as the pupil and the beginning of the curve of the eyebrow of the eagle. Readers of the poem “feel an initial absence” at the identification of these characters, as the moment recalls Purgatorio 10, where they were juxtaposed with the Virgin Mary as examples of humility. The Virgin was frequently associated with justice in the Middle Ages, and — finding it impossible to portray her merely in the sixth heaven, Dante portrays her “covertly” in Paradiso 20 through her association with the other two figures. The reader remembers the association of the three characters and so supplies the third when the other two are presented. Similarly, in his allusion to the voyage of the Argo in Paradiso 33, Dante enables the reader to recall Christian, salvation history through an act of remembrance that compensates for the absence of Dante’s explicit mention of that history. Indeed, this strategy can be seen to characterize the entire poem, in which “the entire Commedia [is] an effort to make presence an absence, the absence being the original experience being recalled” (18). [VSB]
McClatchy, J. D. “His Enamel.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 277-291.
Merrill, James. “Divine Poem.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 227-235.
Merwin, W. S. “Poetry Rising from the Dead.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 292-305.
Modesto, Diana. “Dante all’altro polo: Dante Studies in
An
overview of critical studies and related activities on Dante in
Montale, Eugenio. “Dante, Yesterday and Today.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 94-117.
Morrison, Molly. “Looking at God: Imagery for the Divinity in Dante’s Paradiso.” In Forum Italicum 35, No. 2 (Fall, 2001), 307-317.
There are two moments in the Paradiso in which the poet attempts to describe his vision of God: Canto 28 (where he describes God as an infinitely small, infinitely brilliant point) and Canto 33 (where “the tiny bright point now becomes a larger light, a light which somehow divides itself into three,” 313). Our understanding of these two visions is increased by reading them within the context of the theology of Pseudo-Dionysius. Dante’s “point” affirms Dionysian theory of religious symbols in that it both “denies the Divine Essence, yet affirms it” (309). This vision prepares the pilgrim for his more profound vision in the poem’s final canto, in which he penetrates the vision of God while simultaneously coming to the Dionyisan realization that God is ultimately beyond all human understanding. [VSB]
Nemerov, Howard. “The Dream of Dante.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 210-226.
Osherow, Jacqueline. “She’s Come Undone: An American Jew Looks at Dante.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 265-276.
Parker, Deborah. “Dante ‘Giocoso’: Bronzino’s Burlesque of the Commedia.” In Quaderni d’italianistica 22, No. 1 (2001), 77-101.
The author aims to point out “indecent adaptations” of the Comedy in the burlesque poetry of Agnolo Bronzino “in order to draw attention to the painter’s poetry” and “to clarify its relation to an earlier tradition of parodies of Dante.” The article opens with a short catalogue of allusions to the Comedy in Della Casa’s Galateo, Pulci’s Morgante and Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Simposio. After a short overview of Bronzino’s interest in Dante and Petrarch, the author identifies several humorous reworkings of Dante in the Capitoli, especially “La cipolla” and “Il piato.” [MP]
Peters, Edward. Limits of
Thought and Power in Medieval
Contains seven essays on Dante, all reprinted verbatim from their original source. They are, in the order found in the volume: “The Failure of Church and Empire: Paradiso, 30,” in Medieval Studies 34 (1972), 326-335 [see Dante Studies 91 (1973), 175]; “I principi negligenti di Dante e le concezioni medioevali del rex inutilis,” in Rivista Storica Italiana 80 (1968), 741-758; “Pars, Parte: Dante and an Urban Contribution to Political Thought,” in The Medieval City, edited by Harry A. Miskimin, David Herlihy, and A. L. Udovitch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), pp. 113-140 [see Dante Studies 99 (1981), 206]; “The Frowning Pages: Scythians, Garamantes, Florentines, and the Two Laws,” in The Divine Comedy and the Encyclopedia of Arts and Sciences, edited by Giuseppe C. Di Scipio and Aldo Scaglione (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1988), pp. 285-314 [see Dante Studies 107 (1989), 153]; “Human Diversity and Civil Society in Paradiso VIII,” in Dante Studies 109 (1991), 51-70 [see Dante Studies 110 (1992), 303]; “The Shadowy, Violent Perimeter: Dante Enters Florentine Political Life,” in Dante Studies 113 (1995), 69-87 [see Dante Studies 114 (1996), 331-332]; and “The Voyage of Ulysses and the Wisdom of Solomon: Dante and the vitium curiositatis,” in Majestas 7 (1999), 75-87.
Pinsky, Robert. “The Pageant of Unbeing.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 306-318.
The Poets’ Dante. Edited by Peter S. Hawkins and Rachel Jacoff.
Contains original and reprinted essays (or portions thereof), in which poets discuss their personal engagement with Dante: “how they first encountered him, what drew them in, what kept them at a distance, whether his writing had any direct influence on their own.” In their Introduction (xiii-xxvi) Jacoff and Hawkins survey the reception of Dante in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and speak in both general and specific terms of the twenty-eight essays contained in the volume. Authors of the essays (in alphabetical order) are W. H. Auden, Jorge Luis Borges, Mary Baine Campbell, W. S. Di Piero, Mark Doty, Robert Duncan, T. S. Eliot, Robert Fitzgerald, Daniel Halpern, Seamus Heaney, Geoffrey Hill, Edward Hirsch, Robert Lowell, Osip Mandelstam, J. D. McClatchy, James Merrill, W. S. Merwin, Eugenio Montale, Howard Nemerov, Jacqueline Osherow, Robert Pinsky, Ezra Pound, Rosanna Warren, C. K. Williams, Charles Williams, Alan Williamson, Charles Wright, and William Butler Yeats. Each essay is listed separately in this bibliography under the individual author’s name. Given their nature, these essays are not accompanied by an abstract.
Pound, Ezra. “From Dante.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 3-11.
Roglieri, Maria Ann. Dante
and Music: Musical Adaptations of the “Commedia” from the Sixteenth Century to
the Present.
“Ever
since its compilation in the fourteenth century, Dante’s great epic poem, the Commedia, has been adapted in a wide
variety of musical forms by composers across the world. Drawing on primary
research in scores and recordings, and on interviews with contemporary
composers, Maria Roglieri provides ... an overview of these adaptations,
considering them in light of Dante’s verses and his own use of music in the Commedia. Three categories of adaptation
are examined: adaptations of the entire poem, works that focus on a particular
character, and pieces that adapt an individual passage from the poem. Roglieri
offers some possible motivations for each composer’s choice of a particular
passage of character, and examines the ways in which these choices influence
the musical form of the adaptation. Common characteristics between works are
also identified.” Important for its examination of the relationship between
music in Dante and Dante in music, Roglieri’s book “provides Dantists and
musicologists alike with essential information on musical adaptations of
Dante’s poem as well as an analytical framework for considering this material.
In addition, it demonstrates that works like the Commedia offer a unique opportunity to chart differing musical
styles over the course of centuries.” Contents:
List of Figures (vii-ix); List of Tables in Appendix (x); Acknowledgements
(xi-xii); 1. Introduction (1-17); 2. The Music of Dante’s Hell, Purgatory and
Rotundo, Angela Rita. “A Teacher’s Soulful Inquiry: Exploring
Professional Development Using The Divine
Comedy as a Guide.” In Dissertation
Abstracts International 62, No. 4 (October, 2001), 1380. Doctoral
dissertation, University of
“This is a reflexive inquiry about a teacher’s story as she journeys through life and her professional teaching experiences. Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy is used to recreate a metaphorical journey towards self-understanding partly influenced by the interactions of people she meets along life’s path.”
Salwa, Piotr. “Dante in Polonia: una presenza viva?” In Dante Studies 119 (2001), 187-202.
A
rapid overview of Dante’s tradition and “fortune” in contemporary
Sayers, William. “Dante’s Venetian Shipyard Scene (Inf. 21), Barratry, and Maritime Law.” In Quaderni d’Italianistica 22, No. 2 (2001), 57-79.
The article begins by posing a question: in the beginning of Inferno 21, why does Dante provide the vast description of the shipyard of the Venetian arzanà when he merely alludes to the boiling pitch of the fifth bolgia? The scholar attempts to demonstrate that while the Comedy is replete with nautical metaphors, the cantos of the barrators also possess numerous references to seafaring. The referents include both terminology derived from sailing as well as lexical items that phonologically suggest such terms. In other words, the opening metaphor of the Venetian arzanà is merely part of a larger program on the part of the poet to associate barratry with ocean voyages. Medieval maritime law, which defined barratry as the deliberate sinking of a ship and confiscation of its cargo, helps to explain the raison d’être for Dante’s extended metaphor. In the culture of the Middle Ages, barratry and seafaring were conceptually linked, and Dante utilizes that connection for literary purposes. [FA]
Schildgen, Brenda Deen. “Dante’s Utopian Political Vision, the
Argues that Dante’s utopian politics impelled him to place the Latin poets—Virgil, Ovid, Lucan and Horace—in Limbo. They could not be saved because they were unable to “see the Empire as the instrument of providential history.” The essay looks at the ethical criteria Dante uses in considering pagan salvation, concluding that those poets who question the Empire’s aims are punished in the Commedia for their misgivings. By contrast, the saved pagans—Statius, Cato, Trajan, and Ripheus—demonstrate a commitment to hope, love, and Roman values and share an optimistic view of history which places the foundation of Rome as a key moment in salvation history. Dante “singled out other Romans for salvation whom he made co-partners in his own vision. Dante’s utopian political vision put faith in a history guided by divine providence, whereas in reading his great literary forebears, he recognized that they did not share this hope.” [Jle]
Shoaf, R. Allen. Chaucer’s
Body: The Anxiety of Circulation in the “
Among the several references to Dante’s works one in particular focuses at some length on the possible relationship between Canto 33 of the Inferno (Alberigo dei Manfredi) and Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale (40-45).
Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kolve. Edited by Robert
F. Yeager and Charlotte C. Morse.
This Festschrift to honor V. A. Kolve contains several essays dealing in some way or another with Dante. These essays—by Piero Boitani, Rachel Jacoff, John V. Fleming, and Penelope Reed Doob—are listed separately in this bibliography under the individual author’s name.
Storey, H. Wayne, and Christopher Kleinhenz. “American Dante Bibliography for 2000.” In Dante Studies 119 (2001), 217-273.
With brief analyses.
Taccheri, Umberto. “I sogni boeziani del Purgatorio dantesco.” In Dissertation
Abstracts International 61, No. 10 (April, 2001), 4020. Doctoral
dissertation, University of
“In queste pagine presenteremo una nuova ipotesi sull’influenza della Consolatio Philosophiae di Anicio Manlio Severino Boezio sulla Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri. Noi proporremo una lettura dei tre sogni di Purgatorio 9, 19 e 27 in chiave di una rielaborazione di tre poesie della Consolatio Philosophiae di Boezio: la dodicesima poesia del terzo libro su Orfeo ed Euridice, la terza poesia del quarto libro, su Ulisse e Circe, e l’ultima poesia del quarto libro, su Agamennone, Ulisse ed Ercole, tre episodi che nel testo boeziano illustrano allegoricamente l’ascesa spirituale del protagonista verso il sommo bene. Mediante un parallelo tra i sogni del Purgatorio ed alcuni passaggi che li circondano con questi brani della Consolatio ed alcuni dei commentari ad essa dedicati che godettero di larga diffusione nel medio evo, illustreremo che la seconda cantica della Commedia prende a modello il percorso spirituale rappresentato allegoricamente nella successione dei tre metra mitologici di Boezio per allontanarsi gradualmente e sistematicamente da essi.”
Ullén, Magnus. “Dante in
The anagogical meaning of any narrative is that determined by the reader in applying at the moral level a chosen ideological matrix to a literal narrative discourse, with the allegorical level seen as a mise en abyme of the act of reading itself. In the Divine Comedy, symbol and allegory merge because the origin and end of the narrative are ultimately the same: God.
Usher, Jonathan. “A Narnian Ulysses.” In the Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America: posted March 12, 2001, at www.dantesociety.org > Publications > Electronic Journal (EBDSA).
Van Anglen, K. P. “Before Longfellow: Dante and the Polarization of
Through
a survey of Dante’s reception in the three main literary periodicals of early
nineteenth-century New England (the Monthly
Anthology, the North American Review,
and the Christian Examiner), Van
Anglen reveals a previously neglected or in some cases overlooked body of Dante
criticism that arose in the decades before Longfellow arrived at Harvard in
1836. He interprets it as reflecting the literary politics of Unitarian Boston,
particularly the conflicted response of the city’s elite to democracy and to
Roman Catholicism. The former manifested itself in Unitarian criticism’s use of
Dante and his writings to illustrate “the translation of empire” theme, which
warned that
Warren, Rosanna. “Words and Blood.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 333-343.
Watt, Mary Alexandra Watt. “Take This Bread: Dante’s Eucharistic Banquet.” In Quaderni d’Italianistica 22, No. 2 (2001), 17-35.
Examines
Dante’s evocation and revision of his own literary past as found in the Vita Nuova and Convivio. In the opening lines of the libello, where Dante speaks of transcribing the book of memory, the
poet casts himself as a writer, copyist, and redactor of the lyric poetry
therein. He establishes, in short, a tension in the tunc et nunc (then and now) structure typical to many conversion
narratives; he is both the person who underwent the experiences communicated in
the lyrics, as well as the amanuensis transcribing and commenting on the
poetry. The simultaneous adoption and revision of his own verse constitutes
Dante’s attempt both to break with the past and, at the same time, to reconcile
it with the present. Dante utilizes numerous Pauline allusions in the Vita Nuova in part to underscore the
temporal aspects of the tunc et nunc
structure. Beatrice’s post mortem appearances
to Dante recollect Paul’s conversion on the road to
Williams, C. K. “Souls.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 380-382.
Williams, Charles. “From The Figure of Beatrice.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 16-27.
Williamson, Alan. “The Tears of Cocytus.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 359-369.
Wilson-Okamura, David Scott. “Lavinia and Beatrice: The Second Half of the Aeneid in the Middle Ages.” In Dante Studies 119 (2001), 103-124.
Allegorical and philosophical interpretations of Virgil’s epic usually emphasized the hero’s descent to the underworld, and therefore trailed off after Book 6. Wisdom was viewed as the telos of the epic journey, and eros was treated as an obstacle. Dante was well versed in the allegorical tradition, but in dealing with the second half of Virgil’s epic, he seems to have been influenced by a second tradition, the courtly tradition of vernacular adaptation. Modern readings, both of Dante and of Virgil, have stressed the tragic elements in Virgil’s poem, and have focused on the death of Turnus. In the courtly tradition, comic elements in the story come to the fore and the emphasis shifts from Turnus to the courtship of Aeneas and Lavinia. The result was a new conception of Virgil’s epic, in which eros does not require eradication, but is susceptible of reformation and rectification. [DSW-O]
Witt, Ronald G. “The De
Tyranno and Coluccio Salutati’s View of Politics and Roman History.” Essay
VI in his Italian Humanism and Medieval
Rhetoric (Aldershot, Hampshire, and
The article, which treats in part the influence on Salutati of Dante’s condemnation of Brutus and Cassius for the assassination of Julius Caesar (Inf. 34), was first published in Nuova Rivista Storica, 53 (1969), 434-474.
Wright, Charles. “Dantino Mio.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 259-264.
Yeats, William Butler. “From A Vision.” In The Poets’ Dante (q.v.), pp. 12-15.
Reviews
Alighieri, Dante. Dante’s “Monarchia.”
Translated by Richard Kay.
John A. Scott, in Speculum 76, No. 2 (April, 2001), 427-430.
Alighieri, Dante. Inferno.
Translated by Robert and Jean Hollander. Introduction and notes by Robert
Hollander.
Tim Parks, in The New Yorker ( January 15, 2001), 84-89.
Barański, Zygmunt G. ‘Chiosar
con altro testo’: leggere Dante nel Trecento.
Olivia Holmes, in Rivista di Studi Italiani 19, No. 1 (giugno, 2001), 289-294;
Barański, Zygmunt G. Dante
e i segni. Saggi per una storia intellettuale di Dante Alighieri.
Olivia Holmes, in Rivista di Studi Italiani 19, No. 1 (giugno, 2001), 285-289.
Boyde, Patrick. Human Vices
and Human Worth in Dante’s “Comedy.”
Alison Cornish, in Italica 78, No. 3 (Autumn, 2001), 414-415;
Bruno Ferraro, in Annali d’Italianistica 19 (2001), 352-354;
Olivia Holmes, in Rivista di Studi Italiani 19, No. 1 (giugno, 2001), 285-289;
Richard Kay, in The Medieval Review, ID: 01.11.04 (http://www.hti.umich.edu/t/tmr/);
Mary A. Watt, in Quaderni d’italianistica 20, Nos. 1-2 (1999), 279-282.
Cherchi, Paolo. L’alambicco
in biblioteca: distillati rari. Edited by Francesco Guardiani and Emilio
Speciale.
Gustavo Costa, in Annali d’Italianistica 19 (2001), 333-335;
Cogan, Marc. The Design in
the Wax: The Structure of the “Divine Comedy” and Its Meaning. Notre Dame,
Indiana:
Giuliana Carugati, in Italica 78, No. 3 (Autumn, 2001), 415-417.
Cornish, Alison. Reading
Dante’s Stars.
Simon Gilson, in The Medieval Review ID: 01.12.07 (http://www.hti.umich.edu/t/tmr/)
Delcorno Branca, Daniela. Tristano
e Lancillotto in Italia: Studi di letteratura arturiana.
Gloria Allaire, in Speculum 76, No. 2 (April, 2001), 430-433.
Dumol, Paul Arvisu. The
Metaphysics of
Christian Moevs, in Italica 78, No. 1 (Spring, 2001), 101-102.
Frank, Maria Esposito. Le insidie dell’allegoria: Ermolao Barbaro il Vecchio e la lezione degli antichi. Venezia: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1999. Reviewed by:
Angelo Mazzocco, in Renaissance Quarterly 54, No. 2 (Summer, 2001), 595-596;
Il genere ‘Tenzone’ nelle letterature romanze delle Origini. Memoria
del Tempo. Edited by Matteo Pedroni and Antonio Stäuble.
Victoria Kirkham, in Quaderni d’italianistica 22, No. 1 (2001), 166-167.
Ginsberg,
William Franke, in Speculum 76, No. 3 (July, 2001), 727-729.
Gorni, Guglielmo. Dante prima
della “Commedia.”
Fabian Alfie, in Speculum 78, No. 1 (January, 2003), 177-179;
Olivia Holmes, in Rivista di Studi Italiani 19, No. 1 (giugno, 2001), 289-294.
Dante’s Modern Afterlife: Reception and Response from Blake to Heaney.
Edited by Nick Havely.
Dennis Looney, in Speculum 76, No. 3 (July, 2001), 733-734.
Hollander, Robert. Boccaccio’s
Dante and the Shaping Force of Satire (
Eugenio Giusti, in Speculum 76, No. 1 (January, 2001), 170-172.
Hollander, Robert. Dante. A
Life in Works.
Bruno Ferraro, in Annali d’Italianistica 19 (2001), 350-352;
Mary Alexandra Watt, in Quaderni d’italianistica 22, No. 1 (2001), 149-150.
Holmes, Olivia. Assembling
the Lyric Self: Authorship from Troubadour Song to Italian Poetry Book.
Frank Fata, in Italica 78, No. 1 (Spring, 2001), 99-101;
Jason Houston, in Rivista di Studi Italiani 19, No. 2 (dicembre, 2001), 276-278;
Rinaldina Russell, in Renaissance Quarterly 54, 3 (Autumn, 2001), 931-932.
Illiano, Antonio. Sulle
sponde del Prepurgatorio. Poesia e arte narrativa nel preludio all’ascesa
(Purg. I-III).
Adriano Moz, in Italian Quarterly 38, Nos. 147-148 (Winter-Spring, 2001), 105-108.
Images of Quattrocento
William J. Kennedy, in Forum Italicum 35, No. 1 (Spring, 2001), 277-278;
Michael T. Ward, in Italica 78, No. 3 (Autumn, 2001), 417-419.
Last Things: Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages. Edited by
Caroline Walker Bynum and Paul Freedman.
Alan E. Bernstein, in Speculum 76, No. 3 (July, 2001), 692-694.
Parker, Deborah. Bronzino:
Renaissance Painter as Poet.
Konrad Eisenbichler, in Quaderni d’italianistica 20, Nos. 1-2 (1999), 244-246;
William J. Kennedy, in Forum Italicum 35, No. 1 (Spring, 2001), 278-280;
Domenico Zanrè, in Annali d’Italianistica 19 (2001), 369-371.
Pucci, Joseph. The
Full-Knowing Reader: Allusion and the Power of the Reader in the Western
Literary Tradition.
Elizabeth Jane Bellamy, in Comparative Literature Studies 38, No. 1 (2001), 78-80.
Russell, J. Stephen. Chaucer
and the Trivium: The Mindsong of the “
Edward I. Condren, in Speculum 76, No. 4 (October, 2001), 1095-1097.
Scorrano, Luigi. Il Dante
‘fascista’. Saggi, letture, note dantesche.
Mary Alexandra Watt, in Quaderni d’italianistica 22, No. 1 (2001), 172-173.
Shapiro, Marianne. Dante and
the Knot of Body and Soul.
Olivia Holmes, in Speculum 76, No. 4 (October, 2001), 1102-1103.
Shaw, Christine. The Politics
of Exile in Renaissance Italy.
Sowell, Madison U., ed. Dante
and Ovid: Essays in Intertextuality.
David Marsh, in Italian Quarterly 38, Nos. 147-148 (Winter-Spring, 2001), 103.
Witt, Ronald G. ‘In the
Footsteps of the Ancients’: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni.
Mark Jurdjevic, in Sixteenth Century Journal 32, No. 2 (Summer, 2001), 467-469;
William McCuaig, in Renaissance Quarterly 54, No. 3 (Autumn, 2001), 928-929.
ADDENDA
Translations
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine
Comedy: Selected Cantos = La Divina Commedia: Canti Scelti: A Dual Language
Book. Edited and translated by Stanley Appelbaum.
Includes the complete text of thirty-three cantos (thirteen from Inferno [1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, 17, 21, 24, 26, 30, 33, 34] and ten each from the other two canticles [Purg.: 1, 6, 7, 9, 11, 24, 25, 27, 28, 30; Par.: 3, 10, 11, 17, 23, 27, 30, 31, 32, 33]) in Italian with English translation on the facing page with brief summaries of the omitted cantos in their proper place to ensure narrative continuity, as well as an introduction that presents a concise introduction to Dante’s life, times, and works. Contents: Introduction (v-xiv); Inferno/Hell (2-113); Purgatorio/Purgatory (114-203); Paradiso/Paradise (204-291).
Studies
Audeh, Aida. “Rodin’s ‘Gates of Hell’ and Aubé’s ‘Monument to Dante’:
Romantic Tribute to the Image of the Poet in Nineteenth-Century France.” In The Stanford University
Examines the works of Aubé and Rodin within the more general reception and appreciation of Dante by the French in the nineteenth century.
Bemrose, Stephen. A New Life
of Dante.
The
volume “weaves into a single narrative thread the whole of Dante’s life and
works. Beginning with his early activity as a lyric poet and this political
career in
Block, Haskell M. “Theory of Comedy from Dante to Joyce.” In Comparative Literary Dimensions: Essays in
Honor of Melvin J. Friedman, edited by Jay L. Halio and Ben Siegel (
Considers the general question of the definition of “comedy” over the centuries with numerous references to Dante.
Carugati, Giuliana. “Dante, il ‘breve uso’ dell’amore.” In Quaderni d’italianistica 21, No. 2 (2000), 93-112.
Argues that carnal love figures as the imperceptible, precarious point of contact with the divine. It is the momentary stepping into the absence of rationality, the passage from history to the “u-topia” of an original paradisiacal dimension. The aporia between carnal love and reason finds resolution in the written word in Dante, as the confluence of two otherwise conflicting agents: love dictates and reason writes. In Inferno 5, the love of Paolo and Francesca bears witness to the irreconcilable relation of eros, on one side, and history, law, and reason, on the other. The Earthly Paradise at the end of Purgatorio proves that carnal love alone allows human beings to transcend history and rationality and become one with the divine. The Earthly Paradise is the ideal locus, or rather a non-place, in which humans exit history to be rejoined with the divine, where reason and the babelic confusion of languages no longer exist. [AV]
Cornish, Alison. “A Lady Asks: The Gender of Vulgarization in Late
Medieval
This essay explores the fascinating interactions among gender, power, and language in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italian vernacularizations. Vernacularization lies at the heart of Italian writing in this period, from prose versions of classical literature and rhetoric to the translation of Aristotelian science implicit in the love lyric. The vernacular (or mother tongue) was commonly gendered female over and against patriarchal Latin, and the stated pretext for vernacular composition was often accessibility for female readers (even though “unlettered” male readers were also increasingly in need of translations). Cornish probes these commonplaces to show how some texts complicate them, in particular Guido Cavalcanti’s learned lyric disquisition on the nature of love, “Donna me prega” (“A Lady Asks”). Infamously arcane, “Donna me prega” resists the notion that vernacularization was always divulgative; Cavalcanti’s poem prompted the physician Dino del Garbo to write an explanatory commentary — in Latin! —, which was itself subsequently vernacularized. Ostensibly written in response to a query poem by Guido Orlandi, “Donna me prega” invents a female interlocutor, Aristotelian efficient cause of Cavalcanti’s lyric reasoning. Cornish considers the historical possibility of such a learned lady and feels that her presence signals the poem’s participation in the lyric genre. (Cornish notes a similarly intriguing gender collaboration in a vernacular text from the following century, Francesco da Barberino’s didactic Reggimento e costumi di donna.) Ultimately, this essay shows how gender complicated the already anxiety-ridden project of vernacularization by feminizing the discourse of Latin learning, ennobling the vernacular and those who used it, and thus posing a potential threat to learned, Latin, male privilege. [GPC]
Fitzsimmons, Lorna. “The Socially ‘Forsaken Race’: Dantean Turns in Ann Petry’s The Street.” In Notes on Contemporary Literature 30, No. 2 (March, 2000), 6-8.
The
author explores the use by Petry of Dantean tropes in order “to suggest that
discrimination and prejudice in
Moevs, Christian. “Pyramus at the Mulberry Tree: De-petrifying
Dante’s Tinted Mind.” In Imagining Heaven
in the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays, edited by Jan Swango Emerson and Hugh
Feiss, O.S.B. (
“Dante
refers directly to the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe twice in the Commedia, once in Purgatorio 27, as the pilgrim is about to enter the garden of
earthly paradise to meet Beatrice, and once in Purgatorio 33, when Beatrice rebukes the pilgrim in the garden for
the past moral failings which prevent him from understanding her. The
references bracket Dante’s reunion with his long-lost Beatrice, and frame his
recovery of
Pinti, Daniel. “A Comedy of the Monk’s Tale: Chaucer’s Hugelyn and Early Commentary on Dante’s Ugolino.” In Comparative Literature Studies 37, No. 3 (2000), 277-297.
The author begins by remarking that the eight learned commentaries on the Commedia produced in roughly the first two decades after Dante’s death suggest that “Dante’s Italian audiences in the Trecento thought that the Comedy needed to be explained if it were to be fully understood” (277). The argument challenges a longstanding scholarly view that “Chaucer read Dante in an unmediated way” and proposes instead that Chaucer most likely encountered this commentary tradition in approaching Dante’s poetry. Pinti focuses on the relationship between Chaucer’s most celebrated appropriation of Dante, the Hugelyn narrative in the Monk’s Tale, in its relation to the early commentaries on the Ugolino episode of Inferno 33. Overall, the author aims to show that “we can better understand how Chaucer read Dante by looking at how other learned readers read Dante in the fourteenth century” (278). [Jlu]
Psaki, F. Regina. “The Sexual Body in Dante’s Celestial Paradise.”
In Imagining Heaven in the Middle Ages: A
Book of Essays, edited by Jan Swango Emerson and Hugh Feiss, O.S.B. (
Argues that in the Paradiso “Dante tries, through very specific lexical and poetic choices, to adumbrate an eroticized relationship that is simply not congruent with earthly dichotomies of soul and body, caritas and eros, pure and impure. Dante’s heaven contains unquestionable erotic freight, and reconciles the contradictory yet coexistent verities of both Christian doctrine and his own historically specific love for and with Beatrice.” [FRP]
Terkla, Daniel P. “Impassioned Failure: Memory, Metaphor, and the
Drive toward Intellection.” In Imagining
Heaven in the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays, edited by Jan Swango Emerson
and Hugh Feiss, O.S.B. (
The essay is concerned with Abbot Suger’s basilica of St.-Denis, Richard of Haldingham’s Hereford Mappa Mundi, and Dante’s Commedia, which are seen both as “metaphoric paradigms of medieval Christian art, monuments to the desire to re-create Creation and to image the Imageless” and as “paradigmatic failures.” Terkla suggests that “Richard’s, Suger’s, and Dante’s use of accommodative and anagogical metaphor to overcome the unavoidable reiterative failure that results when an artist attempts to depict the ineffable, regardless of medium: architecture, mapmaking, or poetry. At base, each man desired to move his virtual pilgrim from the material to the immaterial, to transfer him or her figuratively from this world to the next — or at least to provide an inkling of divine intellection, that ‘direct cognition of realities such as God, the angels, caritas, etc., which have neither corporeal substance nor corporeal shape.’ Put another way, Richard, Suger, and Dante created metaphorical structures — the map, the basilica, the poem — they hoped would act as vehicles that would affect this mystical translatio.” One section of this essay (“Dante’s Commedia: From Memory to Intellection,” 278-288) is devoted to Dante.
Witt, Ronald G. “In the
Footsteps of the Ancients”: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni.
Contains
numerous references to Dante, particularly in the chapter on “