American Dante Bibliography for 1991

Christopher Kleinhenz

This bibliography is intended to include all the Dante translations published in this country in 1991 and all Dante studies and reviews published in 1991 that are in any sense American. For their invaluable assistance in the preparation of this bibliography and its annotations my special thanks go to the following graduate students—past and present—at the University of Wisconsin–Madison: Fabian Alfie, Gerard NeCastro, Tonia Bernardi Triggiano, Scott Troyan, and Scott Visovatti, and to Adriano Comollo of Brigham Young University and Mary Refling of New York University.

 

Translations

Dante Alighieri. “Epistle to Cangrande.” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 3–14. [1991]

The translation is that of Paget Toynbee (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920).

Musa, Mark. “Inferno V: Text and Commentary.” In Lectura Dantis, VIII (1991), 108–133. 

A revised translation of the text of the fifth canto of the Inferno and enlargement of the notes and commentary (see Dante Studies, CIII, 140).

 

Studies

Armour, Peter. “The Love of Two Florentines: Brunetto Latini and Bondie Dietaiuti.” In Lectura Dantis, IX (1991), 11–33. 

Argues that Brunetto’s canzone “S’eo sono distretto” and that of Bondie Dietaiuti (“Amore, quando mi.membra”) should be understood as political—not erotic—, as the expression of love for Florence after the defeat at Montaperti. Armour connects these sentiments toward the patria with those found in Inferno XV.

Asher, Robert Lyell. “Renunciations.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LII, No. 6 (1991), 2137–A. 

Doctoral dissertation, University of Virginia, 1990. 235 p. (Given that “[c]onfession has been a primary discourse for the construction of Western selfhood” and that “in the Renaissance this discourse comes to a crisis,” Asher “suggests how a rhetorical problematic of confessional discourse generally becomes an enabling condition of literary self–representation.” Augustine and Dante are used as points of departure in the attempt to “show how the self is transformed when God and Christendom are replaced as the audience of confession by posterity and the state.”)

Auerbach, Erich. “The Structure of the Comedy.” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 87–112. [1991]

The selections are taken from Ralph Manheim’s translation of Auerbach’s Dante, Poet of the Secular World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961).

Ball, Robert. “Theological Semantics: Virgil’s Pietas and Dante’s Pietà.” In The Poetry of Allusion... (q.v.), pp. 19–36, 249–258. [1991]

Reprint of a previously published article, see Dante Studies, C, 135.

Baranski, Zygmunt G. “Comedía. Notes on Dante, the Epistle to Cangrande, and Medieval Comedy.” In Lectura Dantis, VIII (1991), 26–55. 

Focuses on the Epistle’s characteristics as a commentary to argue against Dantean authorship. The Epistle would appear to be a text with an extremely narrow understanding of Dante’s poetics and one in conflict with the poet’s exegetical practices in the Comedy. In addition, the Epistle remains surprisingly commonplace in its explanations, fitting better into popular currents of medieval literary criticism than with Dante’s more complex and multidimensional metaliterary intentions and practices.

Barolsky, Paul. Why Mona Lisa Smiles and Other Tales by Vasari. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991. 144 p. 

Contains some references to Dante, particularly to Purgatory X–XII and Vasari’s references to Dante.

Becker, Christopher Bennett. “Dante’s Motley Cord: Art and Apocalypse in Inferno XVI.” In Modern Language Notes, CVI, No. 1 (1991), 179–183. 

In Inferno XVI Virgil drops Dante’s belt into the abyss that separates the sins of wrath from the sins of fraud. Shortly afterwards the monster Geryon, emblem of fraud, appears. Becker argues that the source for Dante’s multi–colored belt is St. Thomas’ commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, where Aquinas explains that Aphrodite’s multi–colored girdle represents “sensual desire binding reason.” The girdle is varicolored, St. Thomas suggests, “because it directs one’s course to something apparently good, inasmuch as it is pleasurable but really evil.” Becker believes that the belt has a stylistic as well as a moral meaning: it marks a change in the Inferno’s poetic styles, “from dolce to aspro,” where “all that is pleasing” gives way to “bitter irony and savage parody.”

Benvenuto da Imola. “Proem” and “From Canto XV of Inferno.” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 28–34. [1991]

The selections from Benvenuto’s Comentum Inferni (Firenze: Lacaita, 1887) have been translated for this volume by Diane Vacca.

Biow, Douglas. “From Ignorance to Knowledge: The Marvelous in Inferno 13.” In The Poetry of Allusion... (q.v.), pp. 45–61, 261–264. [1991]

“Argues that the whole of canto 13 is dedicated to setting up an opposition between Dante’s poem and Virgil’s. Here Virgil for the first time openly calls attention to his own text, guiding the reader to compare Dante’s encounter with Pier della Vigna and Aeneas’s meeting with Polydorus in Aeneid 3. The language of this canto brings to the foreground questions of verisimilitude and faith, and probes the contrasting nature of the believable in its Virgilian and Dantean formulations.”

Boccaccio, Giovanni. “Diana’s Hunt: Caccia di Diana.” Boccaccio’s First Fiction. Edited and translated by Anthony K. Cassell and Victoria Kirkham. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. xvi, 255 p. (Middle Ages Series)

Contains many references to Dante.

Boccaccio, Giovanni. “His Appearance, Habits and Character” and “The Difference between Poesy and Theology.” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 21–28. [1991]

These selections from Boccaccio’s Life of Dante are taken from the translation of Philip H. Wicksteed, The Early Lives of Dante (London: Alexander Morings Press, 1904).

Boitano, Piero. “Beyond the Sunset: Dante’s Ulysses in Another World.” In Lectura Dantis, IX (1991), 34–53. 

Treats the figure of Ulysses in the Divine Comedy, its classical background, and its subsequent appearances in literature through the twentieth century.

Boldrini, Lucia. “The Sisters and the Inferno: An Intertextual Network.” In Style, XXV, No. 3 (1991), 453–465. 

Relates certain parts of Joyce’s Dubliners (“The Sisters” and “The Dead”) to Inferno I, III, XV, and XIX.

Boli, Todd. “Treatment of Orthodoxy and Insistence on the Comedy’s Allegory in Boccaccio’s Esposizioni.” In Italian Culture, IX (1991), 63–74. 

Argues that Boccaccio’s commentary on the Comedy was destined to be left unfinished not only because of the aging author’s health problems but also because of the inherent difficulties of sustained allegorical exposition. In order to disguise Dante’s unorthodox theological views Boccaccio felt compelled to “squeeze an allegorical moral out of the text wherever possible,” with the result that “[i]nstead of justifying the poem’s departures from Catholic orthodoxy, [Boccaccio’s strategy in the Esposizioni] only invites attention to them.”

Borges, Jorge Luis. “The False Problem of Ugolino.” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 185–188. [1991]

The selection from Borges’ Nueve ensayos dantescos (edited by Barnatan and Arce [Madrid: Espasa–Calpe, 1982]) has been translated for this volume by Nicoletta Alegi.

Botterill, Steven. “Bernard of Clairvaux in the Trecento Commentaries on Dante’s Commedia.” In Dante Studies, CIX (1991), 89–118. 

Examines the views on St. Bernard expressed in fourteenth–century commentaries on Dante’s Comedy. Botterill divides his study in three parts: “the commentators’ use of Bernard as an auctor, whether or not in the immediate context of Paradiso XXXI–XXXIII; their grasp of the facts of Bernard’s work and career, as evidenced in the biographies that most of them supply at the moment of his entry into the narrative; and their interpretations of his function in Paradiso, which usually take the form of explaining, at greater or lesser length, just why Dante should have chosen Bernard in Beatrice’s stead.”

Brian, Michael. “‘A Very Fine Piece of Writing’: An Etymological, Dantean, and Gnostic Reading of Joyce’s Ivy Day in the Committee Room.” In Style, XXV, No. 3 (1991), 466–487. 

Through etymological play on and repetition of certain words in Joyce’s Dubliners (especially in “Ivy Day in the Committee Room”), Brian attempts to demonstrate “a schemata in which Christianity (mainly represented by Dante) is countered by its inversion, Gnosticism.”

Brownlee, Kevin. “Ovid’s Semele and Dante’s Metamorphosis: Paradiso 21–22.” In The Poetry of Allusion... (q.v.), pp. 224–232, 293–294. [1991]

A partially revised version of a previously published essay; see Dante Studies, CV, 141.

Brownlee, Kevin. “Pauline Vision and Ovidian Speech in Paradiso I.” In The Poetry of Allusion... (q.v.), pp. 202–213, 286–289. [1991]

“Deals with the first extended set of Ovidian allusions after the apparent repudiation of pagan poetry in the Garden of Eden. Brownlee analyzes the tales of Marsyas and Glaucus in the light of Dante’s fragmentary retelling of them in the first canto of the Paradiso, demonstrating how they take on a new and specialized meaning by conflation with the story of Paul’s rapture from 2 Corinthians. Glaucus’s deification comes to represent the transformation of Dante–pilgrim at the level of plot, while Marsyas’s ‘disembodiment’ comes instead to stand for the transformation of Dante–poet at the level of composition. Together, Brownlee suggests, they permit Dante to translate into words and images what the Apostle Paul had refused to disclose in his second letter to the Corinthians: the actual substance or content of his paradisiac vision.”

Camporesi, Piero. The Fear of Hell: Images of Damnation and Salvation in Early Modern Europe. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991. 221 p. 

Uses Inferno as one of the starting points for the early modern European concept of hell. “Using an Aristotelian compass and a Thomistic square,” Dante replaced the chaos of previous descriptions with one that was “rigorously geometric and minutely controlled.” Surveys various features of Dante’s hell for comparison with later versions.

Carugati, Giuliana. Dalla menzogna al silenzio. La scrittura mistica della “Commedia” di Dante. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1991. 153 p. 

Argues that “di Dante si deve parlare in termini di ‘percorso mistico’, qualora per esperienza mistica si intenda l’esperienza dei limiti del linguaggio. Come lo scrittore mistico..., Dante mette in scena la nascita e la morte di una scrittura che affrontando l’inesprimibile non può che riconoscersi ‘menzogna’ e da ultimo naufragare nel proprio contrario, il silenzio.” From a general discussion of medieval mysticism and Dante’s place in this tradition, as well as the nature of the Florentine poet’s allegory, Carugati concludes that Dante writes “non per costituire una verità filosofico–teologica, ma per ‘rifare’ una scrittura assoluta, affidata alla fragilità della metafora.” She proceeds to examine this central point—the fragility of metaphor and its correlative, i.e., the status of writing as a lie (“la metafora-concetto chiave...sembra quella di menzogna”)—in three chapters on 1) the addresses / appeals to the reader, 2) the figure of Ulysses, and 3) the final vision (a “visione mancata”) in Paradiso XXXIII. Contents: Premessa; I. La cosa mistica; II. Allegoria; III. L’attraversamento della menzogna; IV. Menzogna e follia. L’Ulisse; V. La visione mancata; Conclusione; Bibliografia.

Carugati, Giuliana. “Note su Beatrice: la visione mancata.” In Italica, LXVIII, No. 3 (1991), 310–315.  

The fact that Inferno XXVI–XXVII, Purgatorio XXVI–XXVII, and Paradiso XXVI–XXVII employ images of fire to convey passionate longing leads Carugati to explore how falso/vero and temporale/eterno juxtapositions operate along the thematic axis fuoco/lingua/scrittura. This nexus is staged within the textual dynamics of the poem as a function of Beatrice. When Dante encounters two famous love poets in the terrace of the lustful (Purg. XXVI), this axis of contradictions transforms amorous desire into a type of redemptive blindness. Indeed, throughout the Comedy love and poetry, being essentially worldly pursuits, are treated as lies which mask the truth. This paradox becomes especially acute in the Paradiso, where revelation is continuously deferred, where language laments its failure, and where amorous vision obtains its desired object only behind a curtain of protests over its incapacity to see.

Cassell, Anthony K. “Santa Lucia as Patroness of Sight: Hagiography, Iconography, and Dante.” In Dante Studies, CIX (1991), 71–88. 

Explores the legend and iconography of St. Lucy and the presence of these elements in Dante’s Comedy, examining in particular her association with sight. Contends that “Lucy’s patronage of light and sight predates or is independent of the late accretion of the legend of the mutilation of her eyes. Secondly, her ‘severed eyes’ were originally merely an ex–voto representation, just as ancient Roman and Christian votives often take the form of an isolated—not dismembered—part of the body, an arm, a leg, an ear, a nose, for example, cured by heavenly intercession. Thirdly, the legend of the gouged eyes probably appeared as a popular expression of Lucia’s patronage of sight before the early Renaissance to ‘explain’ more obviously her traditional association with sight.”

Castellani, Victor. “Vergilius Vltor: Revenge and Pagan Morality in the Inferno.” In Lectura Dantis, IX (1991), 3–10. 

Discusses two episodes in which personal revenge seems foremost—the encounter with Filippo Argenti (Inf. VIII) and the episode of Geri del Bello (Inf. XXIX)—in order to highlight the problem with this attitude for both Dante and Virgil against its classical background.

Cavallo, Jo Ann. “A Note on Dante in Boiardo.” In Lectura Dantis, VIII (1991), 100–107. 

In the Innamorato Boiardo demonstrates a new understanding of a positive type of love and of woman. He shows that, unlike Dante’s Beatrice of the Comedy, woman does not have to be deprived of her corporality in order to be a meaningful force in the life of man. Fiordelisa and Bradamante are flesh and blood women and likewise, the Innamorato’s ideal love defines itself in this world, not the heavenly one.

Cervigni, Dino. “Beatrice’s Act of Naming.” In Lectura Dantis, VIII (1991), 85–99. 

Beatrice’s naming of the protagonist in Purgatorio XXX (the first and only time he is named in the Comedy) marks a significant change in the pilgrim’s condition. Besides linguistic and historical reasons, this occasion is associated with the ceremony of baptism, that moment which marks the beginning of an individual’s spiritual life. It is an essential step in Dante’s return journey towards God.

Cestaro, Gary [Patrick]. “Irony of the Narrator in the De Vulgari Eloquentia.” In Italian Culture, IX (1991), 15–27. 

Cestaro views Dante’s treatise as a dialectical meditation on the history of language which narrates the poet’s desire to “get beyond history and language to recapture the originary idiom.” It is a kind of narrative where the narrating subject (the “allegorical grammarian who has full confidence in his rational journey toward an ideal language”) contends with an enlightened poet–in–exile figure who assumes an ironic stance and sees the grammarian’s project as a doomed act of hubris. The conflict at the heart of the treatise corresponds to a “contest between allegory and irony,” which the poet was unable to resolve before he abandoned the text.

Cestaro, Gary [Patrick]. “‘...quanquam Sarnum biberimus ante dentes...’: The Primal Scene of Suckling in Dante’s De vulgari eloquentia.” In Dante Studies, CIX (1991), 119–147. 

Notes the importance of images of suckling in the Comedy; indeed, “the link between biology and language, between the nurturing female body and the infant’s first words, loomed large in the poet’s imagination.” Argues that “[r]ecourse to the image of the mother’s breast consistently demarcates crucial stages in Dante’s spiritual and poetic development” and traces the history of this image in De vulgari eloquentia, which “encodes the mother’s body in a complex metaphorical dialectic of concealment and revelation. As the unfinished Latin treatise signals Dante’s first significant attempt to sort out the vastness of human linguistic difference, so it is simultaneously the textual ground upon which the recent exile works through his relationship to the maternal body. The linguistic project remains unfinished, just as the psychological dilemma finds no explicit resolution in the text. And yet...the very incompleteness of the linguistic treatise points to the subtextual resolution of Dante’s problematic encounter with female corporeality.”

Cestaro, Gary [Patrick]. “The Whip and the Wet Nurse: Dante’s De Vulgari Eloquentia and the Psychology of Grammar in the Middle Ages.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LI, No. 12 (1991), 4114–A. 

Doctoral Dissertation, Harvard University, 1990. 377 p.

Ciccarelli, Andrea. “Dante e la poesia italiana del Novecento: il caso Quasimodo.” In Quaderni d’italianistica, XII, No. 2 (1991), 261–271. 

Examines the presence of Dante in the thought and works of Salvatore Quasimodo.

Cioffari, Vincenzo. “Dante’s Use of Lapidaries: A Source Study.” In Dante Studies, CIX (1991), 149–162. 

Examines Dante’s knowledge of precious stones, and presents passages from the Comedy and other of his works that include mention of these as well as the pertinent texts from probable/possible sources (Albertus Magnus, Papias, Isidore, Intelligenza, etc.).

Cioffari, Vincenzo. “Transcription of Inferno XXXIV from Laurentian Pluteo 40.2 and Its Sources.” In L’Alighieri, XXXII, No. 2 (1991), 3–20. 

Cioffari continues his study of the glosses on the Inferno (see Dante Studies, CI, 1983, 1–25) by presenting the text of Andrea Justi de Volterra’s commentary on Inf. XXXIV (MS Plut. 40.2) and that of Benvenuto da Imola, contained in the unpublished Seville MS 5–5–29 (Biblioteca Capitular y Colombina).

Copeland, Rita. Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. xiv, 295 p.

Contains many passing references to Dante. However, in one section Copeland considers both the De vulgari eloquentia and the Convivio, arguing that the former is a “rhetoric” both in the “narrowly technical sense of the Ars poetica or the medieval artes poetriae” and “in the broader political sense of Cicero’s De oratore.” In this way the work foreshadows “Dante’s more extended attempt, in the Convivio, to locate the vernacular in a system of rhetorical values.”

Cornish, Alison. “Difficult Beginnings: Astronomical Exordia in the Poetry of Dante.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LI, No. 11 (1991), 3765–A. 

Doctoral Dissertation, Stanford University, 1990. 238 p.

Costa-Zalessow, Natalia. “The Personification of Italy from Dante through the Trecento.” In Italica, LXVIII, No. 3 (1991), 316–331. 

Focuses on the manner in which Dante presents Italy through similes and in a direct personification (e.g., Inf. I, 106; Purg. VI, 76–151) and examines similar instances in other writers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (e.g., Guittone d’Arezzo, Petrarca, Boccaccio).

Critical Essays on Dante. Edited by Giuseppe Mazzotta. Boston, Mass.: G. K. Hall, 1991. (Critical Essays on World Literature) xxii, 220 p. 

In addition to a Preface, Introduction, Chronology of Important Dates, Selected Bibliography and Index, the volume contains texts and essays by (in order of presentation) Dante Alighieri, Guido da Pisa, Giovanni Boccaccio, Benvenuto da Imola, Francesco Petrarca, Cristoforo Landino, Benedetto Varchi, Iacopo Mazzoni, Gianvincenzo Gravina, Giambattista Vico, Francesco De Sanctis, Benedetto Croce, Erich Auerbach, Bruno Nardi, Etienne Gilson, Charles S. Singleton, Gian Roberto Sarolli, John Freccero, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Jorge Luis Borges, and Giuseppe Mazzotta. Each text and essay is listed separately in this bibliography under the individual author’s name.

Croce, Benedetto. “Character and Virtue of Dante’s Poetry.” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 81–87. [1991]

The selections from Croce’s La Poesia di Dante (Bari: Laterza, 1921) have been translated for this volume by Fiorella Magrini.

Dante and Ovid: Essays in Intertextuality. Edited by Madison U. Sowell. Binghamton, New York: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1991. [xii], 187 p. 

Contains essays by Peter S. Hawkins, Lavinia Lorch, Maristella Lorch, Pamela Royston Macfie, Ronald L. Martinez, Robert McMahon, R. A. Shoaf, Janet Levarie Smarr, and Madison U. Sowell. Each essay is listed separately in this bibliography under the individual author’s name.

Dasenbrock, Reed Way. Imitating the Italians: Wyatt, Spenser, Synge, Pound, Joyce. Baltimore, Maryland, and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. xiv, 282 p. 

Argues in Chapter Nine, “Ezra Pound, the Last Ghibelline,” that “Pound’s fixation on Mussolini cannot be understood outside of the larger context of Pound’s life–long admiration for Italian culture, in particular, for Italy’s greatest poet, Dante.” For Dante in De Monarchia “there are two key elements in good government: a sense of common good and the existence of hierarchy or subjection.” Reviews Dante’s political biography, including his support for Henry VII. Concludes that Pound’s “overly politicized reading of [Dante] ...recalls Machiavelli’s own reading of Petrarch’s ‘Italia Mia’.” Summarizes in the concluding chapter (“In Search of the True Dantescan Voice”) that “virtually all the major modernist writers in English...were...trying to write the Commedia of the twentieth century.” Dante’s most widely admired achievements among the modernists were “the encyclopaedic scope of his epic, the sense in which a total vision of life is to be found in the Commedia, and his architectonic construction.” (An earlier version of Chapter Nine appeared as a journal article.)

Demaray, John. Cosmos and Epic Representation: Dante, Spenser, Milton and the Transformation of Renaissance Heroic Poetry. Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press, 1991. xv, 267 p. 

Investigates the spiritual nature of geography (pilgrimage routes) and architecture (the round church of the Holy Sepulchre, medieval cathedrals, and rose windows) and their presence in and influence on the works of Dante, Spenser, and Milton. According to Demaray, all pilgrimages replay the Exodus, from Egypt to salvation. The events in the poet’s life, which are presented and ordered in the Divine Comedy, correspond to the various “stages” or way–stations that are familiar features of medieval pilgrimages. These events then become “types,” which find their fulfillment in the Comedy, thus suggesting that Dante is conforming his life to a figural pattern. The culmination of Dante’s spiritual journey in the Paradiso corresponds to a pilgrim’s reaching the temple of Jerusalem.

De Rooy, Ronald. “On Anthropophagy in Dante’s Inferno.” In Lectura Dantis, VIII (1991), 64–84. 

An examination of Dante’s imagery of cannibalism in the Inferno reveals that the poet plays with the theme of anthropophagy in various ways. The Ugolino episode represents the climax of several allusions to oral aggressiveness found in preceding cantos of the Inferno and also gives particular significance to the figure of Ugolino when compared intertextually with Seneca’s Thyestes.

De Sanctis, Francesco. “The Subject of the Divine Comedy.” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 60–81. [1991]

The selections from De Sanctis are taken from the translation of Joseph Rossi and Alfred Galpin, De Sanctis on Dante (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1957).

Di Cesare, Mario A. (Editor). See Milton in Italy... (q. v.).

Fajardo-Acosta, Fidel. “Purgatorio XXVIII: Catharsis and Paradisal Visions as States of Dynamic Equilibrium.” In Neophilologus, LXXV, No. 2 (1991), 222–231. 

Analyzes the description of the Earthly Paradise in Canto XXVIII of Purgatory to illustrate Dante’s own conception of Paradise as the joining of opposites: darkness and light, purity and impurity, knowledge and forgetfulness, the physical and the spiritual. Fajardo-Acosta argues that Dante follows St. Augustine’s conception of Paradise as the union of opposites and, in so doing, allows for the sensuous—human—depiction of the height of Purgatory. Fajardo-Acosta concludes that the co–existence of opposites in Dante’s work places the Earthly Paradise precisely between Heaven and Hell and shows that it is the maximum attainable pleasure and knowledge from a human point of view.

Flosi, Linda. “The Geometry of Action in Dante’s Commedia: Lines, Circles and Angles.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LI, No. 12 (1991), 4114–A. 

Doctoral Dissertation, Northwestern University, 1990. 192 p.

Forni, Pier Massimo. “Boccaccio retore.” In Modern Language Notes, CVI, No. 1 (1991), 189–201. 

Review–article that considers, among other works, Robert Hollander’s Boccaccio’s Last Fiction: “Il Corbaccio” (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988); see Dante Studies, CVII, 141.

Forsyth, Neil. “Of Man’s First Dis.” In Milton in Italy... (q. v.), pp. 345–369. [1991]

Contains discussions of Dante’s use of the Proserpina story and his references to and depictions of Dis.

Freccero, John. “The Eternal Image of the Father.” In The Poetry of Allusion... (q.v.), pp. 62–76, 264–265. [1991]

Treats “Dante’s disquieting encounter with his teacher, the vernacular father figure Brunetto Latini. Freccero reads Dante’s characterization of Brunetto as ‘cara e buona immagine paterna’...in relation to the imago of Anchises in Aeneid 6, as well as to Bernardus Silvestris’s commentary on this Virgilian topos. He situates the figure of Brunetto in a series of paternal analogues that include and extend the specifically Virgilian prototype. ...Freccero views Dante’s engagement with paternal analogues as constitutive of his own poetic authority and mission.”

Freccero, John. “The Dance of the Stars: Paradiso X.” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 158–179. [1991]

Reprint of an essay that first appeared in Dante Studies, LXXXVI, 85–111.

Gasbarra, Shane Stuart. “Conceptions of Likeness in the Epic Similes of Homer, Vergil, Dante, and Milton.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LII, No. 1 (1991), 156-A. 

Doctoral Dissertation, Yale University, 1990. 257 p.

Gilbert, Creighton E. Poets Seeing Artists’ Work: Instances in the Italian Renaissance. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1991. 293 p. 

Contains a section on Dante, in which Gilbert examines the analogy between the Comedy and a Gothic cathedral (admittedly now a cliché) with specific references to Reims, Chartres, Amiens, Pisa, and Siena. Treats architectural poetry in its rhyme structure (terza rima compared to Gothic columns), the influence of structures on behavior, and the use of place definition to organize places through the poem as well as to organize life, death, and judgement. Comparisons are made with Giotto and Giovanni Pisano, noting that “sculpture seems a better analogy” than painting.

Gilson, Etienne. “Dante’s Place in History.” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 119–139. [1991]

The selections from Gilson’s Dante the Philosopher are taken from the translation of David Moore (London, 1948).

Ginsberg, Warren. “Dante, Ovid, and the Transformation of Metamorphosis.” In Traditio, XLVI (1991), 205–233.

Reads the deforming metamorphoses of the thieves in Inferno XXIV–XXV as meaningful revisions of the Ovidian model, which Dante openly challenges in these cantos. Claims that Ovid’s metamorphoses operate only on the surface and are thus unrelated to inner transmutation, while Dante’s “out-Ovid Ovid’s because they at once establish the limits of outward change and point to substantive transformations beyond the power of any pagan writer to imagine.” Contends that theft violates justice’s regulation of relations; metamorphosis, therefore, stands as a fitting punishment for the sin since, according to Ginsberg, metamorphosis creates a lack of relation between the forms that are changed. Argues that the thieves stand as illustrations of the dehumanizing metamorphoses experienced by all damned souls. Uses Aristotle, Aquinas, and Statius’s disquisition on the creation of the soul in Purgatory XXV to consider Dante’s conception of human matter and form, contending that damnation involves a process of un-becoming, a movement away from form that bespeaks the dissolution of the intellectual soul. Concludes that Dante figures metamorphosis as an allegory of inner change and that “in the Inferno, metamorphosis thus changes from fiction to a figure for allegory, the soul’s impaired form, justice, conversion, the Incarnation, and the Resurrection.” [JL]

Gravina, Gianvincenzo. “From Della Ragion Poetica (Book II).” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 50–57. [1991]

The selections from Gravina’s Della Ragion Poetica Libri due (in Scritti Critici e Teorici, ed. Amedeo Quondam [Bari: Laterza, 1973]) have been translated for this volume by Mary Ann McDonald Carolan.

Greene, Thomas M. “Ritual and Text in the Renaissance.” In Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, XVIII, Nos. 2-3 (June-September, 1991), 179–197.

Ceremony and ritual played a formative role in medieval and ancient societies, a role that is largely unknown in the modern world. Whereas the medieval individual was “endowed with a ceremonial identity,” the modern period by and large dispenses with ritual. The sixteenth century marks the period when ritual and ceremony began to be questioned, sometimes radically. Dante’s Purgatorio, the canticle that portrays the greatest number of ritual actions, serves as an example of medieval ritual as it appears in a literary text. Dante portrays the entrance to purgatory proper, in particular the inscribing of the 7 Ps on the pilgrim’s forehead narrated in canto 9, as a ritual, which draws on elements from three different sacraments: penance, holy orders, and baptism (the Ps reverse the symbolic gesture of the sphragis in baptism). And while this combination and fusion demonstrates ritual innovations, the scene nevertheless presents an efficacious symbol, securely grounded. Other later authors—beginning with Boccaccio and Petrarch and including Bruni, Erasmus, Rabelais, Ronsard, Shakespeare, and Cervantes—portray ritual innovations that demonstrate a loss of grounding and a simultaneous nostalgia for a discredited ritual that answers to a deeply felt human need. [SB]

Guerra D’Antoni, Francesca. Dante’s Burning Sands: Some New Perspectives. New York: Peter Lang, 1991. xii, 181. (Studies in Italian Culture. Literature in History, Vol. 4)

“This study illuminates some dark passages at the center of the Commedia’s three canticles, revealing the poem’s artistic integrity in ways hitherto unperceived. Dante’s Sodom is a crematorium of all dead empires, where his fellow aristocrats join other Italian nobles, later judged in Purgatorio and Paradiso, as perverters of their ‘holy seed’ of Roman nobility. All sinned against God, Nature and Art by subordinating their divine gift of human intelligence to beastly instincts, abusing power and privilege for material gain—a practice abhorrent to a true Roman. Having undergone metempsychosis, they resemble Homeric beasts pastured by Circe in Dante’s typological circle of burning sands in the Inferno.” Contents: Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. Nature’s Revenge; 2. Wastelands; 3. Vineyards; 4. Naked Cities; 5. Fortune and Virtue; 6. Giovare: To Serve; 7. Merciless Magistrates; Abbreviations; Notes; Index.

Guido da Pisa. “Prologue to the Commentary.” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 14–20. [1991]

The translation is that of Vincenzo Cioffari and Francesco Mazzoni; see Dante Studies, XC, 125–137.

Harris, Neil. “The Vallombrosa Simile and the Image of the Poet in Paradise Lost.” In Milton in Italy... (q. v.), pp. 71–94. [1991]

Contains numerous references to Dante.

Harris, Patricia Stäblein. “La Genèse de la Fureur: Bertran de Born, Inferno XXVIII et Gerusalemme Liberata VIII.” In Mélanges de langue et de littérature occitanes, médiévales et modernes en hommage à Pierre Bec (Poitiers: Centre d’Études Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale, 1991), pp. 193–205.

Suggests that Dante defines a mode of divine justice and a mode of writing—the contrapasso—in the figure of Bertran de Born. Images of rupture and unnarratibility are present at the level of both the subject and the narration. Those who would divide institutions such as the Church and the State create an upside-down world (“monde à l’envers”), and that world is “réalisé par une écriture, une rhétorique, et enfin une langue ‘mise à l’envers’.”

Harwood-Gordon, Sharon. A Study of the Theology and the Imagery of Dante’s “Divina Commedia”: Sensory Perception, Reason and Free Will. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991. (Studies in Italian Literature, Vol. 2)

“Dante interprets for the modern world the Aristotelian via media between Platonism and pre-Socratic sensism that teaches the interdependency of the body and soul in the recognition and interpretation of physical, intellectual, and moral truth. Philosophical and religious dogma, secular and sacred verities must be perceived through the physical senses before they can be comprehended by the rational mind.” The volume provides “an analysis of Dante’s presentation of the poet’s experiences during the extraordinary journey that is narrated in the Divina Commedia.”

Hawkins, Peter. “Dido, Beatrice, and the Signs of Ancient Love.” In The Poetry of Allusion... (q.v.), pp. 113–130, 274–276. [1991]

Examines “the implications of Dante’s rewriting of Virgil’s Dido in his own encounter with Beatrice atop Mount Purgatory. Demonstrating Dido’s importance as a counterexample to Dante’s conception of the redemptive potential of erotic love, Hawkins discusses both her role in the Aeneid and her presence in the Commedia. Dante greets Beatrice by translating the words that Dido had used to acknowledge her love for Aeneas; embedded within this translation Hawkins finds not only a rethinking of the possibilities of eros, but also an attempt on Dante’s part to position himself with respect to Virgil.”

Hawkins, Peter. “Divide and Conquer: Augustine in the Divine Comedy.” In PMLA, CVI, No. 3 (1991), 471–482. 

Examines the subtle presence of Augustine in the Comedy by focussing on cantos XIII–XVII of the Purgatorio and, in particular, on the nature of the earthly city which is neither Virgilian nor Augustinian. In these cantos Dante reworks pertinent passages from the City of God (15.5) and puts these paraphrases into Virgil’s mouth in order to shape his own conception of Rome and the importance of the earthly city. In accordance with the sort of parallel structures that obtain in the Comedy Dante presents in Purgatorio XV two “father” figures—Virgil and Augustine (cf. Brunetto Latini [Inf. XV] and Cacciaguida [Par. XV])—whose divergent views he has reconciled and transcended to become himself a “Christian Vergil and alter Augustinus.”

Hawkins, Peter. “The Metamorphosis of Ovid.” In Dante and Ovid... (q.v.), pp. 17–34. [1991]

Examines the process by which Dante downgrades Ovid as a poetic model when moving from his earlier works to the Comedy. Central to the discussion is the reasoning behind Dante’s “concealment” of a literary progenitor that is second only to Virgil in the Comedy: the author suggests that Ovid’s goal of poetic virtuosity aimed at personal fame is incongruent with Dante’s creation of sacred poetry. Thus, the Metamorphoses is present as a subtext in the Paradiso in order to show how Dante has transformed himself from an erring, egoistic Ovidian figure into a poet capable of writing sacred poetry.

Hawkins, Peter. “‘Out upon Circumference’: Discovery in Dante.” In Discovering New Worlds: Essays on Medieval Exploration and Imagination, edited by Scott D. Westrem (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1991), pp. 193–220. 

Treats, among many other matters, Dante’s conception of the voyage of Ulysses, his inventive manipulations of earthly geography, his discussion of the “character and efficacy of religious travel” (i.e., pilgrimages), and his “discoveries” in the areas of linguistics and poetics.

Hawkins, Peter. “Watching Matelda.” In The Poetry of Allusion... (q.v.), pp. 181–201, 283–286. [1991]

A “study of the interaction between secular and sacred texts in Purgatorio 28. Hawkins begins by noting the misleading hermeneutic cues offered in Dante’s initial description of the Garden of Eden and of its genius loci (later identified as Matelda). ... By comparing Matelda to Proserpina and Venus, and the pilgrim to Xerxes and Leander, Dante seems to suggest that a shockingly inappropriate Ovidian scenario linking eros, tragedy, and death is relevant to Eden. Matelda herself, however, quickly forecloses this possibility. She glosses the Garden with a sacred song, the Ninety–first Psalm, which celebrates God as Creator and song itself as a response to divine creation. Her Christian pastoral, therefore, argues the case for an alternative poetry of divine love and praise that goes beyond the Ovidian interpretive models and their tragic equation of love and death.”

Herz, Judith Scherer. “‘For whom this glorious sight?’: Dante, Milton, and the Galileo Question.” In Milton in Italy... (q. v.), pp. 147–157. [1991]

Discusses the presence of Dante (and Galileo) in Paradise Lost.

Hollander, Robert. “Dante’s Misreadings of the Aeneid in Inferno 20.” In The Poetry of Allusion... (q.v.), pp. 77–93, 265–270. [1991]

The essay “is concerned with the most blatant and most aggressive of Dante’s rewritings of Virgil. The appearance of Manto among the diviners punished in the fourth ditch of the Malebolge leads Virgil to recount a new version of the founding of his native Mantua that not only contradicts Aeneid 10.198–203, but also insists that it alone is accurate. The discrepancy between these two stories leads Hollander to the conundrum of Purgatorio 22, where Virgil speaks to Statius of a second Manto who resides in limbo rather than in hell. Hollander treats the confusing presence of these two Mantos—usually attributed to a lapse on Dante’s part—as the product of a deliberate triangulation by Dante of his own text with those of Virgil and Statius. He argues that by introducing the Statian Manto, Dante intends to offer hope for pagan prophecy and poetry—a hope embodied, not in Virgil, but in Dante’s own figure of the chiuso Cristian..., Statius himself.”

Howard, Lloyd, and Elena Rossi. “Textual Mapping of Dante’s Journey Back to Political Original Sin in Florence.” In Modern Language Notes, CVI, No. 1 (1991), 184–188. 

Howard and Rossi isolate seven political figures in the Inferno (Farinata degli Uberti, Tegghiaio Aldobrandi, Iacopo Rusticucci, Guido Guerra, Catalano de’ Malavolti, Loderingo degli Andalò, and Mosca de’ Lamberti) and argue that they are linked with nine linguistic formulas in the poem. These formulas, however, are not simply “rhetorical devices of repetition,” but have an “unexpected narrative function that transcends their traditional role as identifiers of heroes or metrical fillers.”

Huttar, Charles A. “Arms and the Man: The Place of Beatrice in Charles Williams’s Romantic Theology.” In Studies in Medievalism, III, Nos. 3-4 (Winter-Spring, 1991), 307–343.

Seeks to clarify the Beatrician aspect of Williams’s thought, distinguishing the Beatrician figure, a passive “God-bearer,” from the Christ-figure, who is active and gives the other something. After tracing the Beatrician figure in Williams’s Arthurian works, Huttar turns to the question of when and how Williams’s views developed and what new insights his study of Dante contributed. One must look to Williams’s life to understand this issue properly. Dante did not figure in Williams’s early Romantic Theology, expressed in sonnets composed for his wife Michal. Personal experiences in the late 1920s forced Williams to give greater attention to the dark side of Romantic Theology, a process in which Dante became prominent; finally, the flowering of his mature expression of Beatrician theology ran parallel with a revitalization of his marriage to Michal. [LW]

Jacoff, Rachel. “Intertextualities in Arcadia: Purgatorio 30.49–51.” In The Poetry of Allusion... (q.v.), pp. 131–144, 276–278. [1991]

“Jacoff glosses the triple repetition of Virgil’s name that occurs at the very instant of his disappearance from the Commedia...and links this threefold repetition to the analogous scene of Eurydice’s disappearance in Georgics 4, which Dante deforms or, actually, reforms. Jacoff sees this allusion as layered, a double allusion that recalls not only Georgics 4 but also Statius’s rehearsal of the same motif at the conclusion of the Thebaid. The triple repetition of “The Arcadian” brings the narrative of the Thebaid to a conclusion by mourning the Arcadian Parthenopaeus, whose name may be seen as an oblique reference to Virgil himself.”

Jacoff, Rachel. (Joint author). “Introduction.” In The Poetry of Allusion... (q.v.), pp. 1–15. [1991]

Presents an overview of the collection with specific discussions of the individual essays and their particular critical perspectives on the Divine Comedy.

Jacoff, Rachel. (Co–editor). See The Poetry of Allusion... (q.v.).

Jacoff, Rachel. “The Rape/Rapture of Europa: Paradiso 27. In The Poetry of Allusion... (q.v.), pp. 233–246, 294–295. [1991]

“While Dante’s brief allusion in Paradiso 27.83–84 to ‘il lito / nel qual si fece Europa dolce carco’...is usually assumed to refer to Metamorphoses 2, Jacoff argues for two other Ovidian sources: Metamorphoses 6, where Europa’s abduction appears as the paradigmatic rape story in Arachne’s tapestry, and Fasti 5, where Europa’s abduction is linked instead to the sign of Taurus and her triumph as the eponymous mistress of the European continent. The former associates Europa with the problem of artistic self–representation; the latter hints at a more positive reading in which rape is transformed into rapture, transgression into transcendence.”

Jacoff, Rachel. “Transgression and Transcendence: Figures of Female Desire in Dante’s Commedia.” In The New Medievalism, edited by Marina S. Brownlee, Kevin Brownlee, and Stephen G. Nichols (Baltimore, Maryland, and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), pp. 183-200. (See Dante Studies, CVII, 144.)

Kimmelman, Burt Joseph. “The Poetics of Authorship in the Later Middle Ages: The Emergence of the Modern Literary Persona.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LII, No. 5 (1991), 1741–A. 

Doctoral Dissertation, City University of New York, 1991. 390 p. (Contains a section on Dante.)

Kiser, Lisa J. Truth and Textuality in Chaucer’s Poetry. Hanover, New Hampshire, and London: University Press of New England, 1991. x, 201 p. 

Numerous references to Dante are made, mostly attempting by way of comparison to generate a more complete understanding of medieval poetics and the conception of truth in general, and Chaucer’s poetics and conception of truth in particular.

Kleiner, John Edward. “Mismapping the Underworld: Essays on Error in Dante.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LII, No. 3 (1991), 909–A. 

Doctoral Dissertation, Stanford University, 1991. 173 p.

Kleinhenz, Christopher. “American Dante Bibliography for 1990.” In Dante Studies, CIX (1991), 163–216. 

With brief analyses.

Kleinhenz, Christopher. “Texts, Naked and Thinly Veiled: Erotic Elements in Medieval Italian Literature.” In Sex in the Middle Ages, edited by Joyce E. Salisbury (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1991), pp. 83–109.

Contains some references to Dante, in particular to the tenzone with Forese Donati.

Kollmann, Judith J. “Charles Williams’ All Hallows Eve: A Modern Adaptation of Dante's Commedia.” In Studies in Medievalism, III, No. 3-4 (Winter-Spring, 1991), 291–305.

As the title suggests, this article studies the intertextual relationship between Charles Williams’s 1944 novel, All Hallows Eve, and the Divine Comedy. [FA]

Landino, Cristoforo. “The Divine Origin of Poetry.” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 36–41. [1991]

The selections from the introduction to Dante con l’Esposizione di Cristoforo Landino (Venezia, 1564) have been translated for this volume by John S. Smurthwaite.

Lansing, Richard H. “Purgatorio III.” In Lectura Dantis, IX (1991), 54–71. 

A general reading of the third canto of Purgatory with special attention given to Manfred who emerges as “a figure of eternal hope to all, and the embodiment of the renewal and the regeneration of the human spirit.”

Lieb, Michael. The Visionary Mode: Biblical Prophecy, Hermeneutics, and Cultural Change. Ithaca, New York, and London: Cornell University Press, 1991. xi, 362 p. I

In Chapter Eight, “The Poetics of Vision” (306–350), Lieb considers Dante’s position in and contribution to the tradition of the “visionary mode as hermeneutical enterprise,” and treats the Divine Comedy as representing “a culminating moment in the history of the visionary mode both as poetic and as hermeneutic event.” Analyzes, in particular, the Letter to Can Grande and Cantos XXVII–XXXIII of Purgatorio as especially “compelling evidence of the assimilation of the visionary into Dante’s thought.”

Lipke, William Alan. “Liszt’s Dante Fantasia: An Historical and Musical Study.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LI, No. 11 (1991), 3553-3554-A. 

Doctoral Dissertation (D. M. A.), University of Cincinnati, 1990. 137 p.

Livorni, Ernesto. “Dantesque Iconoclasts: Pound, T. S. Eliot, Ungaretti, Montale.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LI, No. 8 (1991), 2735-A. 

Doctoral Dissertation, University of Connecticut, 1990. 604 p. (“Discusses the presence and significance of Dante’s poetry in the works of Pound, Eliot, Ungaretti and Montale. The central theme is the elaboration of Dante’s similes and metaphors by the four poets.”)

Livorni, Ernesto. “Giuseppe Ungaretti e Dante: dall’effimero all’eterno.” In Canadian Journal of Italian Studies, XIV, Nos. 42-43 (1991), 122-131.

Although frequently considered a poet in the tradition of Petrarch, Giuseppe Ungaretti demonstrated a profound indebtedness to the poetry of Dante. The author analyzes Ungaretti’s different writings on Dante, from his early lectures given in Brazil to his long essay on the first canto of Inferno and relates them to important thematics in his poetry. [FA]

Lorch, Lavinia (Joint author). See Maristella Lorch, “Metaphor and Metamorphosis”...

Lorch, Maristella, and Lavinia Lorch. “Metaphor and Metamorphosis: Purgatorio 27 and Metamorphoses 4.” In Dante and Ovid... (q.v.), pp. 99–121. [1991]

Briefly traces Ovid’s poetic presence in the Comedy before concentrating on Dante’s use of the Pyramus and Thisbe myth as a subtext for Purgatorio XXVII. The author compares and contrasts the wall of fire which separates Dante the pilgrim from Beatrice with the wall that separates Ovid’s lovers. In the latter case, death and infertility are the outcomes, while in the former, Virgil’s invocation of Beatrice’s name spurs him on through the fire into metamorphosis and fertility.

Luciano, Bernadette Mary. “Porta and Dante: A Study of Porta’s Translations from the Inferno.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LII, No. 2 (1991), 558-559-A. 

Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University, 1990. 171 p.

Macfie, Pamela Royston. “Mimicry and Metamorphoses: Ovidian Voices in Purgatorio 1.7–12.” In Dante and Ovid... (q.v.), pp. 87–97. [1991]

Examines the metaphor at the beginning of Purgatorio in which the Pierides (“Piche”) are put forth as negative examples of speech which is no more than mimicry, and which results in “absolute loss” from a poetic point of view. The author reads the Ovidian source myth in detail, and then concludes that these transformed sisters are the anti–type of a poet who must be corrected by Calliope’s song. Yet, the essay concludes, even Calliope is not a sufficient muse for Dante, for his poetry must go beyond her pagan status into the realm of Christian transformation.

Macfie, Pamela Royston. “Ovid, Arachne, and the Poetics of Paradise.” In The Poetry of Allusion... (q.v.), pp. 159–172, 280–282. [1991]

“[E]xplores Dante’s treatment of one of Ovid’s emblematic artist figures, Arachne. Like Narcissus and Phaeton, Arachne figures in all three cnaticles, but is present in different guises in each of them. Tracking her successive appearance from Inferno 17 to Paradiso 18, Macfie shows how Arachne is consistently linked to Dante’s poetic self–definition, and to the transformations it undergoes in the course of the poem’s unfolding. She traces the correlation between the evolving definition of Arachne’s artistry and Dante’s own development as a specifically Christian poeta.”

Malen, Lenore. Images from Dante. Essay (“Why Dante”) by Meyer Raphael Rubinstein. New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 1991. 30 p.

The small volume contains ten illustrations of Dante’s Comedy by the artist Lenore Malen. The introductory essay comments on the merits of the present illustrations and on the more general question of why Dante’s poem has attracted the attention of artists through the centuries.

Martinez, Ronald L. “Ovid’s Crown of Stars (Paradiso 13.1–27).” In Dante and Ovid... (q.v.), pp. 123–138. [1991]

In this detailed explication of the complex astronomy found in Dante’s heaven of the sun, the author suggests how the first twenty–seven lines of Canto XIII are symmetrical, and revolve around “la figliuola di Minoi”: the title of Ovid’s character, Ariadne. Attempts to establish a close relationship between Dante’s process of constellating the Paradiso, and the Ovidian metamorphosis by which Ariadne’s crown is transformed into a crown of stars.

Masciandaro, Franco. Dante as Dramatist: The Myth of the Earthly Paradise and Tragic Vision in the “Divine Comedy”. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. xxvii, 239 p. 

Investigates the poem’s “dramatic dimension”—its “poetry of the theater”—with its sequencing of acts and scenes and its constant dialectical play and the resulting tensions, and suggests that through Dante’s subtle manipulation of the tragic rhythms the reader may be drawn into the action of the poem to experience with the protagonist the processes through which conflict is determined and resolved. Of particular importance is Dante’s “interpretation and reenactment of the myth of the Earthly Paradise” which is “never completely understood” but which has a “deep relation to history.” According to Masciandaro, we “learn that myth, in order not to be reduced to a dream, must enter and vivify man’s existence and be interpreted anew on the stage of this life; and that drama, if it is not to become only a mirror of fragments, but seeks instead unity in the midst of dispersion and the uniqueness of the individual as a measure of the universal, must recreate myth.” Contents: Acknowledgments; Introduction; I. The Prologue: The Nostalgia for Eden and the Rediscovery of the Tragic; II. The Garden of the Ancient Poets; III. The Paradise of Paolo and Francesca and the Negation of the Tragic; IV. The Recovery of the Way to Eden: Rites of Expulsion and Reconciliation in Purgatorio I; V. The Garden of the Negligent Princes; VI. The Earthly Paradise and the Recovery of Tragic Vision; Works Cited; Index.

Musa, Mark. Aspetti d’amore: Dalla “Vita nuova” alla “Commedia”. Pisa: Pacini Editore, 1991. 165 p.

In this volume Musa provides Italian versions of four essays that originally appeared in English. One—”Saggio sulla “Vita nuova”—first appeared as an interpretative study (“An Essay on the Vita Nuova”) appended to the new edition of his translation, Dante’s “Vita Nuova (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973) (see Dante Studies, XCII, 182). The other three—”Una lezione di lussuria,” “Senti Francesca come parla bene,” and “Il ‘dolce stil novo ch’i’ odo’”—first appeared as chapters in his Advent at the Gates: Dante’s “Comedy” (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974) (see Dante Studies, XCIII, 236-237), as, respectively, “A Lesson in Lust,” “Behold Francesca Who Speaks So Well,” and “The ‘Sweet New Style’ That I Hear.”

Mazzaro, Jerome. “From Fin Amour to Friendship: Dante’s Transformation.” In “The Olde Daunce”: Love, Friendship, Sex, and Marriage in the Medieval World, edited by Robert R. Edwards and Stephen Spector (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 121–137, 270–272. 

Considers the development of philosophical and theological notions of “love” and “friendship” through the centuries and how these shaped Dante’s evolving views on love in the Vita Nuova, Convivio, and Divine Comedy. Special attention is given to Inferno V.

Mazzoni, Iacopo. “On the Defense of the Comedy of Dante.” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 48–49. [1991]

The selections from Mazzoni’s work are taken from the translation of Robert L. Montgomery, On the Defense of the Comedy of Dante (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1983); see Dante Studies, CII, 158.

Mazzotta, Giuseppe. (Editor). See Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.).

Mazzotta, Giuseppe. “Introduction.” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. ix–xxii. [1991]

Presents an overview of the collection with specific discussions of the individual essays and their particular critical perspectives on the Divine Comedy.

Mazzotta, Giuseppe. “The Light of Venus and the Poetry of Dante.” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 188–207. [1991]

Reprint of an essay that first appeared in Magister Regis: Studies in Honor of Robert Earl Kaske, edited by Arthur Groos, with Emerson Brown, Jr., Giuseppe Mazzotta, Thomas D. Hill, and Joseph S. Wittig (New York: Fordham University Press, 1986); see Dante Studies, CV, 154.

McEntire, Sandra. “Ruminating and Dreaming in Purgatorio XXVII.” In Mediaevalia, XIV (1991 for 1988), 77–92. 

Discusses the meaning of goats in Christian allegory in order to comment on the description of Dante the Pilgrim as a “capra” in Purgatory XXVII. McEntire suggests that these associations prepare the way for the Pilgrim’s third prophetic dream of Leah and Rachel—the active and the contemplative life—and for Dante’s claim to both of these complementary aspects.

McGregor, James H. The Image of Antiquity in Boccaccio’s “Filocolo,” “Filostrato,” and “Teseida”. New York–Bern–Frankfurt am Main–Paris: Peter Lang, 1991. [ix], 192 p. (Studies in Italian Culture: Literature in History, 1.) 

Contains scattered references to Dante.

McGregor, James H. The Shades of Aeneas: The Imitation of Vergil and the History of Paganism in Boccaccio’s “Filostrato,” “Filocolo,” and “Teseida”. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1991.

Contains some references to Dante.

McMahon, Robert. “Satan as Infernal Narcissus: Interpretative Translation in the Commedia.” In Dante and Ovid... (q.v.), pp. 65–86. [1991]

Summarizes and extends the work done by Dragonetti, Brownlee, and Shoaf on Dante’s use of the Ovidian figure of Narcissus. Satan is presented as a magnification and broadening of the pride (i.e., lack of self–knowledge) that caused Narcissus’ destruction. Based on his actions in Purgatorio XXX, Dante the pilgrim is shown to be an anti–Narcissus who avoids death due to the self–knowledge gained through Christian humility. The author extends the discussion to show how God is the Ultimate Narcissus, but in a positive way: He gazes lovingly at His own Image (humankind), but with self–knowledge, rather than pride; in this way, Dante converts a pagan story into one of Christian Truths.

Menocal, María Rosa. Writing in Dante’s Cult of Truth: From Borges to Boccaccio. Durham, North Carolina, and London: Duke University Press, 1991. 223 p. 

Uses the Vita nuova and Divine Comedy as the basis for a critical and intertextual investigation of subsequent authors—Petrarch, Boccaccio, Borges, Pound, Eliot, and Silvio Pellico—who have “rewritten” Dante’s poetic experience in their own works. Menocal examines “questions of truth, ideology, and reality in poetry as they occur in a series of texts and in the relationship between those texts across time. Contents: Prologue: Wilderness; I. Synchronicity: Death and the Vita nuova; II. Bondage: Pellico’s Francescas; III. Faint Praise and Proper Criticism: The miglior fabbri; IV. Blindness: Alephs and Lovers; Epilogue: Liberation: Galeotto and Doubt; Works Cited; Index.

Milton in Italy: Contexts, Images, Contradictions. Edited by Mario A. Di Cesare. Binghamton, New York: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1991.

Contains essays that deal in part with Dante by Neil Forsyth, Neil Harris, and Judith Scherer Herz. Each essay is listed separately in this bibliography under the individual author’s name.

Moskal, Jeanne. “Blake, Dante, and Whatever Book is for Vengeance.” In Philological Quarterly, LXX, No. 3 (1991), 317–337. 

The illustrations which Blake made for the Divine Comedy late in his career show his preoccupation with the problem of forgiveness. He attacks Dante’s belief in the finality of judgment after death, writing in his copy of the Comedy, “Whatever Book is for Vengeance for Sin & whatever Book is Against the Forgiveness of Sins is not of the Father but of Satan the Accuser & Father of Hell.” His illustrations, according to Moskal, display Blake’s “desire to correct a disposition in Dante’s character, the disposition of vengeance and accusation, in favor of mutual forgiveness, which Blake calls ‘the Gates of Paradise’.”

Mozzillo, Elizabeth. “Dialectic and the Convivio.” In Italian Culture, IX (1991), 29–41. 

Mozzillo notes how Dante’s dismissive attitude towards dialectic in Book II of the Convivio is probably due to its role in Aristotelian logic. But dialectic also plays an important role in neoplatonic dialogues with the self, where love impels the soul in its journey upward towards transcendent truth. The employment of dialectic in this second context renders much more ambiguous the relationship between dialectic, Dante’s love for the donna gentile of the canzoni, and the disputational strategies of Book IV of the Convivio. “Dialectic is not unlike poetry,” she writes, “that hides under its allegorical veil the truth.” It is this affinity which allows Dante to unite dialectical form with conventional poetic form. “The innovation of Convivio IV and the canzone of ‘gentilezza’ lies,” she explains, “in the method in which moral philosophical truths are demonstrated in a logical argument which is then contained in a poetic structure.”

Nardi, Bruno. “Whether Dante Was a True Prophet.” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 113–118. [1991]

Nardi’s text (from Dante e la cultura medievale [Bari: Laterza, 1984]) has been translated for this volume by Marilyn Myatt.

Neuse, Richard. Chaucer’s Dante: Allegory and Epic Theater in “The Canterbury Tales”. Berkeley–Los Angeles–Oxford: University of California Press, 1991. xi, 295 p. 

Starting from the premise that Chaucer modeled The Canterbury Tales on the Comedy, Neuse investigates the numerous points of contact between these two works, as well as more general questions concerning allegory, epic theater, intertextuality, and humanism. Contents: Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. The Question of Genre: The Canterbury Tales as Dantean Epic; 3. Allegory: The Canterbury Tales and Dantean Allegory (Geryon and the Nun’s Priest’s Tale); 4. Epic Theater: The Comedy and The Canterbury Tales (The Knight and the Miller); 5. Chaucerian Intertextuality: The Monk’s Tale and the Inferno; 6. The Friar and the Summoner: Chaucerian Contrapasso; 7. The Clerk’s Tale: A Chaucerian “Poetics of Conversion”; 8. The Merchant’s Tale: Allegory in the Mirror of Marriage; Bibliography; Index.

Olson, Paul A. “On the Dartmouth Dante Project.” In Envoi, III, No. 1 (Spring, 1991), 33–39.

A general overview of the project.

Ordiway, Frank Bryan. “Dante, Chaucer, and the Poetics of the Past.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LI, No. 7 (1991), 2373-A. 

Doctoral Dissertation, Princeton University, 1990. 358 p. (“Focuses on the ways in which Dante and Chaucer attempted to define their places within their inherited poetic traditions.”)

Pequigney, Joseph. “Sodomy in Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio.” In Representations, XXXVI (1991), 22–42. 

Reviews the theological background on sodomy and the manner in which Dante presents this sin in Inferno (XV–XVI) and Purgatorio (XXVI), and also examines the poet’s treatment of Ganymede and Virgil. Notes that while some critics may recognize the “variance in the relative placement of damned and expiating sodomites and in the categorization of their sin in the two canticles,” they “neglect to investigate the implications of the discrepancies. The many who view the discourse on love in Purgatorio 17 and 18 as suffused with Thomism overlook the anomaly of the nonscholastic theory of sodomy as erotic excess.” Concludes that Dante’s thinking on homosexuality had evolved and moved quite far from that of Aquinas and the other scholastics, “finally reaching a position that was extraordinary for his own age.”

Pertile, Lino. “Canto–Cantica–Comedía e l’Epistola a Cangrande.” In Lectura Dantis, IX (1991), 105–123. 

Pertile seeks to demonstrate that Dante is the author of the Cangrande epistle through philological considerations. He argues that, since among the early commentators of the Comedy there was much confusion about the names of the divisions of the poem, a forger would have had difficulty in using the correct words. Moreover, he asks, how could a forger have chosen the exact terms without hesitation, as instead Boccaccio does? Pertile notes that the term “cantica” is used more frequently in the rubrics of the Paradise because by that time Dante had finally chosen that word, perhaps when he wrote the letter to his friend Cangrande.

Pertile, Lino. “Paradiso XVIII tra autobiografia e scrittura sacra.” In Dante Studies, CIX (1991), 25–49. 

In a general reading of Paradiso XVIII, Pertile concentrates on two particular points which he believes have been neglected in discussions of the canto and which are fundamental “alla genesi e struttura del canto: primo, la continuità della linea narrativa tra i tre maggiori segmenti testuali che lo costituiscono, ossia la rassegna militare di Cacciaguida, le metamorfosi dei beati nel cielo di Giove e la requisitoria finale dell’auctor; secondo, il legame che unisce questi passi alla profezia di Cacciaguida nel XVII.”

Pertile, Lino. (Joint author). See William Wilson, “Two Tributes”...

Peters, Edward. “Human Diversity and Civil Society in Paradiso VIII.” In Dante Studies, CIX (1991), 51–70. 

A general reading of Paradiso VIII—the heaven of Venus—with specific attention given to “the broader and more important aspects of Venus, the Principalities, and the art of Rhetoric: human nature and diversity, the necessary love that must bind citizens together in a state, and the art of speech that enables humans to understand themselves as individuals and as citizens.”

Petrarca, Francesco. “Letters on Familiar Matters (XXI. 15).” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 34–36. [1991]

The translation of this letter in which Petrarch gives his views on Dante is that of Morris Bishop, Letters from Petrarch (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966).

Piccolomini, Manfredi. The Brutus Revival: Parricide and Tyrannicide during the Renaissance. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991. xiv, 142 p. 

In the first chapter (“The Making of a Destiny,” 1–34) Piccolomini examines Dante’s presentation and condemnation of Brutus, compares him with Ulysses and Horace, and studies the “complex relationship that Dante indirectly establishes between Brutus and...Cato” against the backdrop of Lucan’s Pharsalia and Stoic views on death and suicide (Seneca, Cicero) and the treatment of these notions in Christian thought. After this presentation of the historical, literary, and philosophical backgrounds, Piccolomini proceeds to examine the reception of Brutus by Renaissance authors.

The Poetry of Allusion: Virgil and Ovid in Dante’s “Commedia.” Edited by Rachel Jacoff and Jeffrey T. Schnapp. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1991. xv, 333 p. 

Contains essays by Robert Ball, Douglas Biow, Kevin Brownlee, John Freccero, Peter S. Hawkins, Robert Hollander, Rachel Jacoff, Pamela Royston Macfie, Michael C. J. Putnam, Jeffrey T. Schnapp, and William A. Stephany. Each essay is listed separately in this bibliography under the individual author’s name. The sixteen essays that comprise this volume are divided into two parts: “Virgil in Dante” and “Ovid in Dante.” As the title implies, each essay deals with a specific allusion found in Dante’s Divine Comedy to either Virgil or Ovid, focusing on such topics as Dante’s adaptation of Virgil’s notion of pietas, the debt of Inferno XX to the Aeneid, and the appropriation in the first canto of Paradiso of Pauline vision and Ovidian speech. The abstracts presented in this bibliography for the individual essays follow, in the main, those contained in the editors’ introduction.

Putnam, Michael C. J. “Virgil’s Inferno.” In The Poetry of Allusion... (q.v.), pp. 94–112, 270–274. [1991]

Notes “the distinct echo found in Inferno 10 of Virgil’s idea of the ‘blind prison’ of bodily and historical existence, and analyzes the latter’s implications for the whole of the Aeneid. His account of the Aeneid’s inability to imagine a fully linear teleology or a paradise beyond the embrace of historical time culminates in a reading of Virgil’s epic as ‘spiritually fulfilled and generically incomplete’.... In his discussion of Virgil as an Anchises figure, Putnam emphasizes the importance of the first major Virgilian allusion in Purgatorio 30, in which Anchises’ funereal lament for the death of Marcellus at the conclusion of Aeneid 6 is transformed by Dante into the greeting of Beatrice in her triumphal advent at the summit of the mountain of purgatory.” (A version of the essay appeared in Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici, XX–XXI (1988), 165–202.)

Quinones, Ricardo. The Changes of Cain: Violence and the Lost Brother in Cain and Abel Literature. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991. viii, 284 p. 

Chapter Three (“Cain as Sacred Executioner”) contains a section on “The Degeneration of the Sacred Executioner: Dante and Civil War” (63–76). Against the much larger background of the transformations of the Cain and Abel myth through history and literature, Quinones examines the ways in which Dante uses it in the Comedy: the presence of Cain among the exempla in Purgatorio XIV; the Alberti brothers in the ninth circle of Hell (“Caina,” Inf. XXXII); the importance of the “blood sacrifice” of Buondelmonte in 1215 and its effects on Florentine society (e.g., Inf. XXVIII and Par. XVI), with suggestive comments on the state and shape of the earthly city in the poem (e.g., Purg. XIV and XVI). (For earlier versions of this material, see Dante Studies, CIV, 179, and CVIII, 145.)

Riquelme, John Paul. Harmony of Dissonances: T. S. Eliot, Romanticism, and Imagination. Baltimore, Maryland, and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. xv, 354 p.

In addition to numerous references to Dante, the volume contains a section on “Dante and Analogical Thinking” (pp. 120–132), which focuses primarily on Eliot’s reading and interpretation of the Vita Nuova.

Rossi, Elena (Joint author). See Lloyd Howard, “Textual Mapping of Dante’s Journey”...

Sarolli, Gian Roberto. “Dante’s Katabasis and Mission.” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 152–158. [1991]

The selection is taken from Sarolli’s Prolegomena alla “Divina Commedia” (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1971).

Saslow, James M. The Poetry of Michelangelo: An Annotated Translation. New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1991. xii, 559 p. 

Contains numerous references to Dante, especially in the commentary to the individual poems.

Scaglione, Aldo. Knights at Court: Courtliness, Chivalry, and Courtesy from Ottonian Germany to the Italian Renaissance. Berkeley-Los Angeles-Oxford: University of California Press, 1991. xi, 489 p. 

Contains a section on Dante’s understanding and use of concepts and terms such as nobility, chivalry, courtesy, and courtliness in his works, as seen against their general cultural background.

Scancarelli Seem, Lauren. “Dante’s Drunkenness and Virgil’s Rebuke (Purg. 15.115–138).” In Quaderni d’italianistica, XII, No. 1 (1991), 71–82.  

Virgil’s seemingly harsh words to the Pilgrim in Purgatory XV (vv. 115–138) are examined in light of their possible biblical analogues and in terms of their meaning within the more general context of Virgil’s role as guide in the poem.

Schnapp, Jeffrey T. “Dante’s Ovidian Self-Correction in Paradiso 17.” In The Poetry of Allusion... (q.v.), pp. 214–223, 289–293. [1991]

Treats “the twin Ovidian allusions of Paradiso 17 [which] respect the letter of Ovid’s text. The first compares the pilgrim’s anxious state as he awaits Cacciaguida’s prophetic words to that of Phaeton querying his mother about his divine father. The second commands the pilgrim, who has now heard intimations of his forthcoming exile, to imitate Hippolytus, who, falsely accused, left his native Athens to set off along the bitter path of exile. The structural parallels between the two tales seem to confirm the pilgrim’s worst fears: if both Phaeton and Hippolytus die tragic deaths, so too, it follows, must the pilgrim. Yet...the apparent parallelisms are in fact an interpretive trap, since the story of Hippolytus’s death is followed by the narrative of his rebirth, which transforms the apparent tragedy into comedy by ultimately resurrecting the hero.”

Schnapp, Jeffrey T. “Dante’s Sexual Solecisms: Gender and Genre in the Commedia.” In The New Medievalism, edited by Marina S. Brownlee, Kevin Brownlee, and Stephen G. Nichols (Baltimore, Maryland, and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), pp. 201–225. (See Dante Studies, CVII, 156.)

Schnapp, Jeffrey T. (Joint author). “Introduction.” In The Poetry of Allusion... (q.v.), pp. 1–15. [1991]

Presents an overview of the collection with specific discussions of the individual essays and their particular critical perspectives on the Divine Comedy.

Schnapp, Jeffrey T. (Co–editor). See The Poetry of Allusion... (q.v.).

Schnapp, Jeffrey T. “‘Sì pïa l’ombra d’Anchise si porse’: Paradiso 15.25.” In The Poetry of Allusion... (q.v.), pp. 145–156, 279–280. [1991]

“[M]aps the subtle symbolic shifts and reversals that underwrite Dante’s claim both to salvage the Virgilian enterprise and at the same time to transcend it in the encounter with his great–great–grandfather Cacciaguida. [Schnapp] locates the crucial difference between Virgilian Elysium and Dantean paradise in Christianity’s theology of fruitful sacrifice.” (Portions of the essay appeared in The Transfiguration of History at the Center of Dante’s “Paradise”; see Dante Studies, CV, 158.)

Schnapp, Jeffrey T. “Virgin Words: Hildegard of Bingen’s Lingua Ignota and the Development of Imaginary Languages Ancient to Modern.” In Exemplaria, III, No. 2 (1991), 267–298. 

After discussing the possibility of constructing a genuinely private language, Schnapp studies the use of private languages in medieval texts, most particularly Hildegard of Bingen’s Lingua ignota, but also the Divine Comedy. Private languages in the Inferno—the most notable examples being Pluto and Nimrod, whose babble marks them as “marginal figures excluded from linguistic intercourse”—are characterized by linguistic ruin. In the Purgatorio, Dante rehabilitates natural languages such as Provençal and Latin and extends language’s dominion to include such phenomena as acrostics. In the Paradiso Dante strives to found discourse on a universal Logos, as in the fusion of Latin and Hebrew in Justinian’s speech or by inventing neologisms which “probe the outer grammatical and phonetic limits of human languages as a whole.”

Schwartz, Joseph. “T. S. Eliot’s Idea of the Christian Poet.” In Renascence, XLIII, No. 3 (1991), 215–227. 

Contains numerous references to Dante.

Scott, John A. “Beatrice’s Reproaches in Eden: Which ‘School’ Had Dante Followed?” In Dante Studies, CIX (1991), 1–23. 

Scott suggests “that the generally accepted supposition that ‘quella scuola’ [Purg. XXXIII, 85] refers to Philosophy does not fit in with what Dante has witnessed and failed to understand—a pageant setting forth the vicissitudes and present corruption of the Church, which has its origins in the notorious Donation of Constantine—, since it is difficult to imagine how the phylosophica documenta (“teachings of philosophy”) of Monarchia III, xv, 8 could prove to be any kind of barrier to grasping such a truth of universal import.” Instead, Scott argues that “what the poet is denouncing in Beatrice’s reference to “quella scuola / c’hai seguitata...” is the refusal of the “scuola guelfa” to accept the establishment of the Empire de iure and the concomitant necessity for humanity to be guided by the Emperor to the terrestrial paradise...where the pilgrim now finds himself. Dante in 1300, a citizen and soon to be elected Prior of a defiantly Guelph commune, had followed a path remote from that traced out by God for the well–being of humanity.”

Senior, Matthew James. “In the Grip of Minos: Confessional Discourse in Dante, Corneille, and Racine.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LI, No. 8 (1991), 2766-A. 

Doctoral Dissertation, Yale University, 1990. 235 p.

Shoaf, R. A. “Ugolino and Erysichthon.” In Dante and Ovid... (q.v.), pp. 51–64. [1991]

Examines Ovid’s myth of Erysichthon as the source for Dante’s portrayal of Ugolino della Gherardesca in the Inferno. The essay begins by exploring the psychology of hunger, and culminates in a discussion of dryness (“secco”) as a symbol of both avarice and the inability to speak.

Sicari, Stephen. Pound’s Epic Ambition: Dante and the Modern World. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991. xiv, 249 p. 

According to Sicari the “underlying thesis of this study is that Ezra Pound came to define his own poetic project through an astute and continuous reading of Dante’s Commedia. Pound’s reading of Dante, eccentric though it may be, identifies certain aims and strategies in the medieval epic that he hopes to adapt to his ‘modern’ concerns. Most importantly, he finds in the Commedia a formal principle capable of organizing the diverse cultural material that the genre compels to be ‘included’.” Contains numerous references to Dante and his works and their shaping influence on Pound. Contents: Preface; Abbreviations; Introduction. The Epic Ambition: Reading Dante; 1. The Wanderer as Exile: The Quest for Home; 2. The Wanderer as Fascist: Mussolini, Confucius, and America; 3. The Wanderer as Prophet: Aeneas and the Ideal City; 4. The Wanderer as Historian: Writing Paradise; Conclusion. Palinode and Silence; Notes; Works Cited; Index.

Singleton, Charles S. “Allegory.” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 139–151. [1991]

The selection is taken from Singleton’s Commedia: Elements of Structure (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954).

Smarr, Janet Levarie. “Poets of Love and Exile.” In Dante and Ovid... (q.v.), pp. 139–151. [1991]

Examines how Dante and Ovid present themselves as poets of both love and exile. Using some writings of Boccaccio as a point of departure, the author explains why Dante emerges as a positive example of an exiled poet who finds redemption through divine love, while Ovid remains forever banished from his homeland due to a lack of divine aid and an inflated view of his own ingenium. A portion of the essay summarizes each poet’s use of the figure of Ulysses in his works.

Sowell, Madison U. “Dante’s Nose and Publius Ovidius Naso: A Gloss on Inferno 25.45.” In Dante and Ovid... (q.v.), pp. 35–49. [1991]

Uses Dante’s silencing of Virgil in Inferno XXV as a point of departure for an essay aimed at showing how Ovid approaches Virgil in importance in the Comedy. The in-depth examination of Dante the pilgrim’s gesture of placing his finger “dal mento al naso” (Inf. XXV, 45) concludes with the belief that this is a call for a narrative and textual silencing of Virgil, and that the Metamorphoses becomes the primary subtext for the remainder of the scene. A listing of the word plays which Dante makes using Ovid’s last name is put forth in order to show how Ovid’s importance extends throughout the Comedy.

Sowell, Madison U. (Editor). See Dante and Ovid... (q. v.).

Spillenger, Paul. “Dante’s Arte and the Ambivalence of Retrospection.” In Stanford Italian Review, X (1991), No. 2, 241–268. 

Discusses the problems of interpretation posed by vv. 7–12 of Purgatory X, and especially the phrase “Qui si conviene usare un poco d’arte,” which is linked to certain key verses in the previous canto (Purg. IX, vv. 64–75, 142–145) and particularly the angel’s injunction to not look back (vv. 130–132). Spillenger investigates the relevance of the implicit allusion in these verses to Lot’s wife and its interpretation in biblical commentaries to highlight the conflict he perceives in the activity of retrospection between the moral / theological concerns and artistic / narrative exigencies.

Stefanile, Felix. “Dante for All of Us.” In The Hudson Review, XLIII, No. 4 (1991), 679–685. 

Review article of James Finn Cotter’s translation of The Divine Comedy (Amity, New York: Amity House, 1987). (See Dante Studies CVI, 124.)

Stefanini, Ruggero. “Le tre mariofanie del Paradiso: XXIII.88–129; XXXI.115–142; XXXII.85–114.” In Italica, LXVIII, No. 3 (1991), 297–309. 

Dante’s portrayal of the Virgin Mary as Queen of the celestial court has two Italian precedents, both in Paduan dialect. The first, written by Fra’ Giacomino da Verona around 1265, was titled De Jerusalem celesti, and the other, written about ten years later by Bonvesin de la Riva, was titled De Scriptura. Dante most likely was not acquainted with these poems, but he undoubtedly drew upon the tradition they represent when he chose to balance the Paradiso’s three theophanies of Christ in glory with three visions of Mary as the Queen of Heaven. In contrast to the theophanies, which explore the theological and metaphysical implications of the incarnation, the Marian trilogy draws upon devotional and hagiographical topoi, thus giving Dante greater freedom in the realization of the episodes. While the theophanies ascend to ever more sublime degrees of mystery, the mariofanie, in part to heighten the contrast between Mary’s humility and the ineffable majesty of God, form a descending spiral of variations on the theme of her “portato santo.”

Stefanini, Ruggero. “Purgatorio XXX.” In Lectura Dantis, IX (1991), 90–104.  

A general reading of the thirtieth canto of Purgatory.

Stephany, William A. “Dante’s Harpies: ‘Tristo annunzio di futuro danno’.” In The Poetry of Allusion... (q.v.), pp. 37–44, 258–261. [1991]

Reprint of a previously published article; see Dante Studies, CIV, 182.

Stephany, William A. “Erysichthon and the Poetics of the Spirit.” In The Poetry of Allusion... (q.v.), pp. 173–180, 282–283. [1991]

“Stephany concentrates on the link between the tale of Erysichthon from Metamorphoses 8 and Dante’s representation of the gluttons in Purgatorio 23.25–27.... His analysis shows that, even when Dante seems to be treating a tale as a neutral exemplum—a mere illustration to be cited in passing—the citation performs an interpretative maneuver that heightens the moral and poetic drama of Ovid’s story. As a result, Ovid’s tale of transgression and divine retribution becomes a parable about the letter and the spirit, about how to ‘read’ a man’s body in relation to the condition of his soul.”

Stephany, William A. “Purgatorio 13.” In Lectura Dantis, IX (1991), 72–89. 

A general reading of Purgatory XIII with special reference to “two interconnected motifs...: the first is prayer, and the second is reading, or rather narrative moments which can be seen as staged analogues of the act of reading. ... Purgatorio 13 seems to re–present a meditation on the nature of reading, one specifically oriented toward defining the skills and attitudes needed to be an adequate reader of this poem.”

Stephany, William A. “The Stones of Gilgal and Purgatorio 10–12.” In Italian Culture, IX (1991), 43–53. 

Stephany cites two echoes from the Book of Joshua on the Terrace of Pride. In chapter 4 Joshua instructs a representative from each of the twelve tribes to carry stones from the bed of the Jordan river back to their campsite in order that they may construct a large monument at Gilgal to commemorate the crossing of the Jordan. In another apparently complementary tradition they carry the stones from the riverbank to the riverbed to mark the place where Israel crossed into the Promised Land. Dante echoes this chapter twice, first in the image of the souls carrying stones on their back, and second in the dual location of the sculptures on the Terrace of Pride.

Storey, H. Wayne. “Two Notes on Dantean Ambiguity (Inf. III:130–IV:6; Inf. VII:106–126).” In Lectura Dantis, VIII (1991), 56–63. 

An examination of two episodes of the Comedy seeks to demonstrate that Dante uses various techniques in order to explain more precisely the experience of the traveler, especially in situations where the pilgrim is unable to discern with clarity his surroundings or the events around him. One way Dante fills such a narrative gap is by calling upon echoes of another text, as exemplified in the episode where the pilgrim loses consciousness when crossing the Acheron.

Ungaretti, Giuseppe. “A Commentary upon the First Canto of the Inferno.” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 179–185. [1991]

The selection from Ungaretti’s Letture Dantesche. Inferno, edited by Giovanni Getto (Firenze: Sansoni, 1965) has been translated for this volume by Massimo M. Pesaresi.

Urgnani, Elena. “Veronica Franco: Tracce di dantismi in una scrittura femminile.” In Canadian Journal of Italian Studies, XIV (1991), No. 42–43 (1991), 1-10.

Contains brief discussions of Veronica Franco’s presumed textual borrowings from Dante in her Terze rime.

Vallone, Aldo. “Salvatore Battaglia nel dantismo fiorentino-napoletano.” In Lectura Dantis, VIII (1991), 3–19. 

Discussion of Battaglia’s work on Dante and its place within the more general context of Italian criticism of his times.

Varchi, Benedetto. “On Canto I of Paradise.” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 41–47. [1991]

The selections from Varchi’s Lezioni sul Dante (Firenze: Società Editrice del Varchi, 1841) have been translated for this volume by María Rosa Menocal.

Vico, Giambattista. “The Discovery of the True Dante.” In Critical Essays on Dante (q. v.), pp. 58–60. [1991]

Vico’s “Discoverta del vero Dante ovvero nuovi principi di critica dantesca” (in Scritti vari, ed. Fausto Nicolini [Bari: Laterza, 1940]) has been translated for this volume by Cristina M. Mazzoni.

Wilson, William, and Ricardo Quinones. “Two Tributes: I. Kenelm Foster; II. A. Bartlett Giamatti.” In Lectura Dantis, VIII (1991), 20–25.

 

Reviews

Dante Alighieri. The Banquet. Translated by Christopher Ryan. Saratoga: Anma Libri, 1989. (See Dante Studies, CVIII, 114.) Reviewed by:

Roberta Gentile, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCV, No. 3 (1991), 173.

Alighieri, Dante. La Divina Commedia. Edited by Tommaso di Salvo. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1988. Reviewed by:

            Andrea Fedi, in Quaderni d’italianistica, XII, No. 1 (1991), 143–145.

Alighieri, Jacopo. Chiose all’Inferno. Edited by Saverio Bellomo. Padova: Antenore, 1990. Reviewed by:

            Deborah Parker, in Modern Language Notes, CVI, No. 1 (1991), 202–205.

Armour, Peter. Dante’s Griffin and the History of the World: A Study of the Earthly Paradise (“Purgatorio,” cantos xxix–xxxiii). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. Reviewed by:

Peter S. Hawkins, in Speculum, LXVI, No. 4 (1991), 840–841;

Patricia Zupan, in Lectura Dantis, VIII (1991), 141–142.

Aversano, Mario. San Bernardo e Dante: Teologia e poesia della conversione. Salerno: Edisud, 1990. Reviewed by:

            Steven Botterill, in Italica, LXVIII, No. 3 (1991), 351–352.

Bermann, Sandra L. The Sonnet Over Time: A Study in the Sonnets of Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Baudelaire. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. (See Dante Studies, CVII, 123.) Reviewed by:

Angelica Forti–Lewis, in Italica, 68, 2 (1991), 220–221;

Nancy S. Leonard, in Comparative Literature, XLIII, No. 4 (1991), 389–391.

Bloom, Harold. Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989. (See Dante Studies, CVIII, 119.) Reviewed by:

John Michael Crafton, in South Atlantic Review, LVI, No. 4 (1991), 87–90;

Patrick Parrinder, in Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XC, No. 2 (1991), 230–232;

Jeremy Tambling, in Modern Language Review, LXXXVI, No. 3 (1991), 655–656.

Boitani, Piero. The Tragic and the Sublime in Medieval Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Reviewed by:

            Ronald B. Herzman, in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, XIII (1991), 165–168.

Carugati, Giuliana. Dalla menzogna al silenzio. La scrittura mistica della “Commedia” di Dante. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1991. (See Dante Studies, CX, 284.) Reviewed by:

            Mauro Cursietti, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCV, No. 3 (1991), 179.

Cassell, Anthony K. Inferno I. Foreword by Robert Hollander. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989. (Lectura Dantis Americana.) (See Dante Studies, CVIII, 121.) Reviewed by:

            Ronald L. Martinez, in Manuscripta, XXXV, No. 1 (1991), 62–63.

Chiarenza, Marguerite Mills. The Divine Comedy: Tracing God’s Art. Boston, Mass.: Twayne Publishers, 1989. (See Dante Studies, CVIII, 123.) Reviewed by:

Denise Heilbronn-Gaines, in Speculum, LXVI, No. 4 (1991), 853–855;

Donna Yowell, in Italica, LXVIII, No. 3 (1991), 357–359.

Cioffari, Vincenzo. Anonymous Latin Commentary on Dante’s Commedia: Reconstructed Text. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1989. (See Dante Studies, CVIII, 123–124.) Reviewed by:

            Anthony J. De Vito, in Italica, LXVIII, No. 3 (1991), 359–360.

Corradini, Claudia Ruggiero. Saggio su John Ruskin: Il messaggio nello stile. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1989. (See Dante Studies, CVIII, 125.) Reviewed by:

            Thomas L. Cooksey, in Italica, LXVIII, No. 4 (1991), 491–492.

D’Angelo, Rosetta. Il poemetto dell’Intelligenza. Urbino: Edizioni Quattro Venti, 1990. Reviewed by:

            Theodore J. Cachey Jr., in Annali d’Italianistica, IX (1991), 335–336;

            Giacomo Striuli, in Italian Culture, IX (1991), 455–459.

Dante and Modern American Criticism. Edited by Dino S. Cervigni (Annali d’Italianistica, vol. 8, 1990). Reviewed by:

            Marianne Shapiro, in Lectura Dantis, IX (1991), 139–141.

Dante e la bibbia. Atti del Convegno Internazionale promosso da “Biblia.” Firenze, 26–27–28 settembre 1986. Edited by Giovanni Barblan. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1988. (See Dante Studies CVII, 131–133.) Reviewed by:

            Ricarda Liver, in Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, CVII, Nos. 5–6 (1991), 721–728.

Dante e le forme dell’allegoresi. Edited by Michelangelo Picone. Ravenna: Longo, 1987. (See Dante Studies, CVI, 130.) Reviewed by:

            Gustavo Costa, in Romance Philology, XLV, No. 2 (1991), 346–353.

Dante in America: The First Two Centuries. Edited by A. Bartlett Giamatti. Binghamton: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York, 1983. (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 23.) (See Dante Studies, CII, 150–151.) Reviewed by:

            Christopher Kleinhenz, in Esperienze letterarie, XVI, No. 1 (1991), 123–124.

Dante Studies, Volume CIII (1985). Reviewed by:

Gordon Poole, in Annali: Istituto Universitario Orientale-Napoli (Dipartimento di studi letterari e linguistici dell’occidente, sezione romanza), XXXIII, No. 1 (1991), 287–292.

Dante Studies, Volume CIV (1986). Reviewed by:

Roberta Gentile, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCV, ser. 8, Nos. 1–2 (1991), 154–155.

Dante Studies, Volume CV (1987). Reviewed by:

Massimo Seriacopi, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCV, ser. 8, Nos. 1–2 (1991), 155–157.

Dante Today. Edited by Amilcare A. Iannucci. Special issue of Quaderni d’Italianistica, X, Nos. 1–2 (Spring-Fall). Reviewed by:

            Peter Armour, in Italian Studies XLVI (1991), 120–121;

            Saverio Bellomo, in Filologia e critica, XVI, fasc. 1 (1991), 135–140;

Theodore J. Cachey Jr., in Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, XII (1991), 137–139;

Roberta Gentile, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCV, ser. 8, Nos. 1–2 (1991), 157–158.

Dasenbrock, Reed Way. Imitating the Italians: Wyatt, Spenser, Synge, Pound, Joyce. Baltimore, Maryland, and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. (See above, under Studies.) Reviewed by:

Richard Macksey, in Modern Language Notes, CVI, No. 5 (1991), 1111–1113;

Raymond Adolph Prier, in Annali d’Italianistica, IX (1991), 372–375.

Davis, Charles T. Dante’s Italy and Other Essays. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984. (See Dante Studies, CIII, 146–147.) Reviewed by:

            James H. McGregor, in Romance Philology, XLIV, No. 3 (1991), 358–360.

Del Greco Lobner, Corinna. James Joyce’s Italian Connection: The Poetics of the Word. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989. (See Dante Studies, CVIII, 127.) Reviewed by:

Michael H. Begnal, in Comparative Literature Studies, XXVIII, No. 1 (1991), 118–120;

Mary T. Reynolds, in New Vico Studies, IX, 134–135.

Delmay, Bernard. I personaggi della “Divina Commedia”: Classificazione e regesto. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1986. Reviewed by:

            Zygmunt G. Baranski, in Romance Philology, XLIV, No. 4 (1991), 508–516.

Demaray, John G. Cosmos and Epic Representation: Dante, Spenser, Milton and the Transformation of Renaissance Heroic Poetry. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. (See above, under Studies.) Reviewed by:

            James Finn Cotter, in Envoi, III, No. 1 (1991), 82–86;

            Richard C. Frushell, in Spenser Newsletter, XXII, No. 2 (1991), 1–5.

De Rosa, Mario. Dante e il padre ideale. Napoli: Federico & Ardia, 1990. Reviewed by:

            A[ntonio] F[ranceschetti], in Quaderni d’italianistica, XII, No. 2 (1991), 327.

Discourses of Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Edited by Kevin Brownlee and Walter Stephens. Hanover, New Hampshire, and London: University Press of New England, 1989. (See Dante Studies, CVIII, 127–128.) Reviewed by:

            Piero Boitani, in Modern Language Review, LXXXVI, No. 4 (1991), 974–975;

Michael Rudnick, in Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, XII (1991), 131–132.

The Divine Comedy and the Encyclopedia of Arts and Sciences: Acta of the International Dante Symposium, 13–16 November 1983. Edited by Giuseppe Di Scipio and Aldo Scaglione. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1988. (See Dante Studies, CVII, 134.) Reviewed by:

            H. Wayne Storey, in Lectura Dantis, IX (1991), 124–128.

Doob, Penelope Reed. The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages. Ithaca, New York, and London: Cornell University Press, 1990. (See Dante Studies, CIX (1991), 180.) Reviewed by:

Daniela Boccassini, in Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, XVIII, No. 4 (1991), 600603;

James Paxson, in Envoi, III, No. 1 (1991), 9298.

Dronke, Peter. Dante and Medieval Latin Traditions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Reviewed by:

            Joan M. Ferrante, in Romance Philology, XLIV, No. 4 (1991), 506–508.

Edwards, Robert R. The Dream of Chaucer: Representation and Reflection in the Early Narratives. Durham, North Carolina, and London: Duke University Press, 1989. (See Dante Studies, CVIII, 128.) Reviewed by:

Sigmund Eisner, in Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, XII (1991), 140–141;

R. W. Hanning, in Modern Philology, LXXXVIII, No. 4 (1991), 421–423;

Helen Phillips, in Modern Language Review, LXXXVI, No. 4 (1991), 973–974;

James I. Wimsatt, in Speculum, LXVI, No. 4 (1991), 866–869.

Esposito, Enzo. Bibliografia analitica degli scritti su Dante 1950–1970, 4 vols. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1990. Reviewed by:

            Christopher Kleinhenz, in Lectura Dantis, IX (1991), 137–139.

L’espositione di Bernadino Daniello da Lucca sopra La Comedia di Dante. Edited by Robert Hollander and Jeffrey Schnapp et al. Hanover, New Hampshire, and London: University Press of New England for Dartmouth College, 1989. (See Dante Studies, CVIII, 129.) Reviewed by:

            Lino Pertile, in Italian Studies XLVI (1991), 102–109.

            David Wallace, in Lectura Dantis, VIII (1991), 140–141.

Exile in Literature. Edited by Maria–Inéz Lagos Pope. Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press, 1988. Reviewed by:

            Veena Kumar, in Lectura Dantis, VIII (1991), 138–139.

Ferrucci, Franco. Il poema del desiderio: Poetica e passione in Dante. Milano: Leonardo, 1990.  Reviewed by:

            Mauro Cursietti, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCV, No. 3 (1991), 178–179.

            Ricardo J. Quinones, in Lectura Dantis, IX (1991), 132–134.

Girardi, Enzo Noè. Nuovi studi su Dante. Milano: Edizioni di Teoria e Storia Letteraria, 1987. Reviewed by:

Silvia Ruffo Fiore, in Rivista di Studi Italiani, IX, Nos. 1–2 (1991), 98–100;

Glenn Palen Pierce, in Lectura Dantis, VIII (1991), 137–138.

Harrison, Robert Pogue. The Body of Beatrice. Baltimore, Maryland, and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988. (See Dante Studies, CVII, 139–140.) Reviewed by:

Paul Colilli, in Annali d’Italianistica, IX (1991), 337–338;

Joan M. Ferrante, in Renaissance Quarterly, XLIV, No. 2 (1991), 342–344;

Jeremy Tambling, in Modern Language Review, LXXXVI, No. 1 (1991), 220–221;

Winthrop Wetherbee, in Modern Philology, LXXXVIII, No. 3 (1991), 299–301.

Hollander, Robert. Boccaccio’s Last Fiction: “Il Corbaccio.” Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988. (See Dante Studies, CVII, 141.) Reviewed by:

Gregory L. Lucente, in Italian Culture, IX (1991), 460–462;

Michael Sherberg, in Speculum, LXVI, No. 3 (July), 644–645.

Holmes, George. Florence, Rome and the Origins of the Renaissance. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Reviewed by:

            Deborah Parker, in Lectura Dantis, IX (1991), 136–137.

L’idea deforme: interpretazioni esoteriche di Dante. Edited by Maria Pia Pozzato. Milano: Bompiani, 1989. Reviewed by:

            Thomas Simpson, in Annali d’Italianistica, IX (1991), 340–342.

Jacoff, Rachel, and William A. Stephany. Inferno II. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989. xxiii, 144 p. (Lectura Dantis Americana.) (See Dante Studies, CVIII, 135–136.) Reviewed by:

Roberta Gentile, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCV, ser. 8, Nos. 1–2 (1991), 170–171;

Millicent Marcus, in Speculum, LXVI, No. 4 (1991), 898–901;

            Ronald L. Martinez, in Manuscripta, XXXV, No. 1 (1991), 62–63.

Kelly, Henry Ansgar. Tragedy and Comedy from Dante to Pseudo-Dante. Berkeley-Los Angeles-Oxford: University of California Press, 1989. (See Dante Studies, CVIII, 137.) Reviewed by:

Steven Botterill, in Italian Studies XLVI (1991), 117–118;

Noel Harold Kaylor Jr., in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, XIII (1991), 205–207;

Lino Pertile, in Medium Aevum, LX, No. 1 (1991), 139–140.

Kirkpatrick, Robin. Dante’s “Inferno”: Difficulty and Dead Poetry. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Reviewed by:

Teodolinda Barolini, in Comparative Literature, XLIII, No. 2 (1991), 190–192;

Regina Psaki, in Annali d’Italianistica, IX (1991), 338–340.

Kleinhenz, Christopher. The Early Italian Sonnet: The First Century (1220–1321). Lecce: Milella, 1986. (Collezione di studi e testi, 2.) (See Dante Studies, CV, 152.) Reviewed by:

Pier Massimo Forni, in Speculum, LXVI, No. 1 (1991), 182–184;

Peter Hainsworth, in Modern Language Review, LXXXVI, No. 2 (1991), 485–486;

H. Wayne Storey, in Italica, LXVIII, No. 2 (1991), 243–246.

Lectura Dantis, V (1989). Reviewed by:

Roberta Gentile, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCV, ser. 8, Nos. 1–2 (1991), 159.

Lectura Dantis, VI (1990). Reviewed by:

Massimo Seriacopi, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCV, ser. 8, Nos. 1–2 (1991), 159–161.

Letture Classensi, XVIII (1989). Reviewed by:

            Domenico Berardi, in Critica letteraria, XIX, 2, No. 71 (1991), 403–404.

Lynch, Kathryn L. The High Medieval Dream Vision: Poetry, Philosophy, and Literary Form. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1988. (See Dante Studies, CVII, 148.) Reviewed by:

Julian Weiss, in Lectura Dantis, VIII (1991), 134–137;

James F. G. Weldon, in Criticism, XXXIII, No. 2 (1991), 257–263;

Jon Whitman, in Speculum, LXVI, No. 2 (1991), 440–442.

Lyrics of the Middle Ages: An Anthology. Edited by James J. Wilhelm. New York: Garland, 1990. Reviewed by:

            Robert R. Edwards, in Comparative Literature Studies, XXVIII, No. 4 (1991), 433–437.

Mastrobuono, Antonio C. Dante’s Journey of Sanctification. Washington, D. C.: Regnery Gateway, 1990. (See Dante Studies, CIX (1991), 191–192.) Reviewed by:

            A. D. C., in Civiltà classica e cristiana, I (1991), 118;

Franco Lanza, in L’Osservatore romano 4-11-91 (“Una nuova interpretazione dell’itinerario dantesco”);

M[ario] M[arti], in Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, CLXVIII, fasc. 544 (1991), 611–612;

Christopher Ryan, in Italian Studies, XLVI (1991), 110–114;

Madison U. Sowell, in Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, XII (1991), 134–137.

            [unsigned], in Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, LIII (1991), 439–440.

McDannell, Colleen, and Bernhard Lang. Heaven: A History. New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1988. (See Dante Studies, CVII, 151.) Reviewed by:

            Alan E. Bernstein, in Speculum, LXVI, No. 1 (1991), 200–202.

McGregor, James H. The Shades of Aeneas: The Imitation of Vergil and the History of Paganism in Boccaccio’s “Filostrato,” “Filocolo,” and “Teseida”. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press. (See above, under Studies.) Reviewed by:

            Craig Kallendorf, in Vergilius, XXXVII (1991), 112–114.

Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism, c. 1100–c. 1375: The Commentary Tradition. Edited by A. J. Minnis and A. B. Scott, with the assistance of David Wallace. New York and Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Reviewed by:

            T. P. Dolan, in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, XIII (1991), 218–221;

            Martin Irvine, in Speculum, LXVI, No. 2 (1991), 451–453.

Menocal, María Rosa. The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987. (See Dante Studies, CVI, 141.) Reviewed by:

            Luce Lopez-Baralt, in Comparative Literature, XLIII, No. 1 (1991), 99–103.

Morgan, Alison. Dante and the Medieval Other World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Reviewed by:

            Paul Spillinger, in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, XIII (1991), 221–224.

Montano, Rocco. Dante’s Thought and Poetry. Chicago, Illinois: Gateway, 1988. (See Dante Studies, CVII, 151.) Reviewed by:

            Davy A. Carozza, in Italica, LXVIII, No. 2 (1991), 247–250.

Noakes, Susan. Timely Reading: Between Exegesis and Interpretation. Ithaca, New York, and London: Cornell University Press, 1988. (See Dante Studies, CVII, 151–152.) Reviewed by:

            John C. Barnes, in Italian Studies XLVI (1991), 121–122;

            Joan Ferrante, in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, XIII (1991), 224–227.

Oppenheimer, Paul. The Birth of the Modern Mind: Self, Consciousness, and the Invention of the Sonnet. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. (See Dante Studies, CVIII, 142–143.) Reviewed by:

Madeleine Pelner Cosman, in Literary Review, XXXV, No. 1 (1991), 150–151;

V. Louise Katainen, in Italica, LXVIII, No. 4 (1991), 505–507.

Payne, Roberta L. The Influence of Dante on Medieval English Dream Visions. New York-Bern-Frankfurt am Main-Paris: Peter Lang, 1989. (See Dante Studies, CVIII, 143–144.) Reviewed by:

            Patrizia Lendinara, in Schede medievali, XX-XXI (1991), 237–238.

Piccolomini, Manfredi. The Brutus Revival: Parricide and Tyrannicide in the Renaissance. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. (See above, under Studies.) Reviewed by:

            David Marsh, in Annali d’Italianistica, IX (1991), 352–353.

Reynolds, Barbara. The Passionate Intellect: Dorothy L. Sayer’s Encounter with Dante, with a Foreword by Ralph E. Hone. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1989. (See Dante Studies, CVIII, 145–146.) Reviewed by:

Alzina Stone Dale, in Studies in Medievalism, III–IV (1991), 389–392;

Roberta Gentile, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCV, No. 3 (1991), 197;

Gisbert Kranz, in Deutsches Dante–Jahrbuch, LXVI (1991), 138–140;

Elio Zappulla, in Italica, LXVIII, No. 3 (1991), 385–387.

Saly, John. Dante’s Paradiso: The Flowering of the Self. An Interpretation of the Anagogical Meaning. New York: Pace University Press, 1989. (See Dante Studies, CVIII, 146–147.) Reviewed by:

            Charles Jernigan, in Italica, LXVIII, No. 3 (1991), 390–391.

Schnapp, Jeffrey T. The Transfiguration of History at the Center of Dante’s “Paradise”. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986. (See Dante Studies, CV, 158.) Reviewed by:

            Louis Rossi, in Italica, LXVIII, No. 2 (1991), 256–260.

Sign, Sentence, Discourse: Language in Medieval Thought and Literature, ed. Julian N. Wasserman and Lois Roney. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1989. Reviewed by:

            Daniel F. Pigg, in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, XIII (1991), 253–257.

Smith, Forrest S. Secular and Sacred Visionaries in the Late Middle Ages. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1986. (Garland Publications in Comparative Literature) (See Dante Studies, CV, 175.) Reviewed by:

            Richard K. Emmerson, in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, XIII (1991), 235–237.

Spitzer, Leo. Representative Essays. Edited by Alban K. Forcione, Herbert Lindenberger, and Madeline Sutherland. With a Foreword by John Freccero. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1988. (See Dante Studies, CIX (1991), 215.) Reviewed by:

John Gledson, in Modern Language Review, LXXXVI, No. 3 (1991), 666–667;

María Rosa Menocal, in Hispanic Review, LIX, No. 2 (1991), 207–209.

Studi americani su Dante. Edited by Gian Carlo Alessio and Robert Hollander. Introduzione di Dante Della Terza. Milano: Franco Angeli, 1989. (See Dante Studies, CIX (1991), 215.) Reviewed by:

            Armando Bisanti, in Schede medievali, XX-XXI (1991), 209-210;

Roberto Gigliucci, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCV, ser. 8, Nos. 1–2 (1991), 161–162;

Albert Wingell, in Quaderni d’italianistica, XII, No. 2 (1991), 291–293.

Taylor, Karla. Chaucer Reads “The Divine Comedy.” Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1989. (See Dante Studies, CVIII, 151–152.) Reviewed by:

Sandy Feinstein, in Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, XII (1991), 143–144;

Douglas J. McMillan, in South Atlantic Review, LVI, No. 2 (1991), 130–131;

Edward Vasta, in Annali d’Italianistica, IX (1991), 344–348.

Vallone, Aldo. Cultura e memoria in Dante. Napoli: Guida, 1988. Reviewed by:

            Milda Palubinskas, in Lectura Dantis, IX (1991), 130–131.

Visions of Heaven and Hell Before Dante. Edited by Eileen Gardiner. New York: Italica Press, 1989. (See Dante Studies, CVIII, 153.) Reviewed by:

            Charles Jernigan, in Italica, LXVIII, No. 3 (1991), 372–374;

            Gary D. Schmidt, in Christianity and Literature, XL, No. 2 (1991), 179-181.