American Dante Bibliography for 1993

Christopher Kleinhenz

This bibliography is intended to include notice of all the Dante translations published in this country in 1993 and of all Dante studies and reviews published in 1993 that are in any sense North American. I would like to thank my research assistant, Silvia Monteleone, for her invaluable help in the annotation of this bibliography. 

• Translations
• Studies
• Reviews

 

Translations

Dante’s Inferno: Translations by Twenty Contemporary Poets. Introduced by James Merrill. With an Afterword by Giuseppe Mazzotta. Edited by Daniel Halpern. New York: The Ecco Press, 1993. xiii, 199 p. 

Contents: Preface by Daniel Halpern (vii-viii); Introduction by James Merrill (ix-xiii); Seamus Heaney, Canto I (3-6); Seamus Heaney, Canto II (7-11); Seamus Heaney, Canto III (12-15); Mark Strand, Canto IV (16-20); Daniel Halpern, Canto V (21-25); Galway Kinnell, Canto VI (26-29); Cynthia Macdonald, Canto VII (30-33); Cynthia Macdonald, Canto VIII (34-37); Amy Clampitt, Canto IX (38-41); Amy Clampitt, Canto X (42-45); Jorie Graham, Canto XI (46-51); Jorie Graham, Canto XII (52-57); Charles Wright, Canto XIII (58-62); Charles Wright, Canto XIV (63-67); Richard Howard, Canto XV (68-71); Richard Howard, Canto XVI (72-75); Stanley Plumly, Canto XVII (76-79); Stanley Plumly, Canto XVIII (80-83); C. K. Williams, Canto XIX (84-91); Robert Pinsky, Canto XX (92-95); Susan Mitchell, Canto XXI (96-99); Susan Mitchell, Canto XXII (100-104); Carolyn Forché, Canto XXIII (105-108); Carolyn Forché, Canto XXIV (109-112); Richard Wilbur, Canto XXV (113-117); W. S. Merwin, Canto XXVI (118-122); W. S. Merwin, Canto XXVII (123-126); Robert Pinsky, Canto XXVIII (127-130); Alfred Corn, Canto XXIX (131-134); Alfred Corn, Canto XXX (135-139); Sharon Olds, Canto XXXI (140-144); Deborah Digges, Canto XXXII (145-148); Robert Hass, Canto XXXIII (149-153); Robert Hass, Canto XXXIV (154-157); Afterword: Dante’s Style, by Giuseppe Mazzotta (159-168); Notes (169-199).

Inferno III. Translated by Patrick Creagh and Robert Hollander. In Maria Picchio Simonelli, Inferno III (q.v.), pp. ix-xvii. [1993]

Torrens, James, S.J. Presenting “Paradise”. Dante’s “Paradise”: Translation and Commentary. Scranton, Penn.: University of Scranton Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1993. 268 p. 

The volume includes a translation in blank verse of the Paradiso, together with a running prose commentary, such that the volume is divided into thirty-three “chapters” consisting of a mixture of text and commentary. Torrens comments on his procedure as follows: “My text is an attempt, above all, to keep readers from being discouraged, to open the doors as fully as possible to them, as they delve into the poetry. The approach here, abolishing endnotes, is to intersperse helpful prose, either as introduction to a given passage, or as a follow-up to it, providing necessary information or some critical insight.” Contents: Preface (7-12); Acknowledgments (13-14); Paradise: Translation and Commentary (19-259); References (260-264); Index to the Commentary (265-268).

 

Studies

Allan, Mowbray. “Much Virtue in Ma: Paradiso XIX, 106, and St. Thomas’s Sed contra.” In Dante Studies, CXI (1993), 195-211. 

In form and in content, the Eagle’s answer can be read as the article responding directly and comprehensively to the question of pagans that St. Thomas never wrote: an accurate summa of comments he dropped while answering other questions. It follows him exactly, in recognizing two ways into Paradise for pagans. We have still to recognize the general significance of the one not limited to the past but opening Dante’s text to the future (as does Beatrice’s promise to Virgil), the way exemplified by the importunate prayers of Gregory. The Eagle takes from Thomas the examples of Gregory and of Hezekiah and the hopeful conclusion his dialectics draws from them: Prayer cannot alter Predestination, but that truth does not destroy the value of Prayer. [MA]

Anushiravani, Alireza. “The Image of Satan in Rumi’s Mathnawi, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and Milton’s Paradise Lost.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LIII, No. 7 (January, 1993), 2358. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1992. 311 p.

On the basis of Dante’s appeal to use “Biblical exegesis...as the system of interpretation for his Commedia,” the author attempts “to justify and then implement a Scriptural reading of the nineteenth-century novel.”

Ardizzone, Maria Luisa. “The Genesis and Structure of Pound’s Paradise: Looking at the Vocabulary.” In Paideuma, XXII, No. 3 (Winter, 1993), 13-37. 

Proposes a rereading of Ezra Pound’s Paradise utilizing unpublished material. With this material the author examines eight key words to be found in Pound’s Cantos and makes connections among these words, seeking to put into focus the structure of Pound’s Paradise as organized by Pound in opposition to Dante’s Paradise, utilizing what Ardizzone indicates as Cavalcanti’s function in the Cantos and connecting it to Confucian philosophy. Pound’s knowledge of medieval culture is investigated mostly through his criticism of Aristotle’s philosophy and his putting forward of the medieval philosophy of light. Pound’s Paradise, however, is embedded in twentieth-century culture, as Ardizzone shows by examining the word “jagged” through which Pound defined his Paradise and connecting it, on the one hand, to DAnte and Aristotle and to quantum physics, on the other hand. [MLA]

Barcianskas, Jonas. “Leaves of Light: The Textual Journeys of Dante and García Márquez.” In Cross Currents, XLIII, No. 2 (Summer, 1993), 212-229.

Discusses the “image of a written text” that appears in the final canto of Dante’s Paradiso (XXXIII, 82-90) and in the final paragraph of Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. While Dante’s text is the book of creation portrayed as “the Neoplatonic metaphysical dynamic of the flowing of the One into the many and the return of the many into the One,” Márquez’s text is a “set of parchments” that, once deciphered, reveal the history of the Buendías family over the past one hundred years. Both spiritual quests privilege “final causation” and a view of the universe as organic and “enchanted.” However, Dante’s journey reveals a “metaphysics of union” and being, whereas Márquez works within a “metaphysics of dualitude” and becoming. [GPR]

Barolini, Teodolinda. “Why Did Dante Write the Commedia? or The Vision Thing.” In Dante Studies, CXI (1993), 1-8. 

Barolini presents her answer to the question within the context of at least one of the goals of her recent book, The Undivine Comedy, which was “to suggest that the time has come for us to rehabilitate the Commedia as a vision, not making the positivist error of seeing earlier visions as sources of the Commedia but reengaging Dante’s text in a dialogue with the visionary tradition.” She notes that “while dantisti continue to debate whether or not to consider the Commedia a vision, scholars in others disciplines have been working to understand the common ground that underlies all vision literature. If we wish our more nuanced sense of the Commedia to have any impact on such discussions, we must remove it from its isolated high-culture peak and come to terms with it not only as a literary artifact but also as the record of a visionary experience. Dante’s own suggestions regarding what is clearly a mystical experience have been handled with an excessive timidity that has its roots in our susceptibility to Dante’s narrative realism and our desire to keep poets safely segregated from prophets, as though our tradition were not replete with the complex contaminatio of poets and prophets, language users and visionaries, wordsmiths and truthtellers.” An examination of the Comedy against the backdrop of earlier visionary literature discloses the extraordinary nature of Dante’s achievement.

Barolini, Teodolinda. Il miglior fabbro. Dante e i poeti della “Commedia”. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1993. 274 p.

Italian translation of Dante’s Poets: Textuality and Truth in the “Comedy”. (See Dante Studies, CIII, 141-142.)

Birns, Nicholas. “The Trojan Myth: Postmodern Reverberations.” In Exemplaria, V, No. 1 (Spring, 1993), 45-78. 

Discusses the Trojan myth in the context of medieval readings of the classical epic tradition. Birns deals briefly with Paradiso XX, explaining the presence of Ripheus in heaven because of his Trojan identity, which makes him compatible to Christianity and adaptable to it after Revelation has come.

Boswell, Jackson Campbell. “Dante’s Fame in England: 1536-1586.” In Dante Studies, CXI (1993), 235-243. 

Cites hitherto unnoted references to Dante in eighteen works published in England. This collection supplements previous references by P. J. Toynbee, F. P. Wilson, and J. C. Boswell. Taken singly, the references appear to be relatively unimportant; however, added to those cited in previous collections, they clearly show that Dante’s fame in England was far greater than has been appreciated. [JCB]

Botterill, Steven. “Dante Studies in the British Isles Since 1980.” In Dante Studies, CXI (1993), 245-261. 

Critical survey, with bibliography, of Dante-related books and articles published since 1980 by scholars trained and/or resident in the United Kingdom and Ireland. [SB]

Bregoli-Russo, Mauda. “Il Canto XVII del Paradiso e i commentatori del Cinquecento.” In Italica, LXX, No. 1 (Spring, 1993), 60-68. 

Examines the views expressed by sixteenth-century commentators on Paradiso XVII and, in particular, on the Aristotelian metaphor of the cube (“tetragono”) and on the problem of the relationship between human free will and divine foreknowledge.

Brown, Phyllis R. “Penance and Pilgrimage in The Divine Comedy and The Song of Roland.” In Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching, IV, No. 1 (Spring, 1993), 17-26. 

“Perhaps more than any other medieval work, Dante’s Divine Comedy teaches the intricacy of the internal and external aspects of medieval pilgrimage in its political, social, and religious manifestations. In Dante’s poem the three cantica correspond to the three stages in the pilgrimage to God: 1) in Hell, the reader is led to recognize and understand the nature of sin—to learn what sin is in order to avoid it; 2) in Purgatory, to recognize and understand the nature of true repentence; and 3) in Paradise, to recognize and try to understand the true nature of God’s justice, not from a limited, human view, but rather from a divine point of view. Thus the Commedia can be seen as a sort of guidebook—like the medieval guidebooks to pilgrimage sites such as the Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago—but a guidebook for the soul, not the body.”

Brownlee, Kevin. “Dante, Beatrice, and the Two Departures from Dido.” In MLN: Modern Language Notes, CVIII, No. 1 (January, 1993), 1-14. 

The essay explores how the two departures of Dante’s guides in the Comedy are informed by Aeneas’s two departures from Dido in the Aeneid. Brownlee argues that the exchange between Aeneas and Dido at the moment of his departure from Carthage works as a subtext for the confrontation between Dante and Beatrice after the disappearance of Virgil in Purgatorio XXX and XXXI; the definitive separation in the underworld is the model for Dante’s reaction to the disappearance of Beatrice in Paradiso XXXI. What distinguishes Dante from his predecessor is the power of his words to move the listener: verbal communication is ineffective in the Virgilian subtext, but successful in the two parallel scenes in the Comedy. This is caused by the fact that we have in Dante a Christian sublimation of erotic love that makes the figure of woman central in the Comedy, whereas she was eccentric and an obstacle to the protagonist’s destiny in the Aeneid.

Brownlee, Kevin. “Literary Genealogy and the Problem of the Father: Christine de Pizan and Dante.” In Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, XXIII, No. 3 (Fall, 1993), 365-387. 

Christine de Pizan linked the issue of gender to that of authority, relating herself to a privileged set of model authors and, in particular, to Dante. Brownlee shows how in the Livre du chemin de long estude the Dantean model functions through a process of textual reminiscence and citation that involves authority and difference simultaneously. Christine’s genealogical connections with Dante function both as authorizing links and demarcating lines.

Brugnoli, Giorgio. “‘... si sentì del duolo’.” In Quaderni d’italianistica, XIV, No, 2 (1993), 255-259.

Proposes that certain elements in Paradiso VI (vv. 55-81) depend on loci in Li fet des Romains, Intelligenza, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses (XV, 818-834).

Calenda, Corrado. “Purgatorio XV.” In MLN: Modern Language Notes, CVIII, No. 1 (January, 1993), 15-30. 

In Purgatorio XV the motif of light and the image of the eyes, directly or indirectly, in a literal or figurative sense, mark the development of the narration. The thematic of light modulates the development of Dante’s advancement and his progress to Truth.

The Cambridge Companion to Dante. Edited by Rachel Jacoff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. xx, 270 p. 

“This book is designed to provide an introduction to Dante that is at once accessible and challenging. Fifteen specially commissioned essays ... provide background information and up-to-date critical perspectives on Dante’s life and work, focusing on areas of central importance. They explore the literary antecedents, both vernacular and classical, of Dante’s poetry, the intellectual background to his writings (biblical, philosophical, and theological sources), and their historical context, both political and social. There are introductory essays to each of the three canticles of the Divina Commedia, as well as chapters on Dante’s other works. Selected reception history is provided, discussing the commentary tradition adn Dante’s presence in literature in English.” Contents: Preface (xvii-xviii); Cronological table of important dates (xix-xx); Giuseppe Mazzotta, “Life of Dante” (1-13); Teodolinda Barolini, “Dante and the Lyric Past” (14-33); Robert Pogue Harrison, “Approaching the Vita Nuova” (34-44); Albert Russell Ascoli, “The Unfinished Author: Dante’s Rhetoric of Authority in Convivio and De Vulgari Eloquentia” (45-66); Charles Till Davis, “Dante and the Empire” (67-79); John M. Najemy, “Dante and Florence” (80-99); Kevin Brownlee, “Dante and the Classical Poets” (100-119); Peter S. Hawkins, “Dante and the Bible” (120-135); Christopher Ryan, “The Theology of Dante” (136-152); Joan Ferrante, “A Poetics of Chaos and Harmony” (153-171); John Freccero, “Introduction to Inferno” (172-191); Jeffrey T. Schnapp, “Introduction to Purgatorio” (192-207); Rachel Jacoff, “‘Shadowy Prefaces’: An Introduction to Paradiso” (208-225); Robert Hollander, “Dante and His Commentators” (226-236); David Wallace, “Dante in English” (237-258); Further Reading (259-260); Index (261-270).

Carruthers, Mary. “The Poet as Masterbuilder: Composition and Locational Memory in the Middle Ages.” In New Literary History, XXIV, No. 4 (Autumn, 1993), 881-904. 

Suggests that the master builder trope for every sort of composition is fundamental to the Middle Ages and that it specifically evokes mnemonic technique. Carruthers argues that in the Comedy buildings, such as the “amphitheatre” of Hell and the noble castle, function for Dante as mnemonic cues to matters he has stored away and now has the opportunity to use. These images function as mnemonic structures, not informative but inventional, whose visual appearance in the text serves as the stimulus for further meditation.

Cavanagh, Michael. “Seamus Heaney’s Dante: Making a Party of Oneself.” In Lectura Dantis, XII (Spring, 1993), 7-15. 

Treats Seamus Heaney’s appropriation and personal adaptation of Dante. Cavanagh traces Dantesque analogies in the tripartite form of Station Island and suggests a reading of Heaney’s most recent volume, Seeing Things, as a fourth book of the Comedy.

Cervigni, Dino S. “Il triplice io nel Purgatorio VII: parola, silenzio e ascolto nella Commedia.” In The Italianist, XIII (1993), 7-28. 

The essay first appeared in L’Alighieri, XXXIII, No. 1 (gennaio-giugno, 1992), 3-29. (See Dante Studies, CXI, 273.)

Chiarenza, Marguerite. “Dante’s Lady Poverty.” In Dante Studies, CXI (1993), 153-175. 

This essay attempts to support and develop Erich Auerbach’s claim that the figure of Lady Poverty in Dante’s account of St. Francis’s life is erotic in nature. Working on the background of the writings surrounding the Canticle of Canticles, Dante interprets Francis’s commitment to poverty as a mystical choice to embrace the goods of the next world directly, without the dressing of this world. The metaphor he chooses for this exceptional spiritual passion is that of sexual consummation within marriage. The essay also argues that Lady Poverty represents a positive version of Purgatory’s seductive siren, the only other figure in the Comedy whose role is clearly sexual. [MC]

Cogan, Marc. “Delight, Punishment, and the Justice of God in the Divina Commedia.” In Dante Studies, CXI (1993), 27-52. 

Virgil’s statement (Inf. XII, 87) that Dante has not come to Hell for “delight” embodies Dante’s fundamental principles of action, punishment and reward. For medieval Aristotelians, all action, sinful or pious, begins in desire and ends, if successful, in delight. Since the punishments of Hell replicate the actions which condemned their agents, sinners in Hell can be said to be there for “delight” in a double sense: for desiring wrong delights while alive, they were condemned; in replicating those actions in Hell, they experience a parody of the same delights. Their punishment is precisely to experience wrong delight eternally. Since the blessed also replicate their blessed actions, they eternally experience proper delight. One single justice permeates all realms of the other world: as people chose delight in this life, so are they rewarded (or punished) by experiencing the same delight forever. No other judgment could be simpler, nor more just. [MC]

Cornish, Alison. “Dante Alighieri” and “Dante’s Moral Cosmology.” In Encyclopedia of Cosmology: Historical, Philosophical, and Scientific Foundations of Modern Cosmology, edited by Norriss S. Hetherington (New York and London: Garland, 1993), pp. 139-148. 

A biographical sketch of Dante’s life followed by a succinct account of the moral underpinnings to Dante’s elaboration on the Aristotelian cosmos. Attention is paid to the Neoplatonic, Islamic, and Christian sensibilities that demanded certain adaptations to the system of the universe inherited from the Greeks. Dante’s descriptive and metaphoric use of the stars is traced from his early works to the last word of the Paradiso. The moral geography presented in the Divine Comedy is contrasted with the scholastic cosmogony proposed in the Questio de Aqua et Terra. The Comedy also offers an original vision of how the sensible and supernatural worlds might intersect. [AC]

Cornish, Alison. “Dante’s Moral Cosmology.” In Cosmology. Historical, Literary, Philosophical, Religious, and Scientific Perspectives, edited by Norriss S. Hetherington (New York and London: Garland, 1993), pp. 201-215. 

A succinct account of the moral underpinnings to Dante’s poetic elaboration of the Aristotelian universe. [AC]

Dante e la “bella scola” della poesia: Autorità e sfida poetica. Edited by Amilcare A. Iannucci. Ravenna: Longo, 1993, 358 p. 

This collection of essays investigate the complex system of relations between Dante and the poets of the “bella scola,” which also includes Statius. Individual essays are dedicated to each of the poets and analyze Dante’s strategy of imitation. Particular attention is given in the introductory article to the fundamental scene of the encounter of poets in Limbo. One purpose of the book is to present new approachs to the study of the relationship between Dante and the Latin authors. Contents: Amilcare A. Iannucci, “Introduzione” (7-17); Amilcare A. Iannucci, “Dante e la ‘bella scola’ della poesia (Inf. 4.64-105)” (19-39); Gian Carlo Alessio and Claudia Villa, “Per Inferno 1.67-87” (41-64); Giorgio Brugnoli, “Omero” (65-85); Claudia Villa, “Dante lettore di Orazio” (87-106); Michelangelo Picone, “L’Ovidio di Dante” (107-144); Violetta De Angelis, “‘... e l’ultimo Lucano’” (145-203); Luca Carlo Rossi, “Prospezioni filologiche per lo Stazio di Dante” (205-224); Zygmunt G. Baranski, “Dante e la tradizione comica latina” (225-245); Robert Hollander, “Le opere di Virgilio nella Commedia di Dante” (247-343; Indice dei nomi (345-354); Notizie sugli autori (355-358); Indice.

Dante’s “Divine Comedy”. Introductory Readings. II: Purgatorio. Special Issue: Lectura Dantis Virginiana, vol. II. Edited by Tibor Wlassics. Lectura Dantis, XII: Supplement (1993). 501 p. 

Features “letture” of each of the thirty-three cantos of Purgatorio. Contents: Antonio Illiano, I (3-16); Robert Hollander, II (17-34); Richard Lansing, III (35-52); Christopher Kleinhenz, IV (53-69); Aldo Scaglione, V (70-79); Zygmunt Baranski, VI (80-97); Paolo Cherchi, VII (98-114); Ricardo Quinones, VIII (115-127); Paul Spillenger, IX (128-141); Rebecca West, X (142-157); Marianne Shapiro, XI (158-168); Regina Psaki, XII (169-182); William A. Stephany, XIII (183-200); Paul Colilli, XIV (201-211); Theodore J. Cachey, Jr., XV, 212-234); Mario Trovato, XVI (235-247); Dennis Looney, XVII (248-258); Alfred Triolo, XVIII (259-278); William Wilson, XIX (279-287); John C. Barnes, XX (288-301); Giovanni Cecchetti, XXI (302-320); Michelangelo Picone, XXII (321-335); Franco Masciandaro, XXIII (336-347); JoAnn Cavallo, XXIV (348-361); Dino Cervigni, XXV (362-379); Lino Pertile, XXVI (380-397); Steven Botterill, XXVII (398-410); Victoria Kirkham, XXVIII (411-432); Marina De Fazio, XXIX (433-447); Ruggero Stefanini, XXX (448-462); H. Wayne Storey, XXXI (463-475); Peter Armour, XXXII (476-490); Antonio Mastrobuono, XXXIII (491-500); Editor’s Note (501).

Dasenbrock, Reed Way. “Why the Commedia Is Not the Model for the Cantos and What Is.” In Lectura Dantis, XII (Spring, 1993), 16-25. 

Breaking with the critical tradition that reads the Cantos as a modern Comedy, Dasenbrock argues that when Pound refers to a structural resemblance between his poem and Dante’s work he is asserting his difference from that model. The Cantos resemble not the Comedy, but express instead the Renaissance epideictic idea of epic practiced by Tasso, Varchi and Tassoni.

De Girolami Cheney, Liana. “Rodin’s Gates of Hell: An Interpretation of Dante’s Poema Sacro.” In Italian Culture, XI (1993), 103-126. 

Examines the influence of Dante’s Comedy on Auguste Rodin’s conception and execution of the bronze doors, The Gates of Hell.

Della Terza, Dante. “Charles Singleton and American Dante Criticism.” In Word and Drama in Dante: Essays on the “Divina Commedia,” edited by John C. Barnes and Jennifer Petrie (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993), pp. 181-201. 

Explores the pivotal role of Charles Singleton in the evolution of Dante studies in North America.

Doueihi, Milad. “Cor ne edito.” In MLN: Modern Language Notes, CVIII, No. 4 (September, 1993), 696-709. 

Examines the origin of the legend of the eaten heart and its development in medieval narrative. Dante’s vision in chapter III of Vita Nuova represents a radical departure from the conventional articulations of the legend, because of its inscription within a framework defined by the Eucharist and the cult of the Sacred Heart.

Emiliani, Cesare. “The Veltro and the Cinquecento diece e cinque.” In Dante Studies, CXI (1993), 149-152. 

Because there are only three words in medieval Italian that rhyme in -inque, and Dante uses all three in Purgatorio XXXIII (vv. 41, 43, 45), the common interpretation that DXV means DUX is probably correct. This unidentified leader, whose origin will be “tra feltro e feltro,” is termed by Dante a veltro, which is a big dog or a “gran cane.” Villani, whose Cronica was started in 1308, notes that Cane means “emperor” in the Mongols’ language and reports that Cangius (Cinghis Khan) was made emperor “in su un povero feltro.” Marco Polo, whose Milione was translated into Tuscan in 1309, reports that felt was widely used by the Mongols for their tents, to cover their carts, and to make idols. Marco Polo lavishly exalts both “Cinghis Kane” and especially “Coblam Kane” (Kublai Khan), who is more powerful than all other leaders of the world put together. It would seem that Dante’s veltro is a great leader patterned after the great Khans of the time, but without their thirst for land and peltro. [CE]

Ferrante, Joan M. “Why Did Dante Write the Comedy?” In Dante Studies, CXI (1993), 9-18. 

In her reponse to the question, Ferrante first reinforces her already expressed view “that Dante wrote the Comedy to deliver a political message” and “that his main purpose in writing the poem was to preach the need for political unity, for independent states, cities or kingdoms, working together under the only umbrella large enough to cover them, the empire, which can only function properly in conjunction with an apolitical church purified of all secular wealth and power, and individuals who recognize their responsibility to participate in and contribute to the common cause.” She then passes to a consideration of “why he delivered the message in the form he did, or how he presents his coming to it, how he chooses to order what happened to him, often revising his earlier views, and to see it in the context of universal as well as local history and see himself as the bearer of a divine message.” She concludes with an examination of the role of women in the poem, which attests both to Dante’s evolving thought on political matters and to his revised view of the Aeneid.

Ferrucci, Franco. “Dante e Chrétien de Troyes: sublimazione classico-cristiana del romanzo cortese.” In Lectura Dantis, XIII (Fall, 1993), 3-21. 

Examines the symbolic ritual of identification in the Comedy in light of how it was presented by Chrétien de Troyes. Like Chrétien’s heroes who decide to hide their name because they are in a condition of guilt or default, Dante refuses to reveal his name to Guido del Duca because he has not yet demonstrated his poetic eccellence. The subtext provided by Chrétien seems to organize the most important scenes of the progressive identification of Dante and to serve as a constant point of reference in the Comedy.

Fleck, Linda Lee. “The Traversal of Infinity; or, The Extended Family Romance in the Writings of Philippe Sollers.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LIV, No. 6 (December, 1993), 2167. Doctoral Dissertation, Harvard University, 1993. 224 p.

The author “focuses on Sollers’ effort to compose a comedy that might compete with and surpass Dante’s Commedia.”

Flosi, Linda. “Geometric Iconography in the Commedia: Paradiso and the Circling of the Square.” In Italian Culture, XI (1993), 31-44. 

Attempts to demonstrate to what extent the “metaphysical and physical merge in spatial, geometric imagery” in the Comedy.

Flosi, Linda. “Visual and Semantic Multistability in Dante’s Commedia.” In Lectura Dantis, XII (Spring, 1993), 26-33. 

Using Claude Gendelman’s translation of reversible visual patterns in the semiotic interaction between signifié and signifiant, Flosi identifies in the Comedy three semantically multistable signs: volse, spirare, and punto. She shows how these share a visual element that can be graphically expressed in a line, a spiral and a centerpoint and demonstrates that Dante gives through them a geometrical unity to the work.

Frank, Maria Esposito. “La ‘concreata e perpetua sete’ del Paradiso.” In Esperienze letterarie, XVIII, No. 3 (luglio-settembre, 1993), 41-55. 

Frank notes that she has “attempted to reexamine the traditional interpretation of Paradiso II, 19-20 that considers ‘La concreata e perpetua sete / del deiforme regno...’ to be the same ‘sete naturale’ of which Dante speaks elsewhere in the Commedia. [She has] analyzed the various places in the Convivio, the Commedia, and the Letter to Cangrande where Dante expresses his concept of desire in the light of his choice of adjectives (‘naturale’ and ‘concreata e perpetua’). [She] believe[s] there is a distinction, for Dante, between human earthly desire—a desire which finds its ultimate and complete satisfaction upon the soul’s arrival in paradise—and heavenly desire, which exists alongside this satisfaction, continually rekindled by the experience of the ‘infinito eccesso.’ In this regard, [she] see[s] a connection with the Augustinian concept of ‘unsatiable satiety’ in the heavenly community, with the mystic Richard of Saint Victor’s ‘fourth degree of Charity’ as the ultimate union with God, and with Saint Paul’s charis, which is both grace and gratitude.”

Franke, William. “Dante and Modern Hermeneutic Thought.” In Lectura Dantis, XII (Spring, 1993), 34-52. 

Treats the question of the truth or historicity of Dante’s narrative. The critical tradition established by Erich Auerbach and Charles Singleton asserts that the Comedy must be taken to be literally and therefore historically true; Franke argues that the most significant implications of the poem’s claim to truth and historicity concern not the literal and historical senses of the narrative so much as the existential historicity of the reader. The locus of the making of history is not the plot of the poem so much as the act of reading.

Gertz, Sun Hee Kim. “The Readerly Imagination: Boccaccio’s Commentary on Dante’s Inferno V.” In Romanische Forschungen, CV, Nos. 1-2 (1993), 1-29. 

Boccaccio the critic is also an author who gives a decidely literary turn to his observations. This is particularly evident in his gloss to Inferno V where he provides information in a traditionally expository fashion but also underscores thematically and structurally the canto’s emphasis on passion, temporality, reason, and creativity in forming a polysemous gloss with stylistic and thematic echoes of Dante’s text.

Godorecci, Barbara J. After Machiavelli: “Re-writing” and the “Hermeneutic Attitude”. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1993. 212 p. 

As part of the chapter on Machiavelli’s “Re-writing of Others,” Godorecci includes a section on “The Discorso o dialogo intorno alla nostra lingua and Dante” (pp. 62-79).

Heffernan, James A. W. Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. xii, 249 p.

Contains a section on “Visible Speech: The Envoicing of Sculpture in Dante’s Purgatorio” (pp. 37-45) The competition between sculpture and poetry in Purgatorio is due to Dante’s knowledge of the ekphrastic tradition and his “own ambition to remake it” by rivaling the works of Homer and Virgil. Dante distinguishes himself from the ekphrastic techniques of his predecessors (prosopeia, representational fiction, narrative) by a technique of “conversion” whereby “Dante does not presume to rival God’s mimesis.... Instead, he is the translator or interpreter of God’s art, turning the image back into the word from which it emanates.”

Hollander, Robert. Dante’s Epistle to Cangrande. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993. 113 p. (Recentiores: Later Latin Texts and Contexts) 

Hollander reviews arguments for and against the authenticity of Dante’s authorship of the Letter to Can Grande and with new evidence attempts to demonstrate that the epistle should be considered authentically Dantean. The principal arguments of the study were presented as the Barlow Lectures at University College London in March of 1993. Contents: Introduction (1-5); Chapter 1. Brugnoli’s Edition (1979) (7-22); Chapter 2. The Evidence Offered by Mazzoni (1955) and Jenaro-MacLennan (1974) (23-41); Chapter 3. The Epistle and the Cursus: Dronke (1986) and Others (43-53); Chapter 4. Kelly (1989) and the “Falsario” (55-74); Chapter 5. Baranski’s Article (1991) (75-95); Chapter 6. Further Evidence from the Early Commentators (97-101); Works Consulted (103-110); Index of Discussants and Texts Cited (111-113).

Hollander, Robert. “Le opere di Virgilio nella Commedia di Dante.” In Dante e la “bella scola” della poesia: Autorità e sfida poetica, edited by Amilcare A. Iannucci (Ravenna: Longo, 1993), pp. 247-343.  

In this initial exploration of a much broader study of the significance of Virgil for Dante, Hollander provides a list of quotations from the Latin author that appear in Dante’s Comedy. Almost one fifth of the quotations occur in the first five cantos, indicating the fundamental role of Virgil when Dante started his work.

Hollander, Robert. “The Proem of the Decameron: Boccaccio between Ovid and Dante.” In Miscellanea di Studi Danteschi in memoria di Silvio Pasquazi, edited by Alfonso Paolella, Vincenzo Placella, and Giovanni Turco, 2 vols. (Napoli: Federico & Ardia, 1993), I, 423-440. 

Contains brief references to Boccaccio’s use of Dantean material (in particular the relation of Decameron II, 1 to the falsifiers of Inferno XXIX-XXX, and that of the Proemio to Inferno I, as seen against the more general backdrop of the Vita nuova).

Hollander, Robert. “Why Did Dante Write the Comedy?” In Dante Studies, CXI (1993), 19-25. 

In response to Charles Davis’s challenging question, the author of this brief paper argues that Dante’s choices for the composition of his magnum opus involved him in three linked if apparently paradoxical positions: the poem is theologically grounded, against the statements of St. Thomas (and others) denying to poetry a major cognitive role; despite this stance (Dante as “theologus/poeta”), the poem welcomes classical learning in ways that would seem at odds with its theological interests; further, it goes on to sponsor, against its classicizing bent, the supremacy of the “low” vernacular, a stylistic choice that is related to its sense of the “sermo humilis” as the stylistic register most fitting for its God-centered poiesis. [RH]

Holloway, Julia Bolton. Twice-Told Tales. Brunetto Latini and Dante Alighieri. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. xiv, 550 p. 

“Twice-Told Tales presents the life and writings of Dante Alighieri’s maestro, the Florentine notary and diplomat, Brunetto Latino. The book first discusses archival documents found in Florence, the Vatican Secret Archives, Genoa, England and elsewhere, which were written by or which name Brunetto Latino. The documents concern, among other topics, the Vallombrosan Abbot Tesauro, the Sicilian Vespers’ plotting, and the death by starvation of Ugolino. The book then discusses Brunetto’s translations of Aristotle’s Ethics and Cicero’s De inventione, as texts presented to Charles of Anjou and others, as well as the influence of these texts on Dante. Appendices present the archival documents discussed in the book and list manuscripts containing Latino’s writings.” Contents: Preface (vii-xi); Part I: Praxis: Ser Brunectus Latinus. Introduction: Chancery and Comedy (3-22); 1: Republic (23-50); 2: Exile (51-73); 3: Tyranny (75-106); 4: Vespers (107-143); 5: Priorate (145-162); 6: Envoy (163-175); Part II: Theory: Maestro Brunetto Latino. 7: Silva (179-216); 8: Arabesque (217-257); 9: Romanesque (259-285); 10: Fountains and Rivers (287-311); Appendices. I: Documents (315-427); II: 1. Ethica (429-474); 2. Politica (475-503); 3. Lauda (504-509); III: Manuscripts (511-533); Index (537-550); Maps; Plates.

Howard, Lloyd H. “Decoding the Parallelism of Three Descents into Dante’s Hell.” In Quaderni d’italianistica, XIV, No. 1 (Primavera, 1993), 111-119. 

Argues that the repetition of the noun “color” and of the formula “vo’ che sappi” constitutes a linguistic code that joins together the descents of Christ, Virgil and Dante into Hell and affirms the commonality of their purpose. All the descents are concerned with saving souls: Virgil descended so that one soul might be saved from the pain of the ninth circle (cf. Inf. IX, 25); Christ descended to save a host of souls from the torments of Hell (Inf. III); the Christian reader of Dante’s book may also be counted among those who will be saved from Hell.

Iannucci, Amilcare A. “Dante e la ‘bella scola’ della poesia (Inf. 4.64-105).” In Dante e la “bella scola” della poesia (q.v.), pp. 19-39. 

Iannucci, Amilcare A. (Editor). See Dante e la “bella scola” della poesia... (q.v.).

Iannucci, Amilcare A. “Dante Produces Television.” In Lectura Dantis, XIII (Fall, 1993), 32-46. 

An examination of the oral dimension of Dante’s poem affirms that its characteristics are in many respects similar to those of television. From this perspective Iannucci discusses three recent televised adaptations of the Comedy.

Iannucci, Amilcare A. “The Gospel of Nicodemus in Medieval Italian Literature.” In Quaderni d’italianistica, XIV, No. 2 (Autunno, 1993), 191-220.

The Evangelicum Nicodemi, consisting of the Gesta Pilati, an elaboration of the scriptural account of Christ’s trial, passion, and resurrection, and the Descensus Christi ad inferos, the legend of Christ’s harrowing of hell, found a wide readership in medieval Italy, both in its original Latin versions and in Italian translations. Starting in the late thirteenth century, the pseudo-gospel exerted a clear influence on longer literary works, from laude and sacre rappresentazioni to religious sermons. Iannucci describes instances of literary borrowing from the Evangelicum Nicodemi, several of which also bear the traces of Dante’s brief reference to the harrowing of hell in Inferno IV, 52-63. Dante’s account of Christ’s descent to the underworld itself owes a debt to the Evangelicum Nicodemi, although it is unclear whether his familiarity with the earlier work is due to direct contact with the original text or to the mediation of popular medieval works which revisit the material of the Evangelicum Nicodemi. Iannucci argues that the Gesta Pilati functions as a subtext for Dante description of “colui / che fece per viltà il gran rifuito” (Inf. III, 59-60); he points out linguistic similarities between the Descensus and Dante’s description of the harrowing; and he asserts that the Descensus stands as a major narrative model for all of Dante’s Inferno. [JL]

Illiano, Antonio. “Purgatorio I 1-31: Prologo e Incipit Narratio.” In Miscellanea di Studi Danteschi in memoria di Silvio Pasquazi, edited by Alfonso Paolella, Vincenzo Placella, and Giovanni Turco, 2 vols. (Napoli: Federico & Ardia, 1993), II, 449-463. 

Analyzes the prologue of Purgatorio, identifying its fundamental methodological and rhetorical principles with the precettistica of Horace and Virgil.

Kirkham, Victoria. The Sign of Reason in Boccaccio’s Fiction. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1993. 283 p. (Biblioteca di “Lettere Italiane”: Studi e Testi, XLIII) 

In addition to eight previously published essays concerning Boccaccio (but with scattered references to Dante), the volume contains a new essay (Chapter 2) on the Amorosa Visione, “Amorous Vision, Scholastic Vistas” (pp. 55-116), which contains numerous references to Dante.

Kleinhenz, Christopher. “American Dante Bibliography for 1992.” In Dante Studies, CXI (1993), 267-312. 

With brief analyses.

Mazzocco, Angelo. Linguistic Theories in Dante and the Humanists: Studies of Language and Intellectual History in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy. Leiden-New York-Köln: E. J. Brill, 1993. xvi, 270 p. (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, vol. 38) 

“One of the burning issues of late medieval and early Renaissance Italy was the question of the language. The single most important figure to treat this subject in the late Middle Ages was Dante Alighieri. The Dantean argument on language with its implicit acknowledgment of a classical bilingualism and its faith in the efficacy of the vernacular stimulated and defined the debate on language among the humanists of the fifteenth century. [Mazzocco’s] book aims at a novel and open-ended reading of Dante’s literature on language and at a systematic reconstruction of the whole body of humanistic literature on linguistic phenomena. In so doing, it recaptures the theoretical assumptions—philological empiricism, political ideology, stylistic imperatives, literary aspirations—that shaped the thinking of Bruni, Biondo, Alberti, Guarino, Poggio, Filelfo, Valla, Landino and Lorenzo de’ Medici. The work, therefore, goes beyond the strict, technical periphery of linguistic enquiry, and it becomes a study of intellectual history.” Contents: Acknowledgments (ix); Bibliographical Note (xi); Abbreviations (xiii-xvi); Introduction (3-10); Part One: The Florentine Debate of 1435. I. Bruni and Biondo: Dramatis Personae of the Florentine Debate (13-23); II. Dante’s Linguistic Theories: Elixir Vitae of the Florentine Debate (24-29); III. Dante, Bruni, and the Beginning of the Questione della Lingua (30-38); IV. Dante, Biondo and the Beginning of Romance Philology (39-50); V. The Ramifications of the Florentine Debate: The Contribution of Guarino, Poggio, and Filelfo (51-68); VI. The Florentine Debate and the Unique Position of Valla (69-81); VII. The Florentine Debate, Alberti, and the Reaffirmation of the Questione della Lingua (82-105; Part Two: Dante’s Theories of Language and Style. VIII. Dante’s Notion of the Illustrious Vernacular: A Reappraisal (108-158); IX. “La lingua ch’io parlai fu tutta spenta:” Dante’s Reappraisal of the Adamic Language (Paradiso XXVI, 124-138) (159-179); Appendices. I. The Binomial Latina Lingua/Grammatica in Dante and the Humanists (182-184); II. Interconnection Between De Vulgari Eloquentia I, xi-xv; II, vi and Purgatorio XXIV, 42-62; XXVI, 92-123: A Clarification of the Dolce Stil Novo (185-188); III. A Recent Contribution to the Florentine Debate of 1435: Mirko Tavoni’s Latino, grammatica, volgare. Storia di una questione umanistica (189-208); Notes (209-261); Index (262-270).

Mazzotta, Giuseppe. Dante’s Vision and the Circle of Knowledge. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993. xv, 328 p. 

“In a ... synthesis of historical and literary analysis, Giuseppe Mazzotta shows how medieval knowledge systems—the cycle of the liberal arts, ethics, politics, and theology—interacted with poetry and elevated the Divine Comedy to a central position in shaping all other forms of discursive knowledge. To trace the circle of Dante’s intellectual concerns, Mazzotta examines the structure and aims of medieval encyclopedias, especially in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; the medieval classification of knowledge; the battle of the arts; the role of the imagination; the tension between knowledge and vision; and Dante’s theological speculations in his constitution of what Mazzotta calls aesthetic, ludic theology. As a poet, Dante puts himself at the center of intellectual debates of his time and radically redefines their configuration.” Contents: Preface (ix-xi); Acknowledgments (xiii-xiv); Note on Dante’s Texts; Introduction (3-14); 1: Poetry and the Encyclopedia (15-33); 2: Sacrifice and Grammar (Paradiso III, IV, V) (34-55); 3: The Light of Venus (56-74); 4: Metaphor and Justice (Inferno XXVIII) (75-95); 5: Logic and Power (96-115); 6: Imagination and Knowledge (Purgatorio XVII-XVIII) (116-134); 7: The Dream of the Siren (Purgatorio XIX-XXXI) (135-153); 8: Language and Vision (Paradiso XXI and XXII) (154-173); 9: Theology and Exile (Paradiso XXIV, XXV, XXVI) (174-196); 10: Order and Transgression (197-218); 11: Theologia Ludens (219-241); Notes (243-283); Bibliography (285-315); Index (317-328).

Mazzotta, Giuseppe. “Theologia ludens.” In Miscellanea di Studi Danteschi in memoria di Silvio Pasquazi, edited by Alfonso Paolella, Vincenzo Placella, and Giovanni Turco, 2 vols. (Napoli: Federico & Ardia, 1993), II, 507-517. 

Identifies in the Comedy a theologia ludens that considers play as a central element of the work. For Dante play is inseparable from theology with which it interacts. Play is God’s activity, and it is through play that men can meet with God.

Martinez, Ronald L. “Dante’s Bear: A Note on ‘Così nel mio parlar’.” In Dante Studies, CXI (1993), 213-222. 

The author inspects the bear-lore available to Dante in encyclopedias, bestiaries, and vernacular poetic traditions in assessing the relevance of the image of the bear at verse 71 of “Così nel mio parlar voglio esser aspro” to the themes and langauge of the canzone more generally. In light of this bear-lore, the author argues that the lover-as-bear in “Così” is linked to Dante’s presentation of the lover’s lust and violence, but to his skill and dexterity as well; rich in anthropomorphic attributes, the bear was compared in medieval texts to a naked man, a comparison germane to the ambiguous status, between humanity and ferality, of the lover in the rime petrose. The author also sees in Dante’s reference to the beating of the lover by Amor an instance of the vernacular poetic topos (Rigaut de Berbezilh, Chiaro Davanzati) of the “beaten bear” strengthened by ill-treatment. [RLM]

McCracken, Andrew. “In Omnibus Viis Tuis: Compline in the Valley of the Rulers (Purg. VII-VIII).” In Dante Studies, CXI (1993), 119-129. 

The symbolism and narrative of Purgatorio VIII are based largely upon the various prayers and hymns of the office of Compline. Dante draws on the texts of this office in constructing his account of the princely souls and the serpent’s assault on their Eden-like valley: the liturgy provides him with the images he uses to demonstrate that the tendency toward sin has yet to be purged from the princes. Dante also refigures the liturgical action of Compline in his narrative to underscore the return to original innocence that the Mountain represents. [AMcC]

Musa, Mark. “Rereading Inferno IX.” Rivista di studi italiani, XI, No. 1 (Giugno, 1993), 1-27.  

A general reading and commentary on Inferno IX.

Nassar, Eugene Paul. “The Iconography of Hell: From the Baptistery Mosaic to the Michelangelo Fresco.” In Dante Studies, CXI (1993), 53-105. 

A study of a dozen or so depictions of Hell (accompanied by 28 plates) from the late thirteenth century to the mid-fifteenth century treated as a painterly tradition, wherein those artists of Dante’s time and thereafter were influenced in their iconographical choices by their almost inevitable reading of the Inferno, but apparently more by their equally inevitable awareness of the other visual representations up until their time. The representations are here gathered together for comparative study, especially with regards to their iconographical relations to Dante and, usually more importantly, to each other. [EPN]

Nissen, Christopher. “Rejection, Death and the Eternal Law: The ‘Wounded Tree’ in Inferno and ‘Villa Chigi’.” In Lectura Dantis, XII (Spring, 1993), 53-64. 

Recognizing in D’Annunzio’s adaptation of the image of the wounded tree an echo of Dante’s “alberi strani” in Inferno XIII, Nissen suggests that the canto is the direct font of inspiration for the whole poem, where D’Annunzio consciously reverses Dantean imagery in a distinctly non-Christian and pessimistic context.

Parker, Deborah. Commentary and Ideology: Dante in the Renaissance. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993. xii, 248 p. 

“The Divine Comedy played a dual role in its relation to Italian Renaissance culture, actively shaping the fabric of that culture and, at the same time, being shaped by it. This productive relationship, in which both the Comedy and Italian Renaissance society existed in mutual definition and redefinition, is examined in Commentary and Ideology.... By studying the social and historical circumstances under which commentaries on Dante were produced, the author clarifies the critical tradition of commentary and explains the way in which this important body of material can be used in interpreting Dante’s poem. Parker begins by tracing the criticism of Dante commentaries from the nineteenth century to the present and then examines the tradition of commentary from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. She shows how the civic, institutional, and social commitments of commentators shaped their response to the Comedy, and how commentators tried to use the poem as an authoritative source for various kinds of social legitimation. Parker also discusses how different commentators dealt with a deeply political section of the poem: the damnation of Brutus and Cassius. Differences in the commentators’ intellectual roles and their various audiences are shown to have affected both their remarks on the poem and the subsequent fate of their commentaries. Parker concludes with an examination of the publishing history of the Divine Comedy in the Renaissance and argues for the development of a bibl-xii); I: Interpretation and the Commentary Tradition. 1. Dante’s Medieval and Renaissance Commentators: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Constructions (3-24); 2. The Medieval Roots of Commentary in the Renaissance (25-49); II: Commentary and Ideology. 3. Interpretive Strategy and Ideological Commitment: The Brutus and Cassius Debate (53-88); 4. Commentary as Social Act: Trifone Gabriele’s Critique of Landino (89-108); 5. Imitation, Plagiarism, and Textual Productivity: Bernardino Daniello’s Debt to Trifone Gabriele (109-123); 6. Material Production and Interpretations of the Comedy (124-158); Conclusion (159-160); Notes (161-221); Selected Bibliography (223-242); Index (243-248).

Parker, Deborah. “Ideology and Cultural Practice: The Case of Dante’s Treatment of Beatrice d’Este.” In Dante Studies, CXI (1993), 131-147. 

Underlines the limitations of the dominant formal mode of reading the Comedy. As an example, Parker takes Dante’s condemnation of Beatrice d’Este’s remarriage (Purg. VIII). The different account of the story offered by the Trecento commentators, who recall to us the social and legal mechanisms that determined Beatrice’s action, shows that more attention to the poem’s interpretive tradition can help us detect differences between Dante’s representation and contemporary social practice.

Pertile, Lino. “Dante’s Comedy beyond the Stilnovo.” In Lectura Dantis, XIII (Fall, 1993), 47-77. 

Argues that the dolce stil novo is revisited by the poet of the Comedy not to recuperate or redeem it, but to disclose its limitations and transcend it. In Purgatorio XXVI we are shown that Dante must transcend that style through the figure of Arnaut Daniel who underlines how limited and cieco Dante the character still is even at this late stage in his journey.

Picchio Simonelli, Maria. Inferno III. With a new translation of the canto by Patrick Creagh and Robert Hollander. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. xx, 124 p. (Lectura Dantis Americana) 

The study is divided into sections that correspond to the sequence of themes in the text, providing a step-by-step analysis of the third canto and its interpretation through the centuries. This is the third volume in the continuing “Lectura Dantis Americana” series sponsored by the Dante Society of America. Contents: Inferno III and translation (ix-xvii); Preface (xix-xx); 1. The Ante-Inferno (1-9); 2. The Inscription (10-17); 3. Spiritual Readiness to Enter Hell (18-22); 4. The Sounds of Suffering (23-25); 5. Scorned by Mercy and Justice (26-38); 6. The Great Coward (39-58); 7. Toward the Acheron (59-61); 8. Charon (62-69); 9. The Souls at the River (70-77); 10. Divine Justice: Fear and Desire (78-83); 11. Prodigy and Sleep (84-93); 12. The Form and Meaning of Canto III (94-97); Notes (99-114); Bibliography (115-119); Index (121-124).

Pike, David L. “Céline and Dante: From Golden Bough to Charon’s Oar.” In Lectura Dantis, XII (Spring, 1993), 65-74. 

Illustrates how Louis-Ferdinand Céline adopted Dante’s allegory of descent and conversion as a structuring principle in his post-war novels. While Dante’s motivation was primarily to mediate the personal into the historical, Céline attempts to mediate the historical into the personal to show the reader an expurgated version of his past.

Pope-Hennessy, John. “Paradiso”: The Illuminations to Dante’s Divine Comedy by Giovanni di Paolo. New York: Random House, 1993. 224 p.

This lavishly illustrated volume contains the illuminations from the third cantica of the Divine Comedy executed for the Yates-Thompson codex in the British Library by the fifteenth-century Sienese artist Giovanni di Paolo. Pope-Hennessy provides a reading/interpretation of the illuminations, and Singleton’s translation of Paradiso concludes the volume. Contents: Introduction (7-66); The Illuminations by Giovanni di Paolo (67-191); Paradiso, translated by Charles Singleton (193-224).

Poulakidas, Andreas K. “Kazantzakis: Dante’s Translator and Rhapsodist.” In Studies in Medievalism V: Medievalism in Europe (1993), 225-238. 

Politically and poetically devoted to the advancement of demotic Greek, Kazantzakis “acquired the conviction that his mission recapitulated that of Dante and Luther, since they had also advocated and promoted the vernacular language of the people.” In 1932, the year he completed his epic poem The Odyssey, Kazantzakis began his hendecasyllabic translation of the Comedy. Poulakidas describes Kazantzakis’s translation and cites references to Dante in Kazantzakis’s correspondence and in his novel Zorba the Greek. The article includes Poulakidas’s full translation of Kazantzakis’s 181-line poem “Dante.” Bibliographical notes on editions of Dante, critical studies, and Italian dictionaries in Kazantzakis’s library in Greece. [KVerduin]

Reynolds, Mary T. “Dante and the Development of Joyce’s Modernism.” In Lectura Dantis, XII (Spring, 1993), 75-92. 

Analyzes and underlines Joyce’s early identification with Dante, in whose Comedy he recognized autobiographical elements that influenced the use of his own life in his fiction.

Ruffolo, Lara. “Literary Authority and the Lists of Chaucer’s House of Fame: Destruction and Definition through Proliferation.” In Chaucer Review, XXVII, No. 4 (1993), 325-341. 

Contains references to Dante that point to basic differences between the Comedy and the House of Fame with regard to literary authority, the notion of inspiration, sources and locus of action.

Russo, Kathleen. “Henry Fuseli’s Interpretations From Dante.” In Italian Culture, XI (1993), 83-102. 

Examines the various ways in which Henry Fuseli drew inspiration for his paintings and drawings based on Dante’s Divine Comedy, particularly the episodes of Ugolino (Inf. XXXIII) and Francesca da Rimini (Inf. V).

Stefanile, Felix. “Dante as His Own Rival.” In Hudson Review, XLVI, No. 3 (Autumn, 1993), 579-586. 

Review essay on Dante’s Inferno: Translations by Twenty Contemporary Poets (q.v.). Dante seems to be not so much the goal of the book’s production, but its occasion. Stefanile notes how these translations by different hands give us a composite Dante revealed in a sequence of differing voices and styles.

Stefanini, Ruggiero. “Attributo e predicato di piè(de) in Inferno I.30.” In Italica, LXX, No. 2 (Summer, 1993), 212-216. 

Considering the widely disparate critical interpretations (e.g., Enrico De Negri and John Freccero) of this verse—“sì che ’l piè fermo sempre era ’l più basso”—, Stefanini suggests that here Dante informs the reader that he has turned to the left and is moving up the slope on a diagonal course, such that the right foot is always higher up (toward the mountain) than the left (toward the valley), and thus sempre più basso.

Stefanini, Ruggiero. “In nota a un commento.” In Lectura Dantis, XIII (Fall, 1993), 78-89. 

Critical evaluation of the first volume of the recent commentary to Dante’s Commedia by Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi: Inferno (Milano: Mondadori, 1991). In this issue (see below) of Dante Studies Gino Casagrande reviews Chiavacci Leonardi’s commentary on both Inferno and Purgatorio.

Saxby, Nelia. “Dante, Petrarca: innovazioni metriche e lessicali nelle Rime di Francesco Palmario.” In Italiana V (1993), edited by Albert N. Mancini, Paolo A. Giordano, and Enrico Pozzi (West Lafayette, Indiana: Bordighera, 1993), pp. 55-63.  

Discusses innovations and imitations in Francesco Palmario’s verse collection of the mid-fifteenth century in relation to the poetic tradition of Dante and Petrarch

Schildgen, Brenda Deen. “Dante and the Indus.” In Dante Studies, CXI (1993), 177-193. 

“For Dante, the Indus is in the East, a distant periphery to the Christian-Roman geo-political space serving as an imaginative cultural horizon outside the Christian world. Dante conceives of this world as beyond the political-cultural aspirations of his own sphere, and by including the Indus, Dante introduces a difficulty with his religio-imperial map, for the lands and peoples beyond its borders are a challenge to its ideological certainties.”

Schildgen, Brenda Deen. “Dante’s Utopian Landscape: The Garden of God.” In The Medieval World of Nature: A Book of Essays, edited by Joyce E. Salisbury (New York: Garland Publishing, 1993), pp. 201-219. (“Garland Medieval Casebooks,” 5)

Discusses Dante’s extensive use of the garden metaphor (and related imagery) and analyzes it vis-à-vis its precedents in the classical, biblical and patristic traditions.

Schnapp, Jeffrey T. “Injured by the Light: Violence and Paideia in Dante’s Purgatorio.” In Dante Studies, CXI (1993), 107-118. 

Examines the representation of Dante-pilgrim’s body with relation to the light imagery of Purgatorio. Whereas in Hell the pilgrim’s corporeality is mostly taken for granted and in Paradise there is no way to answer the question of whether he travels inside or outside of his body, Purgatory is the realm of embodiment and Dante’s fleshly presence is marked from the beginning by an elaborate pattern of allusions to the violent interaction between his body and the sun. These interactions, shaped by contemporary optics, cosmology and metaphysics, are shown to be essential to the second canticle’s overall allegory of the pilgrim’s spiritual renewal. [JTS]

Smith, Mark Lesly. “Image and Word in the Prints of Robert Rauschenberg, 1951-1981.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LIV, No. 3 (September, 1993), 714. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1992. 542 p.

One chapter deals in part with his prints of Dante’s Inferno.

Sowell, Madison U. “Dante’s Poetics of Sexuality.” In Exemplaria, 5, No. 2 (Fall 1993), 435-469.

Sowell first presents the case for the connection of texts to bodies in Inferno 28 (Muhammad and Alì), Purgatorio 29 (the pageant of the Bible), and Paradiso 18 (souls of just rulers). Next, he surveys the notion of the Commedia as a reflection of the human body: Inferno is a womb of lack; Purgatory is phallic; Heaven is a womb of fullness. Then he considers the conceptual relationship of textuality to sexuality, as in the Vita Nuova’s treatment of Beatrice, Inferno 5, and Inferno 25. For Dante, the possible sources for connecting corporal and sexual metaphors to poetry, books, and book production are legion (e.g., Alan of Lille). But the wordplay of the Purgatorio is more urbane than Alan’s: Dante orchestrates Cantos 23-26 to present poetry and sexuality in bono, and himself as an inspired scribe. In Paradiso, the poet employs amatory language to establish a voice like the prophets of old (e.g., Isaiah, Aeneid 6). What gives new life is the realization of Dante’s decision to incorporate and ameliorate amorous language is the new context he provides for the traditional language of love and his insistence that the body/text nexus is ultimately rooted in the greatest act known to mankind: the incarnation of the Word of God. [LW]

Storey, H. Wayne. Transcription and Visual Poetics in the Early Italian Lyric. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1993. xxviii, 476 p. (“Garland Studies in Medieval Literature,” 7)

Studies the “visual poetics” of early Italian poetry, including many poems by Dante, by examining these texts as they appear in the manuscript tradition. On codicological and palaeographical evidence Storey attempts to demonstrate the “unusually high degree of metrical experimentation and innovation on the part of their authors, as well as their concomitant desire for editorial control over the finished product. We are able to observe the progressive movement of these poems from the margins to the center of the manuscript folio, a physical movement that coincides with a new concern on the part of the poets for the organization and integrity of their works—both verbal and visual—in the transmission process. Storey begins his two-part investigation of these complex issues with the early “Ritmo Laurenziano” by an anonymous jongleur and considers the contributions of a number of poets in the metrically rich terrain of thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Italy—Monte Andrea, Guittone d’Arezzo, Francesco da Barberino, and Dante Alighieri—as well as the various systems they developed to enhance the cohesion of their compositions—song books, corone, tenzoni, etc. The second part of the study considers what Storey terms Petrarch’s “reform of this experimental tradition,” that is, the development of his own authorial, transcriptional, and editorial strategies in the compilation and elaboration of the Canzoniere.”

Terkla, Daniel Paul. “The Centrality of the Peripheral: Illuminating Borders and the Topography of Space in Medieval Narrative and Art, 1066-1400.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LIII, No. 9 (March, 1993), 3206. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Southern California, 1992.

Investigates the Divine Comedy as one of “five very different medieval artistic representations of narrative space.” Examines “the ways in which these idiosyncratic constructions themselves help us twentieth-century readers and viewers to understand them and, by extension, their larger medieval aesthetic context.” Other works are the Hereford Mappa Mundi, the Bayeux Tapestry, Chrétien de Troyes’ Yvain and Lancelot, and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Torner, Enrique. “Valle-Inclán’s Luces de Bohemia as a Parody of Dante’s Inferno.” In Hispanofila, CIX (septiembre, 1993), 33-47. 

While it is widely recognized that Luces de Bohemia is a parody of Dante’s Inferno, Torner argues that “the parallelism of structure must be studied, not only through Dante, but also through the esoteric perspectives of the Cabbala, theosophy, and occultism, since Valle-Inclán was steeped in this esoteric atmosphere. The structure of Luces de Bohemia must be understood both through the Divine Comedy and Numerology.” An examination of Max Estrella’s pilgrimage through Madrid discloses that “he appears in nine different locations, and that the events taking place in these locations are a parody of the moral meaning of the nine circles of Dante’s Inferno.”

Turner, Alice K. A History of Hell. San Diego: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1993. vi, 275 p. (Harvest Book)

A popular account of the infernal underworld. Contains one chapter on “Dante’s Inferno” (pp. 133-144) and numerous illustrations of the Inferno by various artists over the centuries.

Usher, Jonathan. “Pieces of Dante Among Cipolla’s Relics.” In Lectura Dantis, XIII (Fall, 1993), 22-31. 

Argues that there is an insistent and consistent Dantean subtext in the novella of Frate Cipolla by Boccaccio (Dec. VI, 10) and that this subtext goes beyond the quote itself. Usher identifies in Cipolla’s relics, the “relics” of a reading of the Comedy disclosing Boccaccio’s serious scholarly approach to Dante.

Vallone, Aldo. “Purgatorio 14 e l’Apocalisse.” In Quaderni d’italianistica, XIV, No. 1 (Primavera, 1993), 5-16.  

Identifies the unifying idea of the canto in the use of images and symbols of apocalyptic tone, at the center of which is the image of the Arno as a monster. A closer reading discloses parallels between Dante’s text and the Apocalypse.

Verduin, Kathleen. “Sayers, Sex, and Dante.” In Dante Studies, CXI (1993), 223-233. 

The success of Dorothy L. Sayers’s translation of the Divine Comedy (published by Penguin 1949-1962) may be credited in part to her alertness as a popular novelist to the needs of contemporary readers: decades before the current concern with reader response and literary reception, Sayers tacitly recognized that acts of reading are culturally placed. Part of her self-appointed project, therefore, was to rehabilitate Dante for a twentieth-century readership by detaching both the poet and his texts from the matrix of the nineteenth-century Dante revival. Explicitly rejecting “Byronic” and Pre-Raphaelite constructions of Dante, Sayers was most exercised against the Victorian absorption of Dante and Beatrice into the cult of feminine purity and idealized love. Charles Williams’s revisionary reading in The Figure of Beatrice (1943) functioned as a necessary authorization for Sayers, but it was she more than any other writer of her generation who strove to uproot Dante from nineteenth-century gentility and credit both him and Beatrice with an inexorable sexuality. Yet her suppressed frustration is suggested by her repeated swerving from the Beatrician center to women at the periphery of Dante’s story—the Donna Pietra, the Donna Gentile, and especially Gemma Donati. Sayers’s sustained attention to Gemma valorized Dante’s appreciation “not only of the Beatrice traditionally idealized, but of the real, sensual, and fertile mate ... closest to Sayers’s expressed idea of herself.” [KV]

Warner, Michael Lee. “One-Man Minorities: Multilingual Dante, the Modernists, and a Mookse.” In Lectura Dantis, XII (Spring, 1993), 102-112. 

Argues that Dante’s use of multiple languages and dialects together with Tuscan, established the premises of the multilinguism of modernists such as James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.

Watts, Barbara J. “Dante’s Role in the Nineteenth Century Rediscovery of Botticelli.” In Italian Culture, XI (1993), 59-81. 

Examines the emergence of Botticelli as an object of critical study in the nineteenth century thanks to the writings of Walter Pater and John Ruskin, both of whom were led to their understanding of the artist through Dante.

Weinfield, Henry. “Lacrimae Rerum, or, Why Dante Weeps.” In Hellas, IV, No. 1 (Spring, 1993), 11-18. 

Dante weeps in Purgatorio because he is conscious of the problem of representing the ineffable of Paradise, which is beyond human experience. The poetic is ineluctably tied to the human and hence to the tragic; and when we arrive in Paradise there is a sense in which we leave poetry behind. In this view Virgil does not represent Reason, so much as he represents Poetry; and when Virgil deprives us of himself, there is a sense in which his disappearance deprives us also of poetry.

 

Reviews

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

            John Took, in Modern Language Review, LXXXVIII, No. 1 (January, 1993), 218-219.

Dante Alighieri. Dante’s Inferno: Translations by Twenty Contemporary Poets. Introduced by James Merrill. With an Afterword by Giuseppe Mazzotta. Edited by Daniel Halpern. New York: The Ecco Press, 1993. (See above under Translations.) Reviewed by:

            The New Yorker, June 28 (1993), 103.

Barolini, Teodolinda. The Undivine “Comedy”: Detheologizing Dante. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992. Reviewed by:

John C. Barnes, in Lectura Dantis, XIII (Fall, 1993), 91-92;

Ricardo J. Quinones, in Lectura Dantis, XIII (Fall, 1993), 92-95.

Barolsky, Paul. Giotto’s Father and the Family of Vasari’s Lives. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991. Reviewed by:

            Amy Golahny, in Sixteenth Century Journal, XXIV, No. 4 (Winter, 1993), 974.

Bloom, Harold. Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989. Reviewed by:

            Joseph Wittreich, in Comparative Literature Studies, XXX, No. 2 (1993), 206-211.

Carruthers, Mary J. The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. (See Dante Studies, CIX, 173.) Reviewed by:

Martin Irvine, in Modern Philology, XC, No. 4 (May, 1993), 533-537;

Beryl Rowland, in English Language Notes, XXXI, No. 2 (December, 1993), 75-77.

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

            Linda Flosi, in Lectura Dantis, XIII (Fall, 1993), 109-110;

Comollo, Adriano. Il dissenso religioso in Dante. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1990. (See Dante Studies, CIX, 176.) Reviewed by:

Edward Hagman, in Italica, LXX, No. 2 (Summer, 1993), 225-226;

Italo Pantani, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCVII, Nos. 1-2 (gennaio-agosto, 1993), 288.

Dante and Modern American Criticism. Edited by Dino S. Cervigni. Volume VIII (1990) of Annali d’italianistica. (See Dante Studies, CIX, for entries by individual author.) Reviewed by:

Florinda Nardi, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCVII, Nos. 3 (settembre-dicembre, 1993), 250-251.

Dante and Ovid: Essays in Intertextuality. Edited by Madison U. Sowell. Binghamton N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1991. (See Dante Studies, CX, 288.) Reviewed by:

Roberto Gigliucci, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCVII, Nos. 1-2 (gennaio-agosto, 1993), 293-294;

            Jonathan Usher, in Italian Studies, XLVIII (1993), 138-139.

Demaray, John. Cosmos and Epic Representation: Dante, Spenser, Milton and the Transformation of Renaissance Heroic Poetry. Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press, 1991. (See Dante Studies, CX, 289.) Reviewed by:

            Charles S. Ross, in Italica, LXX, No. 2 (Summer, 1993), 229-231.

Dasenbrock, Reed Way. Imitating the Italians: Wyatt, Spenser, Synge, Pound, Joyce. Baltimore, Maryland, and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. (See Dante Studies, CX, 288-289.) Reviewed by:

            John C. Hirsh, in Paideuma, XXII, Nos. 1-2 (Spring-Fall, 1993), 155-157.

Durling, Robert M., and Ronald L. Martinez. Time and the Crystal: Studies in Dante’s “Rime Petrose.” Berkeley-Los Angeles-Oxford: University of California Press, 1990. (See Dante Studies, CIX, 180-181.) Reviewed by:

Albert Russell Ascoli, in Speculum, LXVIII, No. 3 (July, 1993), 751-753;

Victor Castellani, in Modern Philology, XC, No. 3 (February, 1993), 409-413;

Alessandro Valori, in Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, CLXX, fasc. 551 (1993), 436-438.

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

Piero Boitani, in Speculum, LXVIII, No. 2 (April, 1993), 497-498;

Edward E. Foster, in Philosophy and Literature, XVII, No. 1 (April, 1993), 142-143;

Guy P. Raffa, in Lectura Dantis, XIII (Fall, 1993), 105-106.

Edwards, Robert R. Ratio and Invention: A Study of Medieval Lyric and Narrative. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1989. Reviewed by:

            Gary P. Cestaro, in Lectura Dantis, XIII (Fall, 1993), 100-102.

Esposito, Enzo. Bibliografia analitica degli scritti su Dante, 1950-1970, 4 vols. Città di Castello: Leo S. Olschki, 1990. Reviewed by:

            Richard Lansing, in Dante Studies, CXI (1993), 263-265.

Filologia e critica dantesca. Studi offerti a Aldo Vallone. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1989. Reviewed by:

            Adriano Comollo, in Italica, LXX, No. 3 (Autumn, 1993), 394-401.

Fleming, John V. Classical Imitation and Interpretation in Chaucer’s “Troilus.” Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. (See Dante Studies, CIX, 182.) Reviewed by:

            Robert R. Edwards, in Comparative Literature Studies, XXX, No. 3 (1993), 295-298.

Gorni, Guglielmo. Lettera, nome, numero: l’ordine delle cose in Dante. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990. Reviewed by:

            Guy P. Raffa, in Annali d’italianistica, XI (1993), 296-298.

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:

            Steven Botterill, in Romance Philology, XLVI, No. 4 (May, 1993), 514-519.

Harrison, Robert Pogue. Forests: The Shadows of Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. (See Dante Studies, CXI, 277.) Reviewed by:

            David W. Price, in New Vico Studies, XI (1993), 105-108.

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

            Virginia Jewiss, in Romance Philology, XLVII, No. 2 (November, 1993), 259-261.

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

            Steven Botterill, in Romance Philology, XLVI, No. 3 (February, 1993), 390-395.

Kiser, Lisa J. Truth and Textuality in Chaucer’s Poetry. Hanover, N.H., and London: University Press of New England, 1991. (See Dante Studies, CX, 295.) Reviewed by:

            Robert B. Burlin, in Speculum, LXVIII, No. 1 (January, 1993), 186-187.

Katharine S. Gittes, in Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, XIV (1993), 155-157.

Lectura Dantis, IX (1991). Reviewed by:

Massimo Seriacopi, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCVII, Nos. 1-2 (gennaio-agosto, 1993), 289-291.

Lectura Dantis Newberryana, Volume II. Lectures presented at the Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois, 1985-1987. Edited by Paolo Cherchi and Antonio C. Mastrobuono. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1990. (See Dante Studies, CIX, 190.) Reviewed by:

            Mark Balfour, in Modern Language Review, LXXXVIII, No. 1 (January, 1993), 221-222.

Il Libro della Scala di Maometto. Translated by Roberto Rossi Testa. Notes and “Postfazione” by Carlo Saccone. Milano: SE, 1991. Reviewed by:

            María Rosa Menocal, in Lectura Dantis, XIII (Fall, 1993), 106-109.

Manlove, Colin. Christian Fantasy: From 1200 to the Present. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992. Reviewed by:

            J. A. Bryant Jr., in Sewanee Review, CI, No. 1 (Winter, 1993), ii-vi.

Masciandaro, Franco. Dante as Dramatist: The Myth of the Earthly Paradise and Tragic Vision in the “Divine Comedy.” Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. (See Dante Studies, CX, 298.) Reviewed by:

            Ricardo J. Quinones, in Italica, LXX, No. 2 (Summer, 1993), 245-246.

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

            Peter Armour, in Modern Language Review, LXXXVIII, No. 1 (January, 1993), 219-220;

            Christian Moevs, in Envoi, III, No. 2 (Autumn, 1992), 537-540.

Mazzotta, Giuseppe. Dante’s Vision and the Circle of Knowledge. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993. (See above, under Studies.) Reviewed by:

            James S. Torrens, S.J., in Christianity and Literature, XLII, No. 3 (Spring, 1993), 484-485;

            Massimo Verdicchio, in Quaderni d’italianistica, XIV, No. 1 (Primavera, 1993), 157-160.

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. (See Dante Studies, CX, 299.) Reviewed by:

            Janet L. Smarr, in Speculum, LXVIII, No. 1 (January, 1993), 211-213.

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. (See Dante Studies, CX, 322-323.) Reviewed by:

            John Dagenais, in Romance Philology, XLVI, No. 3 (February, 1993), 356-361.

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:

            L. P. Harvey, in Romance Philology, XLVI, No. 3 (February, 1993), 366-367.

Menocal, María Rosa. Writing in Dante’s Cult of Truth: From Borges to Boccaccio. Durham, N.C., and London: Duke University Press, 1991. (See Dante Studies, CX, 300.) Reviewed by:

G. H. McWilliam, in Medium Aevum, LXII, No. 1 (1993), 150-152;

Deborah Parker, in Lectura Dantis, XIII (Fall, 1993), 110-112;

Karla Taylor, in Renaissance Quarterly, XLVI, No. 4 (Winter, 1993), 819-820.

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

            Rachel Jacoff, in Literature and History, XXI (Spring, 1993), 104-106.

Musa, Mark. Aspetti d’amore: Dalla “Vita nuova” alla “Commedia.” Pisa: Pacini Editore, 1991. (See Dante Studies, CXI, 307.) Reviewed by:

            Fernando Di Mieri, in Rivista di studi italiani, XI, No. 1 (Giugno, 1993), 252-253.

Nelson, Lowry, Jr. Poetic Configurations: Essays in Literary History and Criticism. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992. (See below, under Addenda.) Reviewed by:

            Joachim Küpper, in Romanische Forschungen, CV, Nos. 1-2 (1993), 142-146.

Neuse, Richard. Chaucer’s Dante: Allegory and Epic Theater in “The Canterbury Tales.” Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. (See Dante Studies, CX, 301-302.) Reviewed by:

            George D. Economou, in Lectura Dantis, XIII (Fall, 1993), 97-100;

Charles A. Owen Jr., in Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XCII, No. 3 (July, 1993), 426-429;

Paul G. Ruggiers, in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 15 (1993), 242-247;

N. S. Thompson, in Medium Aevum, LXII, No. 2 (1993), 327-328.

The New Medievalism. Edited by Marina S. Brownlee, Kevin Brownlee, and Stephen G. Nichols. Baltimore, Md., and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. (See Dante Studies, CXI, 306-309.) Reviewed by:

            Sarah Beckwith, in Envoi, III, No. 2 (Autumn, 1992), 331-335;

Alexandra Hennessey Olsen, in Philosophy and Literature, XVII, No. 1 (April, 1993); 172-173;

Robert S. Sturges, in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 15 (1993), 174-177;

Paul Zumthor, in Speculum, LXVIII, No. 1 (January, 1993), 112-113.

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

            Gerald L. Bruns, in Comparative Literature, XLV, No. 2 (Spring, 1993), 175-177.

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

            Christopher Kleinhenz, in Speculum, LXVIII, No. 1 (January, 1993), 220-222.

Parker, Deborah. Commentary and Ideology: Dante in the Renaissance. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993. (See above, under Studies.) Reviewed by:

            Jennifer Petrie, in Lectura Dantis, XIII (Fall, 1993), 90-91.

Pépin, Jean. La tradition de l’allégorie de Philon d’Alexandrie à Dante: Études historiques. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1987. Reviewed by:

            Jon Whitman, in Speculum, LXVIII, No. 1 (January, 1993), 236-239.

Piccolomini, Manfredi. The Brutus Revival: Parricide and Tyrannicide during the Renaissance. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991. (See Dante Studies, CX, 303.) Reviewed by:

David Bornstein, in Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, XIV (1993), 174-175.

            Julian H. Franklin, in Sixteenth Century Journal, XXIV, No. 1 (Spring, 1993), 153-154.

The Poetry of Allusion: Virgil and Ovid in Dante’s “Commedia.” Edited by Rachel Jacoff and Jeffrey T. Schnapp. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991. (See Dante Studies, CX, 303-304.) Reviewed by:

            Peter Armour, in Italian Studies, XLVIII (1993), 137-138;

Mauro Cursietti, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCVII, Nos. 1-2 (gennaio-agosto, 1993), 291-293;

Madison U. Sowell, in Speculum, LXVIII, No. 3 (July, 1993), 809-812;

J. H. Whitfield, in Modern Language Review, LXXXVIII, No. 1 (January, 1993), 215-217.

Scaglione, Aldo. Knights at Court, Courtliness, Chivalry and Courtesy from Ottonian Germany to the Italian Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. (See Dante Studies, CX, 305.) Reviewed by:

            Lynne Lawner, in Annali d’italianistica, XI (1993), 309-311;

Madison U. Sowell, in Rivista di Studi Italiani, XI, No. 2 (December, 1993), 101-104;

Larissa Taylor, in Renaissance Quarterly, XLVI, No. 4 (Winter, 1993), 824-826.

Shapiro, Marianne. De Vulgari Eloquentia: Dante’s Book of Exile. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. (See Dante Studies, CIX, 164.) Reviewed by:

            Gary P. Cestaro, in Speculum, LXVIII, No. 1 (January, 1993), 258-260.

Shapiro, Marianne, and Michael Shapiro. Figuration in Verbal Art. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988. Reviewed by:

            H. Wayne Storey, in Romance Philology, XLVI, No. 3 (February, 1993), 361-366.

Sicari, Stephen. Pound’s Epic Ambition: Dante and the Modern World. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991. (See Dante Studies, CX, 307-308.) Reviewed by:

            Reed Way Dasenbrock, in Comparative Literature Studies, XXX, No. 4 (1993), 442-445.

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

            David Wallace, in Annali d’italianistica, XI (1993), 303-305.

Tambling, Jeremy. Dante and Difference: Writing in the ‘Commedia’. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Reviewed by:

            Steven Botterill, in Romance Philology, XLVI, No. 3 (February, 1993), 390-395.

Took, J. F. Dante Lyric Poet and Philosopher: An Introduction to the Minor Works. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Reviewed by:

Douglas Biow, in Lectura Dantis, XIII (Fall, 1993), 96-97;

Dino S. Cervigni, in Speculum, LXVIII, No. 1 (January, 1993), 268-271.

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

            John C. Barnes, in Romance Philology, XLVII, No. 2 (November, 1993), 261-263.