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Accessible and informative account of Dante's great Commedia: its purpose, themes and styles, and its reception over the centuries.
List of contents
Introduction Zygmunt G. Baräski and Simon Gilson; 1. Narrative structure Lino Pertile; 2. Dante Alighieri, Dante-poet, Dante-character Giuseppe Ledda; 3. Characterization Laurence E. Hooper; 4. Moral structure George Corbett; 5. Title, genre, metaliterary aspects Theodore J. Cachey, Jr; 6. Language and style Mirko Tavoni; 7. Allegories of the corpus James C. Kriesel; 8. Classical culture Simone Marchesi; 9. Vernacular literature and culture Tristan Kay; 10. Religious culture Paola Nasti; 11. Doctrine Simon Gilson; 12. Politics Claire E. Honess; 13. Genesis, dating, and Dante's 'other works' Zygmunt G. Baräski; 14. Transmission history Prue Shaw; 15. Early reception until 1481 Anna Pegoretti; 16. Later reception from 1481 to the present Fabio Camilletti.
About the author
Zygmunt Guido Barański is Serena Professor of Italian Emeritus at the University of Cambridge and Notre Dame Chair of Dante and Italian Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Among his publications are 'Sole nuovo luce nuova'. Saggi sul rinnovamento culturale in Dante (1996), Dante e i segni (2000), 'Chiosar con altro testo'. Leggere Dante nel Trecento (2001) and with Lino Pertile Dante in Context (Cambridge, 2015).Simon Gilson is Agnelli-Serena Professor of Italian at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Magdalen College. He is the author of Dante and Renaissance Florence (Cambridge, 2005) and Reading Dante in Renaissance Italy: Florence, Venice and the 'Divine Poet' (Cambridge, 2018).
Summary
A comprehensive and informative account of Dante's masterpiece, the Commedia, in essays by leading scholars. Chapters cover the main themes and motifs of the poem, its handling of narrative and literary matters, its cultural context, and its hugely influential afterlife, through textual transmission and readers' responses over the centuries.
