American Dante Bibliography for 1995
Christopher Kleinhenz
This bibliography is intended to include all the Dante translations published in this country in 1995 and all Dante studies and reviews published in 1995 that are in any sense American. The latter criterion is construed to include foreign reviews of American publications pertaining to Dante. For their assistance with certain parts of this bibliography and its annotations my thanks go to Alan Perry of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and to Fabian Alfie of the University of Arizona.
Translations
Alighieri, Dante. Dante’s Inferno. The Indiana Critical Edition. Translated and edited by Mark Musa. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995. xviii, 409 p. (Indiana Masterpiece Editions)
The volume is divided between Musa’s translation of the Inferno (with synopses and notes, pp. 1-249) and a section of ten “Critical Essays” by the following authors (in order of presentation): Lawrence Baldassaro, Guy P. Raffa, Denise Heilbronn-Gaines, Amilcare A. Iannucci, Mark Musa, Christopher Kleinhenz, Robert Hollander, Ricardo J. Quinones, Joan M. Ferrante, and John P. Welle. Each essay is listed separately in this bibliography under the individual author’s name. Also contains a Preface (ix-xviii), Selected Bibliography: Inferno (397-398), a section on Contributors (399-400), and an Index (401-409).
Alighieri, Dante. The Portable Dante. Translated and edited with an Introduction and notes by Mark Musa. New York: Penguin, 1995. xliii, 654 p. (The Viking Portable Library)
Contents: Introduction (ix-xxxvi); Translator’s Note: On Being a Good Lover (xxxvii-xliii); The Divine Comedy: Inferno (1-191); The Divine Comedy: Purgatory (193-387); The Divine Comedy: Paradise (389-585); Vita Nuova (587-649); Selected Bibliography (651-654). A more streamlined version of the Comedy as it appeared in the earlier Penguin Classics editions (1984, 1985, 1986) and of the Vita Nuova in the Indiana University Press edition of 1973. (See Dante Studies, XCII, 182; CIII, 140; CIV, 164; CV, 138.)
Alighieri, Dante. Vita Nuova. Italian Text with Facing English Translation by Dino S. Cervigni and Edward Vasta. Notre Dame, Ind., and London: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1995. xii, 339 p.
“This bilingual edition of the Vita nuova...contains Michele Barbi’s 1932 Italian edition and an English translation.... Cervigni and Vasta have translated Dante’s lyrics into line-by-line free verse that seeks, despite metrical differences, to reproduce Dante’s lyrical complexities of meaning, form, and style. The three-part introduction covers Dante’s life and work, the form and content of the Vita nuova, and the theory and practice adopted for the translation.” Contents: Preface (ix-xii); Introduction (1-44); Vita nuova: Italian Text & Facing English Translation (46-145); Topical Index (147-226); Concordance and Glossary of Archaic Terms (227-304); Appendix 1: The Manuscript Tradition & Barbi’s Divisions of the Vita nuova into Chapters (305-309); Appendix 2: Barbi’s General Comments on Chapter Divisions of the Vita nuova (311-314); Appendix 3: Incipits and Explicits of the Paragraphs according to Barbi’s Edition and Adopted Criteria (315-325); Appendix 4: Incipits of the Poems in the Vita nuova (327-328); Works Cited and Selected Bibliography (329-339).
Studies
Akbari, Suzanne Conklin. “Theories of Vision and the Development of Late Medieval Allegory.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LVI, No. 3 (September, 1995), 919. Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University, 1995. 658 p.
“This study offers close readings of several allegories in the context of medieval theories of optics. ... Works surveyed in this study include Guillaume de Lorris’ and Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose; Dante’s Vita nuova, Convivio, and Commedia; Chaucer’s dream visions, Tale of Melibee and the Merchant’s Tale; and the allegories of Christine de Pizan.”
Albertini, Stefano. “Questione linguistica e questione politica nelle opere minori di Dante.” In Canadian Journal of Italian Studies, XVIII, No. 51 (1995), 111-135.
Through a chronologically oriented examination of the minor works the author traces the development of Dante’s thought on the relationship of language and literature to politics.
Alessio, Gian Carlo. “A Few Remarks on the Vulgare Illustre.” In Dante Studies, CXIII (1995), 57-67.
Dante, as a vernacular poet, needs to defend his poetic ideal and related linguistic and stylistic options before the poetic and critical establishment that regarded Latin as the only possible lofty, tragic literary language. The De Vulgari Eloquentia is an apology of the lofty vernacular qua literary language. Therefore, the questions are: 1. What kind of language is the lofty vernacular relative to ordinary vernaculars and Latin? 2. What is the relationship of the DVE with the stylistic and linguistic experience of the Commedia? If, according to Dante, his own poetic language stands as an “other” language relative to the municipal vernaculars, which are entirely natural, the former can only be conventional, constructed recalling the grammarians’ theories on the origin and function of languages structured with a grammar. In the Commedia Dante seems to resolve the misunderstandings that had supported the DVE, and to identify his language rather with his natural language, Tuscan, Florentine. [GCA]
Alfie, Fabian. “‘Se io potesse con la lingua dire’: Tradition and Innovation in Cecco Angiolieri’s Poetry.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LVI, No. 5 (November, 1995), 1766. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1995. 202 p.
In this general study of Cecco Angiolieri some consideration is given to the tenzone with Dante.
Arnold, Luisella Bovio. “Aspetti narrativi nella Genealogia deorum gentilium di Giovanni Boccaccio.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LV, No. 11 (May, 1995), 3505. Doctoral Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1994. 259 p.
In the last part of the thesis the authors “focuses on the autobiographical aspects of the Genealogia, and particularly on the memories of the author’s childhood and his relationship with great scholars of his time, namely Dante and Petrarch.”
Ascoli, Albert Russell. “Palinode and History in the Oeuvre of Dante.” In Dante Now (q.v.), pp. 155-186.
Investigates “how history transcends the Dantean oeuvre by illustrating the breakdown of the palinodic structure under extreme forms of historical pressure. The Monarchia’s undecided chronological position, its engagement with, and suppression of, the political-historical order, reveal to us both the contingency and the rhetoricity of the palinode, its status as a rhetorical trope. Divergences between Monarchia and Convivio, between Monarchia and the Commedia (in particular the account of the proper relation between pope and emperor in Purgatorio 16), suggest the fragility and instability of the palinode, that is, of attempts by Dante and his critics alike to impose an idealized historical narrative on his life and works.”
Baldassaro, Lawrence. “Read It and (Don’t) Weep: Textual Irony in the Inferno.” In Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Inferno. The Indiana Critical Edition (q.v.), pp. 253-265.
Investigates the subtle ways in which Dante distinguishes the voices of the Pilgrim and the Poet in the Inferno and discusses how readers should interpret these distinctions in order to come to grips with and to understand the poem. Treats in some detail the following cantos: Inferno I, IV, V, X, and XX.
Balducci, Marino Alberto. “Dante and the Ancient World: Classical Myths in the Divine Comedy.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LVI, No. 2 (August, 1995), 568. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Connecticut, 1994. 280 p.
Baranski, Zygmunt G. “Dante, America, and the Limits of ‘Allegory’.” In Italian Studies, L (1995), 139-153.
After examining the influence of Charles Singleton on American Dante scholarship and considering briefly the contributions of American scholars such as John Freccero and Robert Hollander, the author focuses his attention on the writings of Giuseppe Mazzotta and Teodolinda Barolini.
Baranski, Zygmunt G. “The ‘New Life’ of ‘Comedy’: The Commedia and the Vita nuova.” In Dante Studies, CXIII (1995), 1-29.
The article questions the traditional view that the Vita Nuova and the Commedia “constitute the two complementary panels of an ideal artistic and ideological diptych.” Instead, by focusing on the ways in which, in the poem, Dante reworks elements taken from the libello (and in particular from chapters XXIII, XXXV-XXXVIII), it argues that major fissures separate the two works. Of especial significance in this process of rewriting is the fact that Beatrice presents a major re-assessment of the story of the Vita Nuova by describing, in Purgatorio XXX and XXXI, an alternative account of her relationship with the pilgrim. The reasons for the Commedia’s critique of the libello are not connected to its ‘content’ (the story of love and salvation which it recounts are undoubtedly continued in the poem), but are found in the ways in which it tells this story. In contrast to the Commedia’s ‘comic’ register, the Vita Nuova’s idealizing ‘tragic’ purview cannot provide a ‘truthful’ account of the lover’s adventures. The article closes with a methodological discussion of the ways in which the ties between the Commedia and the ‘minor works’ might be studied, and of how the problem of Dante’s ‘self-construction’ might be approached. [ZGB]
Baranski, Zygmunt G. “The Poetics of Meter: Terza Rima, ‘Canto,’ ‘Canzon,’ ‘Cantica’.” In Dante Now (q.v.), pp. 3-41.
Traces the “poet’s self-exegesis as it is inscribed in the very poetic structures and rhetorical terminologies employed in the poem.” Attempts to show “how the ‘canto,’ ‘canzone,’ and ‘terza rima’ synthesize and surpass secular Romance and classical precedents. Dante’s ‘cantica,’ on the other hand, establishes the poem’s connection to the Canticum Canticorum and the Book of Psalms, and here Dante as scriba Dei appears to vie even with the biblical authors David and Solomon.”
Barnes, Bernadine. “Metaphorical Painting: Michelangelo, Dante, and the Last Judgment.” In Art Bulletin, LXXVII, No. 1 (March, 1995), 65-81.
Examines the references to Dante’s Divine Comedy in the lower right portion of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel within the more general context of the nature of poetry as representing truth or fiction and proposes that these references “were made not to deny the existence of Hell, but to encourage the audience to work at finding the meaning of the scene through reference, association, and completion. The imagery not only refers to poetry, but is also itself poetic in the way it is presented. And just as in metaphor there is a kind of shift of contexts, so too does Michelangelo sometimes play literary and visual associations against each other. The purpose is not to render the painting incomprehensible but rather to veil its meaning, in order to engage the learned view more fully, and in so doing to make the ‘truth’ that is found all the more precious” (68). Suggests that Michelangelo’s self-portrait on the skin of St. Bartholomew recalls Dante’s reference to Marsyas in the first canto of Paradiso; and given the association of Marsyas with audacia or daring in the Renaissance commentators on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, “[t]he metaphor suggests that Michelangelo is competing (however foolishly) with the creative powers of God, and with the creative imagination of Dante” (69). Suggests other “quotations” of Dante’s poem in the Last Judgment: specifically, Charon, Minos, and other figures that may be associated with Geryon (or the devil who carries the barrator on his back), and Ugolino and Archbishop Ruggieri.
Becker, Mary Emily. “Prayer, Poetry, and Personality: The Subject of Language in Dante.” In Dissertations Abstracts International, LVI, No. 5 (November, 1995), 1766. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1994, 188 p.
Benfell, V. Stanley. “God’s Poets: Dante, Milton, and the Bible.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LVI, No. 1 (July, 1995), 183. Doctoral Dissertation, New York University, 1994. 337 p.
“Dante and Milton perhaps most strongly resemble each other as poets in their conviction that they write textual truth. The task of textual truth-telling depends, for both poets, on their ultimate standard of textual truth: the Bible.” The author examines “the ways in which each poet uses the Bible to create a ‘true’ poem.”
Benfell, V. Stanley. “Prophetic Madness: The Bible in Inferno XIX.” In MLN: Modern Language Notes, CX, No. 1 (January, 1995), 145-163.
Canto XIX is the most biblical of the Inferno, as Dante fills it with translations and allusions to scriptural texts. His most interesting use of the Bible in the canto is found in lines 106-111, where Dante subtly rewrites Apocalypse 17 in order better to denounce the simoniacal popes and yet claims that his version of the scripture is that intended by John the Revelator. His revision of the biblical text together with his simultaneous claim to scriptural authority mark his intertextual use of the Bible as prophetic. [VSB]
Biondi, Michael Paul. “Compositional Process in Dallapiccola’s Ulisse: A Survey and Analysis of New Findings in the Dallapiccola Archive, Florence, Italy.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LV, No. 9 (March, 1995), 2624. Doctoral Dissertation, City University of New York, 1994. 93 p.
Studies the last and largest work of Luigi Dallapiccola, the opera Ulisse. The libretto “fuses interpretations of the Ulysses figure not only as it is found in Homer, but also—and especially—in Dante to create a unique 20th-century vision of the legendary hero.”
Branciforte, Suzanne. “Antonio di Meglio, Dante, and Cosimo de’ Medici.” In Italian Studies, L (1995), 9-23.
Examines the poetic text—three capitoli ternari and a dedicatory sonnet—written by Antonio di Meglio to commemorate the death of Cosimo de’ Medici’s brother Lorenzo in 1440 and its borrowings from the Comedy.
Brownlee, Kevin. “Literary Genealogy and the Problem of the Father: Christine de Pizan and Dante.” In Dante Now (q.v.), pp. 205-235.
Investigates “Christine de Pisan’s ‘rewriting’ of Dante’s Commedia in her Livre de longe estude, in which an appropriation of Dante as a literary ‘father figure’ accompanies a no less complex representation in the poem of Christine’s father, Thomas de Pizan, who was born in Italy, and was himself a figure of authority at the French court of King Charles V. Brownlee shows how both biological and literary genealogies are constructed by Christine in order to establish her own difference and autonomous literary authority.”
Brownlee, Kevin. “Widowhood, Sexuality, and Gender in Christine de Pizan.” In Romanic Review, LXXXVI, No. 2 (March, 1995), 339-353.
Contains brief references to Christine’s “overt rewriting of a key Dantean model” (i.e., the first simile, Inf. I, 22-27).
Brugnoli, Giorgio. “‘Piangene ancor la trista Cleopatra’.” In Quaderni d’italianistica, XVI, No. 1 (primavera, 1995), 89-90.
Argues that the adjective “trista” used in Paradiso VI (v. 76) to describe Cleopatra may be traced to the adjective “maesta” which Juvenal uses for her in the same context (Satires 2:109). Provides other examples of “tristo” with the meaning of “sventurato” or “infelice” in the Comedy.
Cachey, Theodore J., Jr. (Editor). See Dante Now... (q.v.)
Cachey, Theodore J., Jr. “Introduction.” In Dante Now... (q.v.), pp. ix-xxi.
Presents an overview of the collection with specific discussions of the individual essays and an account of the special conference on “Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies” that took place at the University of Notre Dame on October 29-30, 1993.
Cachey, Theodore J., Jr. Le Isole Fortunate. Appunti di storia letteraria italiana. Roma: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 1995. 283 p.
An examination of the history of the Fortunate Isles (the Canary Islands) as a topos in medieval and Renaissance Italian literature. Given their position at the extreme western confines of the known world, the Fortunate Isles also occupy an important position between literature and history. Although not appearing per se in the geography of the Comedy, they are virtually present in the episodes of Ulysses and the Earthly Paradise. Contents: Prefazione (9-10); Premessa (11-15); I. Dante e le Isole Fortunate: un locus deperditus nella geografia del poema (17-81); II. Petrarca, Boccaccio e le Isole Fortunate: “lo sguardo antropologico” (83-121); III. Le Isole Fortunate nella storiografia di scoperta del Cinquecento (123-221); IV. Dal Nuovo Mondo alle Isole Fortunate: note sulla rivisione del c. XV della Gerusalemme liberata (223-283).
Caldarone, Frank Ignazio. “Tre fasi poetiche della vita di Dante nei tre sogni del Purgatorio.” In Esperienze letterarie, XX, No. 3 (luglio-settembre, 1995), 29-46.
This article analyses ‘three phases of Dante’s poetical life in purgatorial dreams’. The dreams are inspired by Beatrice, who reminds Dante of their first love and of his betrayal in order to help him in his repentance (Purg. XXX, 134-5). The interpretation is based on analogies of images and rhymes that connect the three purgatorial dreams respectively to the first sonnet of the Vita Nuova, to the first of the poems to ‘Lady Stone’ (the betrayal), and to Dante’s decision to return to Beatrice in Inf. II, 127-42. [FIC]
Cervigni, Dino S., and Edward Vasta. “From Manuscript to Print: The Case of Dante’s Vita Nuova.” In Dante Now (q.v.), pp. 83-114.
The authors attempt to demonstrate “how the accepted canonical structure of the Vita nuova into forty-two numbered chapters represents an imposition of the conventions of print culture upon a work produced by a manuscript culture. Finding the chapter divisions established by Michele Barbi in his 1907 critical edition to be inconsistent and sometimes arbitrary, they propose new criteria for the division of the work which would, in their view, make possible ‘a full-scale orality/literacy study of the Vita nuova’.”
Cervigni, Dino S. “Segni paragrafali, maiuscole e grafia nella Vita Nuova: Dal libello manoscritto al libro a stampa.” In Rivista di letteratura italiana, XIII, Nos. 1-2 (1995), 283-362.
Replies to the criticism which Guglielmo Gorni (“‘Paragrafi’ e titolo della Vita Nuova,” Studi di filologia italiana, LIII, 1995, p. 203-222; “Il ‘copyright’ della Vita Nuova,” Rivista di letteratura italiana, XII, 2-3, 1994 [publ. 1996], p. 481-490) had leveled against Cervigni and Vasta (cf. Dino S. Cervigni and Edward Vasta, “From Manuscript to Print: The Case of Dante’s Vita Nuova,” in Theodore J. Cachey, Jr., ed., Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies (Notre Dame, Indiana: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 83-114; Vita Nuova. Italian Text with Facing English Translation by Dino S. Cervigni and Edward Vasta, Notre Dame, Indiana, and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), focusing on the controversial question how the manuscript evidence regarding the original chapter division of the work is to be evaluated and should best be reproduced in a printed text; see also Gorni’s reply, “Ancora sui ‘paragrafi’ della Vita Nova,” Rivista della letteratura italiana, XIII, 3, 1995 [publ. June 1997, p. 537-562. [OL]
Chance, Jane. The Mythographic Chaucer: The Fabulation of Sexual Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. xxxix, 378 p.
The volume “analyzes mythological references, images, and characters throughout Chaucer’s poetry in the light of the medieval mythographic tradition, with the goal of clarifying those truths hidden within the text, whether for literary, social, or political reasons.” Contains numerous references to Dante.
Chiampi, James T. “Augustinian Distentio and the Structure of Dante’s Purgatory.” In Canadian Journal of Italian Studies, XVIII, No. 50 (1995), 1-21.
Examines the Augustinian notion of distentio, or the distraction of the soul by temporal existence. The author states that “with himself as exemplary of mankind, Augustine represents human history as a drama of restless consciousness: temporal existence is distentio, distraction.” The business of everyday life creates a division—a cleavage—between the soul and the proper object of its attention, namely God. The author then studies examples of distraction and divisions within Dante’s Ante-Purgatory. The pilgrim’s very presence and the song which Casella sings distract the souls there from their duty to climb the mountain, a duty Cato must remind them of by chastising and scattering them. In addition, these cantos abound with the language of “cleavage”—i.e., the body stopping the sun’s rays and causing a shadow—and with distraction. Argues that this Augustinian concept forms a motif within the text of the Purgatorio. [FA]
Cipolla, Gaetano. “Dante’s Ulysses: A Case of Inflation?” In Dante: Summa Medievalis (q.v.), pp. 147-167.
In a general treatment of Inferno XXVI, the author attempts to demonstrate 1) that Ulysses’s actions (the stratagem of the Trojan horse, the deception of Achilles, the theft of the Palladium, and the last voyage) are all “acts of arrogance in which an individual arrogates to himself powers [he] does not possess and behaves as though he were a god” and 2) that Ulysses’s behavior in psychological terms is “symptomatic of ‘ego inflation’.”
Clark, Delane Eugene. “The Transition to the Modern Period of Political Philosophy.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LVI, No. 2 (August, 1995), 684. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Colorado at Boulder, 1994. 208 p.
Examines “the transition to the modern period of Western political philosophy that substantially occurred...during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Europe.” Focuses “on the secularization of politics, at least in theory, that came about. That transition in thought is evident in a consideration of the political writings of John of Salisbury, Thomas Aquinas, Dante Alighieri, and Marsilius of Padua, men whose lives border and fill this period and whose thoughts are representative of the shift that transpired.”
Contrada, Deborah. “Brunetto’s Sin: Ten Years of Criticism (1977-1986).” In Dante: Summa Medievalis (q.v.), pp. 192-207.
Surveys a decade of critical literature on Brunetto Latini and specifically his particular sin in Inferno XV.
Cook, Albert S. “The Pitches of Desire: Trobar.” In Exemplaria, VII, No. 2 (Fall, 1995), 317-343.
Contains some references to Dante.
Cotter, James F. “The Divine Comedy and the First Psalm.” In Dante: Summa Medievalis (q.v.), pp. 10-18.
Discusses the importance of the first psalm (“Beatus vir”) and its tradition of patristic commentary for the shaping of the major themes and images in the Comedy.
Damrosch, David. “Auerbach in Exile.” In Comparative Literature, XLVII, No. 2 (Spring, 1995), 97-117.
Contains a critique of Auerbach’s treatment of Farinata and Cavalcante (Inf. X) in Mimesis.
Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies. Edited by Theodore J. Cachey Jr. Notre Dame, Ind., and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995. (The William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante Studies, 1).
In addition to a Preface (by Theodore J. Cachey, Jr., and Christian Moevs, vii-viii), an Introduction (see Theodore J. Cachey, Jr.), and an Index (279-283), the volume is divided into three sections—”Poetics,” “‘Minor Works’,” and “Reception”— and contains essays by the following authors (in order of presentation): Zygmunt G. Baranski, Christopher Kleinhenz, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Dino S. Cervigni, Edward Vasta, Ronald L. Martinez, Albert Russell Ascoli, R. A. Shoaf, Kevin Brownlee, Brian Richardson, and Nancy J. Vickers. Each essay is listed separately in this bibliography under the individual author’s name.
Dante: Summa Medievalis. Proceedings of the Symposium of the Center for Italian Studies, SUNY Stony Brook. Edited by Charles Franco and Leslie Morgan. Forum Italicum, Supplement. Stony Brook, N.Y.: Forum Italicum, 1995. (Filibrary, No. 9)
In addition to a Foreword (by Patrick A. Heelan, vi-vii) and a Preface (viii-ix) and “The Last Word” (237-242)—both by the Editors—the volume contains essays by the following authors (in order of presentation): Tibor Wlassics, James F. Cotter, Aldo Vallone, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Leonardo Sebastio, James J. Wilhelm, Ruggero Stefanini, Nicolae Iliescu, Marilyn Migiel, Gaetano Cipolla, Deborah Parker, Darby Tench, Deborah Contrada, Lucy Vogel, and Joel Rosenthal. Each essay is listed separately in this bibliography under the individual author’s name.
Dante’s “Divine Comedy”: Introductory Readings, III: “Paradiso.” Edited by Tibor Wlassics. Lectura Dantis, Nos. 16-17 (Spring-Fall, 1995). Special Issue: Lectura Dantis Virginiana, vol. III.
Features “letture” of each of the thirty-three cantos of Paradiso. Contents: Franco Ferrucci, I (3-13); Jo Ann Cavallo, II (14-29); Ruggero Stefanini, III (30-45); Lino Pertile, IV (46-67); Marina De Fazio, V (68-90); Guy Raffa, VI (91-106); Paul Colilli, VII (107-114); Jean-Pierre Barricelli, VIII (115-130); Mark Balfour, IX (131-145); Gary P. Cestaro, X (146-155); Mario Trovato, XI (156-171); Steven Botterill, XII (172-185); John Took, XIII (186-197); Madison U. Sowell, XIV (198-212); Cristina Della Coletta, XV, 213-228); Ricardo J. Quinones, XVI (229-245); Marianne Shapiro, XVII (246-265); Denise Heilbronn-Gaines, XVIII (266-276); Zygmunt G. Baranski, XIX (277-299); Marguerite Chiarenza, XX (300-307); Peter S. Hawkins, XXI (308-317); William Wilson, XXII (318-328); Franco Masciandaro, XXIII (329-351); Giuseppe C. Di Scipio, XXIV (352-370); William A. Stephany, XXV (371-387); Kevin Brownlee, XXVI (388-401); Peter Armour, XXVII (402-423); Regina Psaki, XXVIII (424-434); Rodney Payton, XXIX (435-455); Christopher Kleinhenz, XXX (456-469); Amilcare A. Iannucci, XXXI (470-485); H. Wayne Storey, XXXII (486-503); Rebecca West, XXXIII (504-518); Editor’s Note (519).
Davis, Ellen. “Troubadours and Radios: Terza Rima and the Blues.” In Harvard Review, VIII (Spring, 1995), 78-80.
Discussion of Robert Pinsky’s work as a poet, with some references to his translation, The Inferno of Dante (see Dante Studies, CXIII, 210).
Di Scipio, Giuseppe. The Presence of Pauline Thought in the Works of Dante. Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1995. xii, 355 p. (Studies in Art and Religious Interpretation, Volume 18)
Di Scipio notes that his “purpose is to unearth in a systematic way the Apostle’s thought in Dante’s writings and its shaping or influence on them.” He continues: “My investigation...proceeds from the belief that Paul’s life and writings mark Dante’s own life and writings from his earliest poetical experience, as in the case of the Vita Nuova whose title itself and the concept of novus homo are of Pauline ascendancy. The narrative and its philosophical and theological substratum are full of notions and ideas derived from Paul, for the Vita Nuova is Christocentric, as Paul’s theology is. Paul’s theology, in fact, is a major force in Dante’s work because Paul, although no the Apostle of Love, is the ‘Theologian of Love.’ This same discourse is applied to Dante’s other works.” Contents: Acknowledgments (i); Abbreviations (iii); Introduction: Pauline Thought in Dante’s Opus (v-xii); I: The Vita Nuova and St. Paul (1-28); II: St. Paul in the Convivio (29-101); III: Dante’s Monarchia and St. Paul (103-142); IV: St. Paul in Dante’s Political Epistles (143-184); V: St. Paul’s Influence on the Divine Comedy. Part 1: Inferno (185-222); Part 2: Purgatorio (223-252); Part 3: Paradiso (253-330); Bibliography (331-348); Index (349-355).
Edgecombe, Rodney Stenning. “Typology and After: A Taxonomy of Variants.” In Religion and Literature, XXVII, No. 2 (Summer, 1995), 5-26.
Contains brief references to Dante.
Escalante, Barbara. “Paradigms of Conversion in the Commedia.” In Masters Abstracts International, XXXIII, No. 4 (August, 1995), 1092. Masters Thesis, California State University, Domingues Hills, 1994. 38 p.
Ferrante, Joan M. “Hell as the Mirror Image of Paradise.” In Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Inferno. The Indiana Critical Edition (q.v.), pp. 367-380.
Arguing for the fundamental importance of the poem’s political message, the author notes that “What Dante offers in the Comedy is a model in broad outlines for the ideal society on earth, the restoration of that earthly paradise. He begins by revealing in Hell all the traits which must be excluded from the ideal society; in Purgatory, he gives the remedies to counter those traits, and in Paradise he presents the essential qualities and functions of such a society in action. The political message is integral to the poem; all the sins and virtues have social or political implications.” The nature and unity of the poem demand that the Inferno “be read within the context of the whole.”
Forni, Pier Massimo. “Boccaccio tra Dante e Cino.” In Quaderni d’italianistica, XVI, No. 2 (autunno, 1995), 179-195.
Forni examines in detail one narrative from Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (3.5). In that tale, a young man named Zima is in love with Francesco Vergellesi’s wife. While the latter is preparing for a trip, he wishes to purchase a palfrey from Zima who, in recompense, asks only that he speak frankly with Vergellesi’s wife. During that conversation in which Vergellesi himself is present, she remains silent and, therefore, Zima speaks for her, providing her responses to his declarations of love. In his discussion of this novella, Forni examines the literary precursors to Zima’s “monologic dialogue,” or, rather, instances when the lover speaks on behalf of a silent woman. He notes that Boccaccio relies most heavily upon the lyrics of Guido Cavalcanti and Cino da Pistoia, although he also mentions three passages from Dante’s writings which may also act as palimpsests. Two are from the Vita Nuova, the first being when Dante imagines Beatrice reciprocating his love (XV, 1-2). Forni notes the stylistic similarities between Boccaccio’s tale and this episode, illustrating how Zima also uses the imagined discourse of the woman to prevent dying from unrequited passion. However, Boccaccio subverts Dante’s example by having Zima and Vergellesi’s wife eventually initiate a love affair because of Zima’s efforts. The second passage from the Vita Nuova relates Dante’s encounter with Beatrice during the funeral of her father (XXII, 7-8). Since the context forbids interaction between the sexes, in this instance, Dante imagines Beatrice’s words were she able to communicate with him here. However, the most important passage is from the Convivio, where Dante discusses liberality (I.VIII.16-17). Again, Boccaccio undercuts his source by having Zima initiate his love affair with the woman as part of an economic exchange, thereby removing any sense of liberality from Boccaccio’s tale. [FA]
Gambera, Disa. “Disarming Women: Gender and Poetic Authority from the Thebaid to the Knight’s Tale.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LV, No. 11 (May, 1995), 3505. Doctoral Dissertation, Cornell University, 1995. 287 p.
Studies “the interaction of gender and poetic authority in Statius’ Thebaid, the Roman de Thebes, Dante’s Purgatorio, Boccaccio’s Teseida, and Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale. These texts examine the poet’s role in relation to a difficult and inescapable past, both literary and historical. In each text, women provide the crucial means for the poet to assert his difference from literary tradition.” In the third chapter (“Dante’s Statius and the Conversion of Ancient Poetry”) the author “takes up this same issue of amelioration in the character of Stazio in cantos 21-30 of Purgatorio. Dante’s portrayal of Stazio is an attempt to sever him from all associations with the ‘fallen’ history of the Thebaid. But the very artificiality of this ‘conversion’ is itself a sign of the radical suppressions Dante performs in order to purify his own poetry.”
Godorecci, Maurizio. “The Tragedy of All.” In Romance Languages Annual 1994, VI (1995), 267-272.
Addresses Dante’s problem of “reiteration”: “How to tell the story of this voyage is not simply a problem of putting ‘facts’ into ‘words’ ... but of how to tell of a thing which has not yet taken place yet is already so relevant. How can one re-tell what has not taken place again and before the event (since only once can one go to God).” In confronting this, Dante employs the four powers identified by Thomas Aquinas as pertaining to the anima sensitiva: imagination, common sense, judgment, and memory. Dante reworks Thomas’s premises by subjecting the powers of reason and imagination to his judgment. In extending the fourfold interpretation of scriptures to poetry, Dante stresses the “particular” as the mediator between man and God. Memory stores generals as if they were “particulars,” which are now words rather than images. Dante makes poetry the ground of the divine, but this raises a predicament: poetry, “making,” relies on judgment, that is, particulars, yet God cannot be retained in parts. Language, in speaking of life, gives death; thus “the comedy of the ‘I,’ of the ‘we,’ as that of the name Dante, turns into the tragedy of language, into the tragedy of all.” [LW]
Grange, Robert James, Jr. “Six Medieval Visions of Heaven and Hell with Respect to the Divine Comedy and the Illustrations of Paul Gustave Doré.” In Masters Abstracts International, XXXIII, No. 3 (June, 1995), 728. Masters Thesis, California State University, Long Beach, 1994. 148 p.
Grlic, Olga. “Dante’s Statius and Augustine: Intertextuality in Conversionary Narrative.” In Medieval et Humanistica, XXI (1995), 73-84.
Addresses the absence of St. Augustine from the Divine Comedy by noting the parallels between his conversion, as detailed in the Confessions, and that of Statius. In his autobiographical text, Augustine relates the facts of his conversion, needing to read the Scriptures allegorically before changing his heart. In the Convivio, Dante describes the stages Augustine passes through as being from bad to good, good to better, and better to best (I.ii.12). In the Purgatorio, the poet relates Statius’s conversion in the same manner, similarly brought about by an allegorical reading, this time of Virgil’s Eclogues. Moreover, the author associates Statius’s sin of prodigality with Augustine’s allegorization of the plunder of the Egyptian gold to justify the reading of pagan literature. With this reading, Statius becomes a figura Augustini while Virgil’s works become the equivalent of the Old Testament awaiting a New Testament to be fulfilled. [FA]
Gualtieri, Teresa. “Dante’s Cranes and the Pilgrimage of Poetic Inspiration.” In Rivista di studi italiani, XIII, No. 1 (Giugno, 1995), 1-13.
English version of a previously published essay (see Dante Studies, CXIII, 218).
Havely, Nick. “Babelic Antics and the Illustrious Vernacular: Two New Books on Dante.” In Medieval et Humanistica, XXI (1995), 139-144.
Review article discussing Rachel Jacoff’s Cambridge Companion to Dante and Angelo Mazzocco’s Linguistic Theories in Dante and the Humanists (see Dante Studies, CXII, 306-307 and 317-318).
Heilbronn-Gaines, Denise. “Inferno I: Breaking the Silence.” In Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Inferno. The Indiana Critical Edition (q.v.), pp. 286-298.
Investigates the language, imagery, and symbols of the first canto of Inferno and focuses in particular on the scriptural context of the first spoken words—”Miserere di me” from Psalm 50—and their importance for the poem as a whole.
Hollander, Robert. “The Dartmouth Dante Project.” In Atti. Societá Dantesca Italiana, Firenze: La Societá Dantesca Italiana 1888-1988. Convegno internazionale (Firenze 24-26 novembre 1988, Palazzo Vecchio—Palazzo Medici Riccardi—Palagio dell’Arte della Lana), edited by Rudy Abardo (Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi, 1995), pp. 453-463.
Provides an historical overview of the project. In the appendix is an update on the status of the commentaries.
Hollander, Robert. “Virgil and Dante as Mind-Readers (Inferno XXI and XXIII).” In Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Inferno. The Indiana Critical Edition (q.v.), pp. 340-352.
Slightly revised version of a previously published essay in Medioevo romanzo (see Dante Studies, CVIII, 168-169).
Holmes, Olivia. “From the Canso to the Canzoniere: The Emergence of the Autobiographical Lyric Cycle.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LVI, No. 3 (September, 1995), 920. Doctoral Dissertation, Northwestern University, 1994. 442 p.
The author “analyzes the transition, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, from multi-authored, scribally compiled lyric anthologies to the single-author codex, containing lyrics collected and organized by the poet.” She “explores the emergence of the modern authorial self in the context of vernacular poetry’s shift from the oral to the written medium, and of the new, expanding ‘book-culture.’” Attention given to Dante’s Vita Nuova.
Iannucci, Amilcare A. “Dante’s Inferno, Canto IV.” In Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Inferno. The Indiana Critical Edition (q.v.), pp. 299-309).
Previously appeared in Dante’s “Divine Comedy”: Introductory Readings. I: “Inferno,” ed. Tibor Wlassics (see Dante Studies, CIX, 178.)
Iliescu, Nicolae. “Sarà Salvo Virgilio?” In Dante: Summa Medievalis (q.v.), pp. 112-133.
Outlines the history of thought on salvation before Dante and, in a general discussion of the system of rewards and punishments in the Comedy, presents arguments in favor of Virgil’s future salvation.
James, Sara Nair. “Poetic Theology in Luca Signorelli’s Cappella Nuova at Orvieto.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LV, No. 7 (January, 1995), 1718. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Virginia, 1994. 395 p.
The authors attempts to demonstrate Signorelli’s “reliance on Dante, not so much for subject matter, but as a vehicle for his message and as a mentor in the painter’s self-conscious effort to present himself as an epic poet-theologian. Signorelli’s imitation of Dante’s difficult style helps to explain the complex forms and the layers of obscure meaning. The incorporation of the liturgy explains the choice of the scenes from Dante’s Purgatorio on the lower level, and the poets and scenes from poetry serve as an amplifier for the theological truths presented above.”
Kallendorf, Craig. “From Virgil to Vida: The Poeta Theologus in Italian Renaissance Commentary.” In Journal of the History of Ideas, LVI, No. 1 (January, 1995), 41-62.
Study of the history of the notion of theologia poetica—that pagan Greek and Latin poets anticipated the coming of Christ—during the Renaissance. Passing references to Dante’s Statius who converts after reading Virgil’s Eclogues. [FA]
Keen, M. H. “Dante’s Circle of Mars and the History of Arthur’s Britain.” In Arthuriana, V, No. 3 (Fall, 1995), 115-122.
Keen poses the following questions in his essay. “Why do no Arthurian figures appear in Dante’s circle of Mars in his Paradise, where he encountered the spirits of renowned Christian warriors? Dante knew the stories of Arthur and his knights: were they left out of paradise because he doubted whether their fighting was holy, or because he doubted the purity of their living? Or was it because Arthur’s story could find no place in his scheme of providential history?” [MHK]
Kimmelman, Burt. “Visionary Science in Purgatorio XVII and Paradiso XXX.” In Comitatus, XXVI (1995), 53-74.
While numerous scholars have noted a link between Purgatorio XVII and Paradiso XXXIII regarding the thematics of vision, the author highlights a similar connection between that earlier canto and Paradiso XXX. With reference to numerous medieval treatises on sight, Kimmelman argues that medieval thinkers did not draw a distinction between vision and knowledge; rather, they understood that one flows naturally from the other. In the analysis of the two cantos, the author notes an epistemological tension in Dante’s poem between the pilgrim’s physical sight in Purgatorio XVII and the imaginative understanding of the Divinity in Paradiso XXX. In the former canto, he sees the rays of the Sun (allegorically representing God) but cannot yet possess a full experience of it; only in the latter canto does the promise of Purgatorio XVII become fulfilled. At the same time, the poet uses the two cantos to reconcile the writings of the different auctores of vision. Thomas Aquinas describes sight as intromission, while Augustine explains that sense as extramission. In the earlier canto, Dante describes sight in the more earthly, Thomistic manner; however, at the end of the journey, vision and comprehension are joined, suggesting a greater indebtedness to Augustine’s platonic conception. [FA]
Kirkham, Victoria. “Dante’s Polysynchrony: A Perfectly Timed Entry into Eden.” In Filologia e critica (“A Charles S. Singleton. In memoriam”), XX, Nos. 2-3 (maggio-dicembre, 1995), 329-352.
Reviews the various “chronometries” in the Comedy and focuses on the significance of the number twenty-eight and its particular relevance for Dante’s positioning of the Terrestrial Paradise atop the Mountain of Purgatory. Kirkham concludes: “Dante adapts an ancient formula of Neoplatonic ascendancy to the plural interactive time lines of his Christian epic: since 28 is perfect and the product 4 x 7, he situates Eden in his Commedia on the number 28, factored as an intersection of 4 and 7. Canto Time converges with ‘real’ time, Hexameral Time, and Christian Salvation Time in the masterful harmonies of Dante’s polysynchrony.”
Kleinhenz, Christopher. “American Dante Bibliography for 1994.” In Dante Studies, CXIII (1995), 209-243.
With brief analyses.
Kleinhenz, Christopher. “Autorità biblica e citazione poetica: Osservazioni su Dante e la Bibbia.” In Filologia e critica (“A Charles S. Singleton. In memoriam”), XX, Nos. 2-3 (maggio-dicembre, 1995), 353-364.
Investigates the various ways—exact, incomplete and altered citations, translations and paraphrases, etc.—in which Dante incorporates the Bible in the Comedy.
Kleinhenz, Christopher. “Dante and the Art of Citation.” In Dante Now (q.v.), pp. 43-61.
Examines the ways in which Dante cites authorities in his works and focuses on his incorporation of various sorts of biblical citation—exact, incomplete and altered, paraphrases, translations—in the Comedy, with some attention to the poet’s related use of Christian iconography.
Kleinhenz, Christopher. “Iconographic Parody in Inferno XXI.” In Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Inferno. The Indiana Critical Edition (q.v.), pp. 325-339.
Slightly revised version of a previously published essay (see Dante Studies, CI, 205).
Lochrie, Karma. “Apocalyptic Imaginings.” In Modern Philology, XCII, No. 3 (February, 1995), 351-359.
Review essay of Richard K. Emmerson and Ronald B. Herzman’s The Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval Literature and The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, edited by Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn (see Dante Studies, CXI, 275 and 278).
Lovano, Joseph Basil. “Dante Alighieri, His Conception of ‘Fortune’, and Francisco Imperial.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LVI, No. 3 (September, 1995), 959. Doctoral Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1995. 215 p.
Studies Dante’s evolving views on Fortune in his works, as well as the influence of the Florentine poet on the fifteenth-century Castilian poet Francisco Imperial.
McVeigh, Daniel M. “The Western Canon: Bloom, Dante, and the Limits of Agon.” In Christianity and Literature, XLIV, No. 2 (Winter, 1995), 181-194.
Harold Bloom’s recent book concerning the Western cannon has been publicized in the media as a polemic against the left-wing, “multicultural” wing of literary criticism, but such an emphasis obscures Bloom’s ultimate opponent: “Christianity as an institution and way of looking at the world.” In order to make Dante fit his narrow view of a great author (one characterized by a strange and subversively solitary gnosticism) Bloom must distort the Comedy, ultimately denying that it is even Christian, at least in any traditional sense. Rather than Bloom’s sense of a solitary inwardness, “Dante writes a world which travels out from the confines of the self as defined in opposition to others toward a finding of true individuality sharpened through relationship.” And whereas Bloom jettisons any political or moral dimension to literature, denying it any function but an aesthetic one, Dante binds the political, moral, and aesthetic together “in what may be the largest and tightest unity the Western Canon has ever achieved.” [SB]
Mangieri, Cono A. “Gentucca dantesca e dintorni.” In Italian Quarterly, XXXII, Nos. 125-126 (Summer-Fall, 1995), 5-25.
Examines both historically and biographically the possibility that the “Gentucca” mentioned in Purgatorio XXIV existed. Analyzing the Purgatorio as an autobiographical confession on the part of the poet, Mangieri explains the dream of the siren, and the advent of the “donna santa e presta,” as the victory of Stoic Philosophy over Epicurean Philosophy which is purged in the three highest cornices of Purgatory. From this, he argues that Dante must have passed through an Epicurean period in his youth. Mangieri cites Giovanni Villani for historical evidence and the tenzone with Forese Donati for biographical evidence. He also notes that the seven P’s marked on the pilgrim’s forehead must correspond to seven sinful events in the poet’s life. Reading Dante’s other works with an eye towards his biography, the author argues that the late 1280s and early 1290s constituted a period of dissipation and hedonism for the poet. On the basis of these suppositions, Mangieri concludes that “Gentucca” might have been the poet’s illegitimate daughter, fathered while he was stationed in Lucca during the battle of Pisa in 1289. This would explain the seeming absence of any of Dante’s relatives in Purgatory and of any mention of his children in the Comedy: in Purgatorio, there would be this reference to his oldest child, an illegitimate daughter less than ten years old. [FA]
Mann, Jill. “Chaucer and Atheism.” In Studies in the Age of Chaucer, XVII (1995), 5-19.
Contains a short discussion of Inferno V.
Marti, Mario. “Rassegna di studi su Dante.” In Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, CLXXII, fasc. 558 (1995), 271-292.
Discusses the following volumes, among others: Vincent Moleta, ed., “La Gloriosa Donna de la Mente”: A Commentary on the “Vita Nuova” (see Dante Studies, CXIII, 217); Richard Kay, Dante’s Christian Astrology (see Dante Studies, CXIII, 220-221); and Amilcare A. Iannucci, ed., Dante e la “bella scola” della poesia: Autorità e sfida poetica (see Dante Studies, CXII, 309-310).
Martinez, Ronald L. “Dante and the Two Canons: Statius in Virgil’s Footsteps (Purgatorio 21-30).” In Comparative Literature Studies, XXXII, No. 2 (1995), 151-175.
Dante frequently and sometimes contradictorily articulates and juxtaposes a vernacular canon with the classical Latin canon in the Vita nuova, De Vulgari Eloquentia, Convivio, and Commedia. Statius’s meeting with Virgil in Purgatorio XXI-XXII not only explores Statius’s status as a disciple of Virgil, it also dramatizes the transformation of the classical Latin canon to a Christian one that ultimately “renders it accessible to Dante—a poeta both Christian and vernacular.” Statius, as the envoy to his Thebaid implies, follows in Virgil’s footsteps, imagery that Dante develops so as to include a pentecostal image of fire that unifies all languages in the inspiration of the spirit. Dante internally cites the fire imagery of Purgatorio XXI, 94-99 in Purgatorio XXX, 43-48 in a way that unites Virgil to Statius to Dante, the Latin canon to the new illustrious vernacular, which is “itself ‘conversant’ ... with the dictation of the Spirit and thus with the discourse of all the poets who closely follow its lead.” [SB]
Martinez, Ronald L. “‘Nasce il Nilo’: Justice, Wisdom, and Dante’s Canzone ‘Tre donne intorno al cor mi son venute’.” In Dante Now (q.v.), pp. 115-153.
Continuing the general direction of earlier research on the rime petrose (Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez, Time and the Crystal: Studies in Dante’s “Rime Petrose” [see Dante Studies, CIX, 180-181]), Martinez investigates the great canzone of exile as “a poem that parallels structures of the cosmos and the human body, indeed that points to the poet as a microcosm of the entire cosmos, ‘focusing the natural and metaphysical realms within the little world of [Dante’s] body and mind’.”
Mazur, Michael. (Joint author). See Pinsky, Robert.
Mazzotta, Giuseppe. “Dante’s Siger of Brabant: Logic and Vision.” In Dante: Summa Medievalis (q.v.), pp. 40-51.
Examines various aspects of logic and dialectics in order to “focus on the sharp reversal in Dante’s assessment of syllogism and...to shed some light...on the controversial figuration of Siger of Brabant.”
Mazzotta, Giuseppe. “Why Did Dante Write the Comedy? Why and How Do We Read It? The Poet and the Critics” In Dante Now (q.v.), pp. 63-79.
In response to the question he poses as to why we still read the Comedy, Mazzotta notes that “readers must turn to the classics and to Dante’s poem especially to discover its truth: ‘not a truth which is a whim or a doxa, but the truth about what a text is’.” He issues a call “for a ‘philology of the imagination’ that would bring together genealogy...with hermeneutics...and that would resolve the critical impasse of current neohistoricisms incapable of accounting for the aesthetic function of the text beyond questions of ideology. Mazzotta argues for Dante’s centrality to ongoing and future theoretical speculation about the possibility of any kind of encounter with ‘other’ worlds and ‘other’ times.”
Migiel, Marilyn. “The Diviners’ Truncated Vision: Sexuality and Textuality in Inferno XX.” In Dante: Summa Medievalis (q.v.), pp. 134-146.
Discusses cantos XVI-XX of the Inferno with regard to their special attention to questions of truth and gender and their interaction.
Milbank, Alison. “Dante, the Victorians, and the Distancing of History.” In Studies in Medievalism, VII (1995), 155-168.
A general consideration of the various ways in which Dante was received and interpreted by the cultural historians of the nineteenth century, particularly in the Victorian period.
Musa, Mark. “Behold Francesca Who Speaks So Well (Inferno V).” In Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Inferno. The Indiana Critical Edition (q.v.), pp. 310-324.
Slightly revised essay that appeared in Musa’s book, Advent at the Gates: Dante’s “Comedy” (see Dante Studies, XCIII, 236-237).
Musa, Mark (Editor). See Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Inferno. The Indiana Critical Edition (q.v.).
Musa, Mark (Editor). See Dante Alighieri, The Portable Dante (q.v.).
Palma, Giuseppina. “In the Arms of Hypnos: The Metaphor of Sleep in Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque Literature.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LVI, No. 3 (September, 1995), 920. Doctoral Dissertation, Yale University, 1994. 210 p.
In the second chapter (“The Pilgrim’s Sleep”) the author examines “Cantos IX, XVIII, and XXVII of Purgatory, in which sleep is a metaphor for human weakness. During his journey towards purification—ultimately his ‘restored’ mental lucidity—the pilgrim loses his spiritual alertness, leaving himself vulnerable to temptation, which he overcomes only through only through the faith that divine intervention brings.”
Parker, Deborah. “Dante’s Medieval and Renaissance Commentators: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Constructions.” In Dante and the Middle Ages: Literary and Historical Essays, edited by John Barnes and Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1995), pp. 287-303.
Presents in a slightly revised and abbreviated format the first chapter of her book, Commentary and Ideology: Dante in the Renaissance. (See Dante Studies, CXII, 320-321.)
Parker, Deborah. “New Perspectives on Bernardino Daniello’s Debt to Trifone Gabriele.” In Dante: Summa Medievalis (q.v.), pp. 168-178.
The essay appeared in a slightly different form in Modern Language Notes, CIV (1989) (see Dante Studies, CVIII, 143).
Pellicone, Frank Anthony, Jr. “Shaping Dante’s Humanism: A Horace of Different Colores.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LV, No. 8 (February, 1995), 2383. Doctoral Dissertation, Yale University, 1994. 320 p.
Investigates the influence of Horace on Dante’s work. Notes that “While it remains unlikely that Dante knew more of Horace than the ars poetica and isolated lines from the satires and epistles, Horace came to represent a specific tradition which attests to the importance of classic education within Dante’s understanding of the divinity. Above all, the prominence of Horace within the Commedia helps comprehend the humanist bent of Dante.”
Percic, Tone. “I primi riflessi di Dante nello spazio culturale sloveno.” In Italian Quarterly, XXXII, Nos. 123-124 (Winter-Spring, 1995), 7-16.
Examines the questions regarding the penetration of Dante’s works into Slovenian culture, addressing first the question of whether Dante, in his peregrinations, ever visited the city of Tolminotto. The earliest mention of this possibility was made by the Venetian senator Valvasone di Maniago (1423-1493). Although other Renaissance writers repeat this claim, there appears to be no conclusive evidence for this belief. The second matter concerns whether the powerful Celje family of the fifteenth century introduced Dante’s poetry to that region. Percic prefers the explanation that close commercial and economic ties with Italy during this period were probably responsible for this. In conclusion the author notes the different citations of Dante found in the literature of the Renaissance: books of sermons and in the works of the Slovenian protestant reformers. [FA]
Peterman, Larry. “Ulysses and Modernity.” In Dante Studies, CXIII (1995), 89-110.
This article originates in the familiar idea that the Ulysses of Inferno XXVI represents a Dantean foretaste of an unappealing future. It then explores what Ulysses suggests is dubious about the future, or modernity. First, Ulysses’s dedication to “conoscenza” is immoderate and disregards Aristotle’s teaching on the relationship of moral and intellectual virtue, or the life of politics and the life of the mind. Second, in surrendering to his ardor to experience the world Ulysses departs from the communal piety and detached eros of antiquity and points toward the self-absorbed zealotry and love of modernity. Finally, the article raises the question of whether Dante, in tracing the passage from Ulysses to modernity, rhetorically obscures rather than resolves problems at the heart of modern politics. [LP]
Peters, Edward. “The Shadowy, Violent Perimeter: Dante Enters Florentine Political Life.” In Dante Studies, CXIII (1995), 69-87.
Provides an overview of Dante’s entry into political life and what his first biographers interpreted of it. Peters then gives a concise history of both Dante’s participation during seven tumultuous years in Florence and the events which led to his exile. [AP]
Peterson, Thomas E. “Secularism and Religiosity in the Central Heavens of Paradiso.” In Centennial Review, XXXIX, No. 2 (Spring, 1995), 331-354.
Studies the polarity between the secular and the religious in the central heavens of Paradiso (the heavens of the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn). In Cantos X-XXII, the pilgrim moves out of the shadow of the earth and towards the empyrean. Therefore, the earthly systems of learning of the trivium are surpassed, and these thirteen cantos mark the pilgrim’s movement from the scientia of the trivium to the sapientia of the quadrivium. In the process, the viator will begin the reconciliation between will and intellect. In order to erase the tension between them, Dante must first understand the great figures of the central heavens: the two coronas of the Sun, the cross of Mars, the eagle of Jupiter and the ladder of Saturn. He will learn that they form a bridge between the secular and the divine, and that they allegorize the continuity between earth and heaven. [FA]
Pinsky, Robert, and Michael Mazur. “A Conversation about The Inferno of Dante.” In Harvard Review, VIII (Spring, 1995), 59-71.
A conversation between the translator and the illustrator concerning their collaborative work on the 1994 volume, The Inferno of Dante (see Dante Studies, CXIII, 210).
Pollak, Nancy. Mandelstam the Reader. Baltimore, Maryland, and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. xi, 217 p. (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society)
Contains numerous references to Dante.
Quinones, Ricardo J. “The Plot-Line of Myth in Dante’s Inferno.” In Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Inferno. The Indiana Critical Edition (q.v.), pp. 353-366.
Examines the “series of encounters between...Dante and Virgil and a host of demonic challengers” in the Inferno (Cerberus, Plutus, et al.). “These encounters are distinctive because through them—and only through them—are revealed in Hell the great patterns of Christian eschatology in which the individual soul knowingly or unknowingly participates—the contest in Heaven, the fall of the rebellious angels (with their resultant roles as devils in Hell), the death of Christ and the Harrowing of Hell.” It is in these encounters that the Pilgrim’s journey “taken outside of history and placed in universal myth.”
Raffa, Guy P. “Dante’s Beloved Yet Damned Virgil.” In Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Inferno. The Indiana Critical Edition (q.v.), pp. 266-285.
Treats the multi-faceted role of Virgil in the Comedy, emphasizing his “importance for Dante according to three measures: his poetic excellence first, then his wisdom regarding poetic truth, and lastly his susceptibility to falsehood.” Among the many passages cited, Raffa concentrates on the episodes of Manto and the Malebranche in Inferno XX-XXIII.
Richardson, Brian. “Editing Dante’s Commedia, 1472-1629.” In Dante Now (q.v.), pp. 237-262.
Richardson “identifies the editors of Dante’s text during the Renaissance and assesses the quality and character of their work both as textual critics and as providers of interpretive guidance for readers. [His] essay shows how printers, editors, and their reading publics create new versions of the classic work.”
Roglieri, Maria Ann. “From le rime aspre e chiocce to la dolce sinfonia di Paradiso: Musical Settings of Dante’s Commedia.” In Dante Studies, CXIII (1995), 175-208.
The author presents a general overview of all the known musical adaptations of Dante’s Commedia composed from the sixteenth century to the present. She shows how composers adapting the poem have taken three approaches: some have set the entire poem to music, some have written music based on particular Dantean characters, and others have adapted specific passages of the poem to music. Roglieri considers the settings in light of Dante’s verses and his own use of music in the Commedia and demonstrates that while Dante’s poem is characterized by an absence of music in Inferno, and an increasingly stronger presence of music in Purgatorio and Paradiso, composers who set Dante’s text to music have overwhelmingly favored the Inferno over the music in the other two canticles. The author also explores the possible reasons behind this disparity between composers’ use of Dante in music and Dante’s use of music in his poem. [MAR]
Roglieri, Maria Ann. “Uror, et in uacao pectore regnat amor: The Influence of Ovid’s Amatory Works on Dante’s Vita Nuova and Commedia.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LV, No. 8 (February, 1995), 2419. Doctoral Dissertation, Harvard University, 1994. 293 p.
Rosenthal, Joel. “Teaching Dante: Some Comments from an Historian.” In Dante: Summa Medievalis (q.v.), pp. 220-236.
The author shares insights gathered from teaching the Comedy as an integral element of a medieval history course. He approaches the opus as a masterly blend of travel and quest literature which intricately weaves together Roman and Biblical worlds. Suggests that students may fully appreciate Dante’s Inferno after having studied other medieval authors and their works: the master completes and sublimates what precedes him. The Dantean voyage through Hell—even when read in translation—never ceases to fascinate because of vivid images of eternal torture and exquisite poetic craftsmanship. [AP]
Rutledge, Monica. “Dante, the Body and Light.” In Dante Studies, CXIII (1995), 151-165.
Intending to further studies by Alessandro Parronchi on Dante’s knowledge and use of contemporary medieval optical science, the article explores the cognition theory, shared by Roger Bacon and Dante, which allocates the faculties of the sensitive and rational soul to parts of the brain. Dante is shown to have accepted Aristotle’s view that vision is a passive reception of light and color by the eye, rather than an active force proceeding from the eye, but to have retained the individual’s active will in attending, observing and encoding the information received. Dante believed, with Roger Bacon and other theological scientists, that spiritual light behaves in the same way as physical light, being received directly by angelic intelligences and reflected in mitigated form by them to the “occhi de la mente” of men. It is this power or energy reflected by Beatrice that enables Dante to rise through the heavens. [MR]
Sabbath, Roberta Sterman. “Romancing Visual Women: From Canon to Console.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LVI, No. 3 (September, 1995), 918. Doctoral Dissertation, University of California, Riverside, 1994. 196 p.
“This dissertation juxtaposes the romantic modal treatment of powerful, admired women which canonical male authors and feminist authors and critics construct with those constructed by contemporary women for the visual mass media of video, broadcast television, and computer. The discourse of the former produces the figure of a fragmented woman who is rare, supernatural, marginalized, and impossible. The discourse of the latter produces the figure of a psychologized woman who is typical, natural, mainstream, and possible. To examine the discourse of impossibility, I use three canonical works: Augustine’s Confessions; Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval; and Dante’s Divine Comedy.”
Sachs, Dalya M. “The Language of Judgment: Primo Levi’s Se questo è un uomo.” In Modern Language Notes, CX, No. 4 (September, 1995), 755-784.
Contains references to Ulysses and Ugolino.
Schemo, Diana Jean. “Ushering Dante Into the Realm of Contemporary English.” In The New York Times (Thursday, January 31, 1995), B1-B2.
Review article of Robert Pinsky’s translation, The Inferno of Dante (see Dante Studies, CXIII, 210).
Schildgen, Brenda Deen. “Wonders on the Border: Precious Stones in the Comedy.” In Dante Studies, CXIII (1995), 131-150.
Dante’s treatment of eastern matter in the Comedy lacks the kind of prejudice found in Latin geographical writers like Pliny, Solinus, and Strabo, which promoted the idea of “monstrous” races and reproduced stories of eastern wonders. Dante’s use of precious stones in the Comedy is one feature of his interest in the Matter of the East. As poetic vehicles for hinting at the beauty of the created universe, precious stones are “umbriferi prefazi” of the awesomeness of the heavenly body. In a poetic synthesis of the intellectual-theological positions of scholasticism and Bonaventurian Franciscanism, Dante has unified Albertus Magnus’s scientific discussion of the origins, uses, and properties of precious stones and the Bonaventurian idea of the visible beauty in the world as a sign of the invisible God who created it. [BDS]
Schnapp, Jeffrey. Tragedy and the Theatre of Hell. In ‘Libri poetarum in quattuor species dividuntur’: Essays on Dante and ‘genre,’ edited by Zygmunt G. Baranski. Supplement2 to The Italianist, number fifteen (1995), pp. 100-127.
“This two-part essay reflects upon the genre system that the high Middle Ages inherited from classical antiquity within the domain of the theatre. Its discontinuities are indicative not just of the tentative character of the present inquiry, but also of the elusive nature of the topic: namely, the re-emergence of the dramatic tragic genre in the early fourteenth century, signaled by the 1315 performance of Albertino Mussato’s Latin history play, the Ecerinis (or Echerenéid) and by the presence in Dante’s Commedia of numerous ‘tragic’ and/or ‘theatrical’ features.”
Scott, John A. “The Unfinished Convivio as a Pathway to the Comedy.” In Dante Studies, CXIII (1995), 31-56.
While recognizing the “immense gap” separating the two works, this study concentrates on aspects of the Convivio that prepare the way for Dante’s poetic masterpiece. Book I: the passionate defense of his native tongue is highlighted as a milestone pointing towards the use of the vernacular in the Comedy, even as it offers a key to Sordello’s role in Purgatorio. Book II: the question of what Dante meant by the “allegory of the theologians,” and his idiosyncratic angelology are re-examined. Books III-IV illustrate: a shift towards a more qualified faith in human reason; the discovery of Virgil’s true message and the providential role of Rome and her Empire; the introduction of imagery anticipating its superabundance in the poem. Despite the utterly different focus and self-corrections, the two works are in certain ways complementary: both aim to lead humanity “a scienza e vertù,” while Dante never abandoned his faith in philosophy as capable of bolstering the love of God in rational human beings. [JAS]
Sebastio, Leonardo. “‘Ragion la Bella’ nel Fiore: Preistoria o genesi dell’idea di cultura in Dante.” In Dante: Summa Medievalis (q.v.), pp. 52-86.
Examines the development of the figure of Philosophy—Reason (“Ragione”) in the Fiore—her iconography and attributes, and the nature of her sphere of activities in various of Dante’s works.
Shoaf, R. A. “‘Noon Englissh Digne’.” In Dante Now (q.v.), pp. 189-203.
Shoaf “examines the notoriously difficult and much debated question of Dante’s literary influence in late medieval England, investigated in relation to passages from Dante and Chaucer as well from the Gawain poet.”
Staten, Henry. Eros in Mourning: Homer to Lacan. Baltimore, Md., and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. xvi, 231 p.
“Eros in Mourning begins with a reading of the Iliad that shows how Homer, not yet influenced by the ideology of transcendence, analyzes the structure of unassuageable mourning in a way that is as up-to-date as the latest post-structuralism. Then, in readings of the Gospel of John, Dante, the troubadours, Petrarch, Hamlet, Paradise Lost, La Princess de Clèves, and Heart of Darkness, Staten shows how literary history may be reconstituted in terms of a poetics of mourning that keeps in sight the traditional problematic of mortal and transcendent eros. Finally, a reading of Lacan suggests that this writer—so profoundly influential today on the question of desire—must be understood in the context of the dialectic of mourning that dominates his work.” Most of the references to Dante occur in the chapter on “Cruel Lady, or The Decline of the ‘Gay Science’ from the Troubadours to Dante” (74-97), in which topics such as the erotic ascent, the “donna petra,” “automourning” in the Vita Nuova, and the differences between Dante and the troubadours are discussed.
Steadman, John M. Moral Fiction in Milton and Spenser. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995, xi, 200 p.
“[E]xamines how Milton and Spenser—and Renaissance poets in general—applied their art toward the depiction of moral and historical “truth.” Steadman centers his study on the various poetic techniques of illusion that these poets employed in their effort to bridge the gap between truth and imaginative fiction.” In addition to numerous references to Ariosto, Boiardo and Tasso, the book contains scattered references to Dante’s Comedy.
Steadman, John M. “Two Theological Epics: Reconsiderations of the Dante-Milton Parallel.” In Cithara, XXXV, No. 1 (November, 1995), 5-21.
In this reexamination of the many similarities between the Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost, Steadman, unlike many previous scholars, focuses upon the Renaissance notion of genre to explain the differences between the two works. Given the obsession with genre in Renaissance literary theory, the generic distinction between the two works seems very important. Milton would not have considered Dante’s poem as a heroic epic, but as exactly what Dante claims it to be, a comedy. Therefore, it should not be considered as a precursor to Milton’s poem. Thus, those critics who search for Milton’s sources in Dante will not find them, but this is not to say that Dante is entirely absent from Milton’s great poem either. Rather, Steadman suggests that Milton may have taken inspiration from Dante, but only as from an author in a different genre. [FA]
Stefanini, Ruggero. “Buonconte and Palinurus: Dante’s Re-Working of a Classical Source.” In Dante: Summa Medievalis (q.v.), pp. 100-111.
Investigates the shaping effect of the account of Virgilian Palinurus (Aen. VI) on the episode of Buonconte (Purg. V).
Stefanini, Ruggero. “La ‘laida opra’ di Inferno XIX 82.” In Lingua nostra, LVI, 1 (1995), 12-14.
Argues that verse 82 of Inferno XIX—”ché dopo lui verrà di più laida opra”—has been misunderstood by the critics, who usually interpret this line as meaning: “After him (Boniface VIII), there will come from the West a pastor without laws whose behaviors will be even worse.” However, Stefanini asserts that the phrase “di più laida opra” constitutes the subject of “verrà” introduced with a partitive. In his opinion, this verse should read: “After him (Boniface VIII), there will come even worse stuff.” In this way, the canto builds to an invective by accumulating epithets and accusations. [FA]
Steinberg, Glenn A. “Toward an Aesthetic of Literary Influence: Dante, Chaucer, Spenser.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LV, No. 8 (February, 1995), 2383. Doctoral Dissertation, Indiana University, 1994. 302 p.
“Poststructuralist theory requires that we re-conceptualize literary influence as a relationship more complex and more nuanced than that of cause and effect between two authors. Close comparison between obviously related works can help us to grasp the historical, social, and cultural differences between texts.”
Stewart, Dana Elizabeth. “Love at First Sight: Optical Theory in Medieval French and Italian Love Poetry.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LV, No. 7 (January, 1995), 1947. Doctoral Dissertation, Stanford University, 1994. 167 p.
Examines the treatment of visual themes in the poetry of Chrétien de Troyes, Giacomo da Lentini, Cavalcanti, and Dante.
Tench, Darby. “Variety and Unity in Tommaseo’s Commentary of the Comedy.” In Dante: Summa Medievalis (q.v.), pp. 179-191.
General appreciation of the importance and innovative qualities of Niccolò Tommaseo’s commentary on the poem.
Tripodi, Vincenzo. L’umile Italia in Dante Alighieri. Potomac, Md.: Scripta Humanistica, 1995. iii, 359 p. (Scripta Humanistica, 118)
An examination of the notion of umiltà—and of its opposite, superbia—in the light of the medieval philosophical and theological tradition, as well as an investigation into the other components of the crucial passage in Inferno I (vv. 91-111) that details the final conflict between the lupa and the Veltro (“di quella umile Italia fia salute / per cui morì la vergina Cammilla, / Eurialo e Turno e Niso di ferute”). Contents: Prefazione (i-iii); I. Introduzione (1-23); II. Problemi di critica su Dante Alighieri (24-58); III. Umiltà (59-102); IV. Superbia (103-129); V. Magnanimità: A. Concetto di magnanimità in Dante Alighieri, B. Magnanimi: 1. Camilla, 2. Eurialo, 3. Turno, 4. Niso (130-190); VI. Roma: A. Roma antica, B. Roma moderna (191-216); VII. Firenze: A. Firenze del passato, B. Firenze del presente, C. Firenze del futuro (217-268); VIII. L’Italia: A. L’Italia del passato, B. Alcune regioni dell’Italia moderna, C. L’Italia moderna, D. L’umile Italia (269-331); Indice analitico (332-359).
Trone, George Andrew. “The Cry of Dereliction in Purgatorio XXIII.” In Dante Studies, CXIII (1995), 111-129.
On the terrace of the gluttons in Purgatorio XXIII, Forese Donati alludes to the Cry of Dereliction. The author notes how the series of contradictory images which make up the canto reinforces the contradictory nature of the Crucifixion. Forese’s analogy of the suffering of Christ on the cross to the suffering of the souls in Purgatory highlights the paradoxical nature of both. In both cases, the author points out, the person is both willing and unwilling to undergo the punishment, which he knows is the only way to achieve redemption and salvation. The author briefly discusses the lack of commentary on the sacrificial implications of the passage, acknowledging the contributions of L’Ottimo Commento and Della Lana. After a review of the importance of the Cry of Dereliction in the theological debates over the dual nature of Christ, the author concludes by considering the linguistic ramifications of the cry of “Eli” and comments, in particular, on how Dante uses the same word to identify both Adam and Christ, framing thus a cycle of linguistic redemption. [GAT]
Turner, Rosine Vance. “Breakdown in Hell: The Figuration of an Epistemological Crisis in the Divina Commedia.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LVI, No. 1 (July, 1995), 187. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1994. 516 p.
The author proposes that “in Dante’s Divina commedia, there occurs a somewhat veiled breakdown in the working relationship of the pilgrim and his guide which becomes manifest in Inferno 20, among the diviners, in a series of ‘errors,’ affective oscillations, and isolating factors. This crisis is prepared from Inferno 1, given a context in Inferno 14-17, in the figuration of the Veglio di Creta and of Geryon and his cliff, and provisionally...resolved in Inferno 25, canto of Ulysses. The breakdown is epistemological; the means of knowing and conveying knowledge come into doubt. Moreover, this crisis is the main determinant of the dramatic structure and the poet’s disposition of his materia in Malebolge, and is close to the autobiographical core germinal to the Commedia. ... Since the interpretation of the Commedia has generally centered on moral issues, and has assumed that Dante’s main interest was in the disorder of the affectus, there has been almost complete neglect of the epistemological dimensions of the poem’s structures, in which the crisis proposed was figured.”
Vallone, Aldo. “A proposito di Monarchia III, iii, 10.” In Dante Studies, CXIII (1995), 167-173.
Investigates the possible source of Dante’s remark in the Monarchia—”Nor is this a cause for astonishment, for I once heard one of them say and stubbornly insist that the traditions of the church are the foundation of faith” (trans. Prue Shaw: “Nec mirum, cum iam audiverim quendam de illis dicentem et procaciter asserentem traditiones Ecclesie fidei fundamentum,” III, iii, 10). Argues that Dante’s source was probably not a decretalist nor a glossator, but a preacher, one whom he may have heard in Bologna.
Vallone, Aldo. “Auditory and Visual Memory in Dante.” In Dante: Summa Medievalis (q.v.), pp. 19-39.
Investigates the shaping effect of oral and pictorial culture—as opposed to “bookish” culture—on Dante in the composition of the Comedy.
Vasta, Edward (Joint author). See Cervigni, Dino S., “From Manuscript to Print...”
Vickers, Nancy J. “Dante in the Video Decade.” In Dante Now (q.v.), pp. 263-276.
Presents the videos produced by Peter Greenaway and Tom Phillips in 1990 for the Inferno. She “adopts a formalist and philological mode to trace the polysemous intertext in the Greenaway-Phillips Inferno of still-photographic depictions of human and animal mobility by the cinematic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge.”
Vickrey, John F. “Inferno VII: Deathstyles of the Rich and Famous.” In Neophilologus, LXXIX, No. 4 (October, 1995), 599-610.
When Virgil leads the pilgrim through the circle of the avaricious and prodigal, Dante expects to know some of the sinners there. However, none of them can be identified or even named. The author examines the loss of identity as crucial to the punishment of those who abused their wealth in life. Vickrey notes that these were among the wealthy people of Europe at the age, no doubt the most famous people to be found in their cities. Now they are indistinct, referred to only collectively, and reduced to hurling plebeian insults at one another. The loss of identity as punishment for avariciousness has a possible source in Gregory the Great’s Homilia XL in Evangelia, where he explains that God knows the name of the pauper but not of the rich man, and allows the poor into His presence but not the wealthy. The anonymity of the rich constitutes an inversion of what happens in everyday life, and would perhaps form the basis for this contrapasso. [FA]
Vogel, Lucy. “Russian Metamorphosis: Danteizing Pushkin.” In Dante: Summa Medievalis (q.v.), pp. 208-219.
Examines the shaping effect of Dante on Pushkin, while recognizing the Russian poet’s unique genius.
Warner, Lawrence. “The Dark Wood and the Dark Word in Dante’s Commedia.” In Comparative Literature Studies, XXXII (1995), 449-478.
The first part of this essay argues that the “selva oscura” represents not the pilgrim’s errant will but instead the salvific obscurities of the scriptures. The common topos of “Bible-as-forest” is exemplified in the writings of Augustine and Bonaventure when they explain scripture’s dangers to unprepared readers. In the Monarchia Dante discusses an Augustinian passage that ensures that the pilgrim of Inferno has lost the straight way through the scriptures. Bonaventure modifies the Bible-as-forest figure by focusing on theological students’ dread of the scriptures, which results from the diffusion of truths throughout exegetical writings. Next, the essay argues that the forest metaphor of Inferno IX dramatizes the dangers of the literal interpretation of Biblical obscurities, and that Brunetto Latini’s sodomy and distance from the wood of the suicides figuratively represent his refusal to encounter scriptural difficulties in the Tesoretto. Cacciaguida’s holy discourse corrects Brunetto’s cowardice. Finally, the essay suggests that the paradisal vision of the leaves of the universe in one volume answers the problem of diffusion that the pilgrim, like Bonaventure’s students, has encountered throughout his journey. Dante’s poetic project thus shares with medieval exegesis a fundamental concern with diffusion and unity: both are transgressive endeavors that risk shattering the truths inherent in the unity of God’s Word. [LW]
Watkins, John. The Specter of Dido: Spenser and Virgilian Epic. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995.
The second chapter (“Remembrances of Dido: Medieval and Renaissance Transformations of the Aeneid”) contains a section on Dante (“The Medieval Dido: Dante and Chaucer,” pp. 38-48) with particular reference to Inferno V.
Watts, Barbara J. “The Pre-Raphaelites and the International Competition for Sandro Botticelli’s Dante Drawings Manuscript.” In Pre-Raphaelite Art in Its European Context, edited by Susan P. Casteras and Alicia Craig Faxon (Madison and Teaneck, New Jersey, and London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Associated University Presses, 1995), pp. 81-102.
Discusses Dante’s role in the nineteenth-century rediscovery of Botticelli through the writings of Walter Pater and John Ruskin and recounts the controversial sale of the Dante codex with Sandro Botticelli’s illustrations (MS Hamilton 201) to Prussia in 1882. [BJW]
Watts, Barbara J. “Sandro Botticelli’s Drawings for Dante’s Inferno: Narrative Structure, Topography, and Manuscript Design.” In Artibus et Historie, No. 32 (1995), 163-201.
Discusses Botticelli’s drawings for the Inferno in Cod. Hamilton 201 (Cim. 33) in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin, and Reg. Lat. 1896 in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. The essay attempts to demonstrate the important role that Hell’s topography and structure played in the artist’s compositions and discusses the manuscript’s novel design and layout as fundamental elements of his pictorial adaptation of Dante’s poem. [BJW]
Watts, Barbara J. “Sandro Botticelli’s Drawings for Inferno VIII and IX: Narrative Revision and the Role of Manuscript Tradition.” In Word and Image, XI, No. 2 (April-June, 1995), 149-173.
Considers Botticelli’s drawings for Inferno VIII and IX in Reg. Lat. 1896 (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana) and Hamilton 201 (Cim. 33) (Staatliche Museen, Berlin) in relation to the Baldini engravings for these cantos in the 1481 Florence Commedia, and in relation to traditions in manuscript illumination. Argues that the pictorial tradition of manuscript illumination for the Inferno was not a debilitating influence on Botticelli, but rather, that it provided him with the means to achieve his own narrative and interpretative goals. [BJW]
Welle, John P. “Dante in the Cinematic Mode: An Historical Survey of Dante Movies.” In Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Inferno. The Indiana Critical Edition (q.v.), pp. 381-395.
Investigates the history of the Comedy in Italian cinema and examines Dante’s shaping effect on nineteenth- and twentieth-century culture, particularly his “contribution to the creation of Italian national identity from political unification in 1870 until the present.”
Wilhelm, James J. “What Dante May Have Learned from Arnaut Daniel.” In Dante: Summa Medievalis (q.v.), pp. 87-99.
Examines the various ways in which Arnaut Daniel’s poetry may have influenced Dante.
Wlassics, Tibor. (Editor). See Dante’s “Divine Comedy”... (q.v.)
Wlassics, Tibor. “Translation or Interpretation? Notes on Dante in English.” In Dante: Summa Medievalis (q.v.), pp. 1-9.
Discusses the problems of textual ambivalence in Dante’s Comedy and the dilemma that translators of the poem must confront, with examples from Inferno I, X, XIII, XV, XXIV, and XXVIII.
Wright, Michelle R. “Interpreting Codicology: Re-visions of the Divine Comedy in the Codex Altona.” In Mosaic, XXVIII, No. 4 (December, 1995), 13-37.
Focusing on the intentional and accidental features of medieval manuscripts, this essays explores how the Codex Altona draws attention to the page as a medium of representation and to the interpretive role of illustrations. The reader’s moral progress is shown to depend on hermeneutic skill in a context that relates artistic achievement to pride and avarice. [MRW]
Ziolkowski, Jan M. “Raising Hell.” In Harvard Review, VIII (Spring, 1995), 72-77.
Review article of Robert Pinsky’s translation, The Inferno of Dante (see Dante Studies, CXIII, 210).
Reviews
Alighieri, Dante. The Banquet. Translated by Christopher Ryan. Saratoga: ANMA Libri, 1989. (See Dante Studies, CVIII, 114.) Reviewed by:
Vincent Moleta, in Italian Quarterly, XXXII, Nos. 125-126 (1995), 119-123.
Alighieri, Dante. Il Convivio (The Banquet). Translated by Richard H. Lansing. New York: Garland Publishing, 1990. (See Dante Studies, CIX, 163-164.) Reviewed by:
Vincent Moleta, in Italian Quarterly, XXXII, Nos. 125-126 (1995), 119-123.
Alighieri, Dante. The Inferno of Dante. A New Verse Translation by Robert Pinsky. Illustrated by Michael Mazur, with Notes by Nicole Pinsky. Foreword by John Freccero. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994. (See Dante Studies, CXIII, 210.) Reviewed by:
Wallace Fowlie, in Sewanee Review, CIII, No. 3 (Summer, 1995), lxxxv-lxxxvii;
Rachel Jacoff, in Boston Review, XX, No. 2 (April-May, 1995), 33-34;
Bernard Knox, in The New York Review (October 19, 1995), .
Alighieri, Dante. Vita nuova. Edited by Jennifer Petrie and June Salmons. Dublin: Belfield Italian Library, 1994. Reviewed by:
Fernando Di Mieri, in Rivista di studi italiani, XIII, No. 1 (Giugno, 1995), 198-199.
A[ntonio] F[ranceschetti], in Quaderni d’italianistica, XVI, No. 1 (1995), 147-148.
Alighieri, Dante. Vita Nuova. Italian Text with Facing English Translation by Dino S. Cervigni and Edward Vasta. Notre Dame, Ind., and London: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1995. (See Dante Studies, CXIV, 312-313.) Reviewed by:
James S. Torrens, S.J., in Christianity and Literature, XLIV, No. 2 (1995), 225-227.
The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages. Edited by Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn. Ithaca, New York, and London: Cornell University Press, 1992. (See Dante Studies, CXI, 278.) Reviewed by:
David Bevington, in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, XVII (1995), 202-205;
Philip D. Krey, in Journal of Religion, LXXV, No. 2 (April, 1995), 275-277.
Astell, Ann W. Job, Boethius, and Epic Truth (Ithaca, New York, and London: Cornell University Press, 1994. (See Dante Studies, CXIII, 210.) Reviewed by:
Lawrence Besserman, in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, XVII (1995), 160-163.
Barolsky, Paul. The Faun in the Garden: Michelangelo and the Poetic Origins of Italian Renaissance Art. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. (See Dante Studies, CXIII, 211.) Reviewed by:
Katherine A. McIver, in Sixteenth Century Journal, XXVI, No. 3 (Fall, 1995), 719-720.
Barricelli, Jean-Pierre. Dante’s Vision and the Artist: Four Modern Illustrators of the “Commedia.” New York: Peter Lang, 1992. (See Dante Studies, CXII, 335.) Reviewed by:
Herma Bashir-Hecht, in Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch, LXX (1995), 114-117.
Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and Schools of the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994. (See Dante Studies, CXIII, 211-212.) Reviewed by:
Robert Pogue Harrison, in New Vico Studies, XIII (1995), 91-96.
Boitani, Piero. The Shadow of Ulysses: Figures of a Myth. Translated by Anita Weston. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Reviewed by:
Joan B. Burton, in Classical and Modern Literature, XV, No. 2 (1995), 193-196.
Botterill, Steven. Dante and the Mystical Tradition: Bernard of Clairvaux in the “Commedia.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. (See Dante Studies, CXIII, 212-213.) Reviewed by:
Roberto Carnero, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCIX, No. 3 (1995), 208;
Mario Trovato, in Annali d’italianistica, XIII (1995), 479-483.
Boyde, Patrick. Perception and Passion in Dante’s “Comedy.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Reviewed by:
Richard Kay, in Annali d’italianistica, XIII (1995), 477-478;
Norm Klassen, in Medium Aevum, LXIV, No. 2 (1995), 338-339;
Paul Spillenger, in Speculum, LXX, No. 3 (July, 1995), 587-589.
The Cambridge Companion to Dante. Edited by Rachel Jacoff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. (See Dante Studies, CXII, 306-307.) Reviewed by:
Frank A. Domínguez, in Hispanofila, 113 (1995), 81-83;
Italo Pantani, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCIX, No. 3 (1995), 196-198.
Camporesi, Piero. The Fear of Hell: Images of Damnation and Salvation in Early Modern Europe. Translated by Lucinda Byatt. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993. Reviewed by:
Guido Ruggiero, in Renaissance Quarterly, XLVIII, No. 3 (Autumn, 1995), 652-654.
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:
Massimo Seriacopi, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCIX, Nos. 1-2 (1995), 227-228.
Dante e la “bella scola” della poesia: Autorità e sfida poetica. Edited by Amilcare A. Iannucci. Ravenna: Longo, 1993. (See Dante Studies, CXII, 309-310.) Reviewed by:
Claire Honess, in Medium Aevum, LXIV, No. 1 (1995), 151-152.
Dante Studies, Vol. CXI (1993). Reviewed by:
E[manuela] B[ufacchi], in L’Alighieri, XXXVI, No. 2 (luglio-dicembre, 1995), 126-129.
Dante Studies, CXI (1993). Reviewed by:
Roberta Gentile, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCIX, Nos. 1-2 (1995), 212-214.
Dante Today. Edited by Amilcare A. Iannucci. Special issue of Quaderni d’Italianistica, X, Nos. 1-2 (Spring-Fall, 1989). Reviewed by:
Daniele Simoncini, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCIX, Nos. 1-2 (1995), 214-215.
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:
Ernesto Livorni, in Comparative Literature Studies, XXXII, No. 1 (1995), 58-62.
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:
Margaret Clunies Ross, in Parergon, XII, No. 2 (January, 1995), 248.
Dronke, Peter. Verse with Prose from Petronius to Dante: The Art and Scope of the Mixed Form. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994. (See Dante Studies, CXIII, 215.) Reviewed by:
Mauro Cursietti, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCIX, No. 3 (1995), 189-190;
C. J. McDonough, in Speculum, LXX, No. 3 (July, 1995), 605-607;
F. Muecke, in Parergon, XIII, No. 1 (July, 1995), 159-160;
J. Usher, in Italian Studies, L (1995), 160-161.
“La Gloriosa Donna de la Mente”: A Commentary on the “Vita Nuova”. Edited by Vincent Moleta. Firenze and Perth: Leo S. Olschki and Department of Italian, The University of Western Australia, 1994. (See Dante Studies, CXIII, 217.) Reviewed by:
Selene Sarteschi, in Italianistica, XXIV, No. 1 (gennaio-aprile, 1995), 232-235.
Godorecci, Barbara J. After Machiavelli: “Rewriting” and the “Hermeneutic Attitude.” West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1993. (See Dante Studies, CXII, 314.) Reviewed by:
Kenneth R. Bartlett, in Sixteenth Century Journal, XXVI, No. 3 (Fall, 1995), 726-727.
Heffernan, James A. W. Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. (See Dante Studies, CXIII, 241.) Reviewed by:
Nancy Moore Goslee, in Studies in Romanticism, XXXIV, No. 4 (1995), 648-652.
Richard Macksey, in Modern Language Notes, CX, No. 4 (1995), 1010-1015.
Hollander, Robert. Dante’s Epistle to Cangrande. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993. (See Dante Studies, CXII, 314.) Reviewed by:
Steven Botterill, in Italica, LXXII, No. 3 (Autumn, 1995), 382-383.
Holloway, Julia Bolton. Twice-Told Tales. Brunetto Latini and Dante Alighieri. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. (See Dante Studies, CXII, 315-316.) Reviewed by:
Diana Modesto, in Parergon, XII, No. 2 (January, 1995), 182-185.
Kay, Richard. Dante’s Christian Astrology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. (See Dante Studies, CXIII, 220-221.) Reviewed by:
Peter Armour, in Italian Studies, L (1995), 161-163.
Kleiner, John. Mismapping the Underworld: Daring and Error in Dante’s Comedy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. (See Dante Studies, CXIII, 222.) Reviewed by:
Claire Honess, in Italian Studies, L (1995), 163-165;
Edward Donald Kennedy, in Philosophy and Literature, XIX, No. 2 (1995), 415-416;
Christian Moevs, in Annali d’Italianistica, XIII (1995), 473-476;
Frank A. Pellicone, in Forum Italicum, XXIX, No. 1 (Spring, 1995), 201-202.
Land, Norman E. The Viewer as Poet: The Renaissance Response to Art. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. (See Dante Studies, CXIII, 223.) Reviewed by:
Elaine E. Whitaker, in South Atlantic Review, LX, No. 3 (September, 1995), 159-161.
Lectura Dantis, 1.1 Reviewed by:
Hans Felten, in Romanische Forschungen, CVII, Nos. 1-2 (1995), 243-244.
Letture classensi: lettura del “Fiore”. Edited by Zygmunt G. Baranski, Patrick Boyde, and Lino Pertile. Ravenna: Longo, 1993. Reviewed by:
Theodore J. Cachey Jr., in Medium Aevum, LXIV, No. 1 (1995), 150-151.
Limentani, Uberto. Dante’s Comedy: Introductory Readings of Selected Cantos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Reviewed by:
Vincent Moleta, in Italian Quarterly, XXXII, Nos. 123-124 (1995), 135-136.
Mazzocco, Angelo. Linguistic Theories in Dante and the Humanists: Studies of Language and Intellectual History in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993. (See Dante Studies, CXII, 317-318.) Reviewed by:
Gary P. Cestaro, in Speculum, LXX, 4 (October, 1995), 941-943;
Charles Franco, in Forum Italicum, XXIX, No. 2 (Fall, 1995), 393-395;
Deborah Parker, in Renaissance Quarterly, XLVIII, No. 3 (Autumn, 1995), 619-621.
Mazzotta, Giuseppe. Dante’s Vision and the Circle of Knowledge. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993. (See Dante Studies, CXII, 318.) Reviewed by:
Steven Botterill, in Comparative Literature, XLVII, No. 4 (Fall, 1995), 378-380;
Charles Franco, in Forum Italicum, XXIX, No. 1 (Spring, 1995), 199-201;
William J. Kennedy, in Renaissance Quarterly, XLVIII, No. 3 (1995), 616-619;
Seth Lerer, in Speculum, LXX, No. 1 (January, 1995), 175-177;
Gregory L. Lucente, in New Vico Studies, XIII (1995), 96-99;
Franco Masciandaro, in Italica, LXXII, 1 (Spring, 1995), 112-114;
Lino Pertile, in Medium Aevum, LXIV, No. 1 (1995), 152-153;
Anthony Roda, in Philosophy and Literature, XIX, No. 1 (April, 1995), 194-195.
Menocal, María Rosa. Shards of Love: Exile and the Origin of the Lyric. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1994. (See Dante Studies, CXIII, 224.) Reviewed by:
Hans R. Runte, in Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, XXII, No. 1 (1995), 178-179.
Nassar, Eugene Paul. Illustrations to Dante’s “Inferno.” Rutherford-Madison-Teaneck, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London and Toronto: Associate University Presses, 1994. (See Dante Studies, CXIII, 226.) Reviewed by:
A[ntonio] F[ranceschetti], in Quaderni d’italianistica, XVI, No. 1 (1995), 148.
Parker, Deborah. Commentary and Ideology: Dante in the Renaissance. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1993. (See Dante Studies, CXII, 320-321.) Reviewed by:
Isabella Bertoletti, in Romance Quarterly, XLII, No. 2 (Spring, 1995), 125-126;
Frank Fata, in Italica, LXXII, No. 3 (Autumn, 1995), 391-393;
William J. Kennedy, in Renaissance Quarterly, XLVIII, No. 3 (1995), 616-619.
Payton, Rodney J. A Modern Reader’s Guide to Dante’s “Inferno.” New York: Peter Lang, 1992. (See Dante Studies, CXII, 336-337.) Reviewed by:
Douglas Biow, in Annali d’italianistica, XIII (1995), 476-477.
Picchio Simonelli, Maria. Inferno III. With a new translation of the canto by Patrick Creagh and Robert Hollander. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. (See Dante Studies, CXII, 321-322.) Reviewed by:
C[laudia] C[hierichini], in L’Alighieri, XXXVI, No. 2 (luglio-dicembre, 1995), 141-142.
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Cynthia C. Craig, in Annali d’italianistica, XIII (1995), 483-486.
Rigo, Paola. Memoria classica e memoria biblica in Dante. Firenze: Olschki, 1994. Reviewed by:
James T. Chiampi, in Rivista di Studi Italiani, XIII, No. 2 (dicembre, 1995), 70-73;
Antonio Rossini, in Quaderni d’italianistica, XVI, No. 2 (autunno, 1995), 309-11.
Sabbatino, Pasquale. L’Eden della nuova poesia: Saggi sulla “Divina commedia.” Firenze: Olschki, 1991. Reviewed by:
Kevin Marti, in Speculum, LXX, No. 1 (January, 1995), 199-201.
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:
Antonio Corsaro, in Esperienze letterarie, XX, No. 4 (1995), 103-106.
Douglas Kelly, in Italica, LXXII, No. 1 (Spring, 1995), 114-115.
Staten, Henry. Eros in Mourning: Homer to Lacan. Baltimore, Md., and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. (See above under Studies.) Reviewed by:
John Micheal Crafton, in South Atlantic Review, LX, No. 4 (1995), 144-147.
Joseph D. Parry, in Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, XV (1994), 105-107.
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:
Douglas Kelly, in Italica, LXXII, No. 2 (Summer, 1995), 229-230.
Storey, H. Wayne. Transcription and Visual Poetics in the Early Italian Lyric. New York: Garland, 1993. (See Dante Studies, CXIII, 241-242.) Reviewed by:
Gloria Allaire, in Italica, LXXII, No. 3 (Autumn, 1995), 383-385;
Maria Cristina Panzera, in Studi mediolatini e volgari, XLI (1995), 243-252.
Dario Del Puppo, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCIX, Nos. 1-2 (1995), 168-170;
Spencer Pearce, in Medium Aevum, LXIV, No. 2 (1995), 336-337.
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. (See Dante Studies, CXII, 302-303.) Reviewed by:
Claire Honess, in Italian Studies, L (1995), 165-167.
Word and Drama in Dante: Essays on the “Divina Commedia.” Edited by John C. Barnes and Jennifer Petrie. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993. Reviewed by:
Gary P. Cestaro, in Medium Aevum, LXIV, No. 2 (1995), 337-338.
