American Dante Bibliography for 1994

Christopher Kleinhenz

This bibliography is intended to include all the Dante translations published in this country in 1994 and all Dante studies and reviews published in 1994 that are in any sense American. For their assistance with certain parts of this bibliography and its annotations my thanks go to Julia Ambrose and Teresa Gualtieri, graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

 

Translations

The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. A Poetic Translation in Iambic Pentameter and Terza Rima by Stephen Wentworth Arndt. Lewiston, N.Y.: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1994. xi, 691 p. 

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. xxvii, 427 p.

 

Studies

Al Askari, Ghida Tarik. “Dante and al-Ma’arri’s Risalat al-Ghufran: A Reconsideration of Islamic Sources of the Divina Commedia.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LV, No. 3 (September, 1994), 556. Doctoral Dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1994. 177 p.

The author argues in the conclusion “that no categorical evidence exists to support the contention that Dante could have been directly influenced by the Risalat al-Ghufran.” Proposes to “return to the original hypothesis that both works were influenced by various renditions of the narratives of journeys to the hereafter, and that the analogies found in them are due to the use of the same thematic matter, as well as to the fact that Dante and al-Ma’arri, being supreme masters of poetry and language, were able to use their literary skills to underscore their essential concepts and principles.”

Anderson, David. “The Italian Background to Chaucer’s Epic Similes.” In Annali d’Italianistica, XII (1994), 15-38. 

Analysis of Chaucer’s extended similes with particular attention to his indebtedness to Dante whose similes he came to know primarily through the medium of Boccaccio who incorporated, reworked, and elaborated them in his own works.

Armour, Peter. “Brunetto, the Stoic Pessimist.” In Dante Studies, CXII (1994), 1-18. 

A survey of recent studies of Brunetto Latini’s sin and the imagery of Inferno XV in the light of the author’s interpretation that Dante’s Brunetto is presented as a quasi-Manichaean pessimist and that his language provides an intensified contrast with that of Dante in Convivio IV, on the natural and theological origins of nobility. Brunetto’s Stoic acceptance of his own exile and his function as Dante’s teacher, perhaps of versification in the vernacular, are also reflected in the canto: in Dante’s attitude to Fortune, his tribute to the man who taught him “come l’uom s’etterna,” and the permanence of this influence on Dante’s own “lingua” and fame as a poet. [PA]

Astell, Ann W. Job, Boethius, and Epic Truth. Ithaca, New York, and London: Cornell University Press, 1994. xiii, 240 p.

Auersperg, Ruth E. “Exilic Discourse as Self-Constitution.” In Masters Abstracts International, XXXII, No. 6 (December, 1994), 1531. Masters Thesis, McGill University, 1992. 125 p.

Taking the Divine Comedy as her case study, the author examines “the use of philosophical and literary means admitting of various kinds of self-referential expressions and of simulacra of moral agency as substitutes for self-affirmation by public acts. Stimulated by these means, an intellectual and moral ‘self-portrait’ of the poet eventually emerges in the reader’s consciousness. This ‘portrait’ is no static image of a pre-existent character, but a dynamic presence of an evolving human person of intellectual and moral integrity, as a reflection of the poet’s self-perception.”

Discusses Dante and Beatrice, among others, in the chapter on “Boethian Lovers” (pp. 127-158).

Baranski, Zygmunt G. “Dante Alighieri.” In The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, edited by Michael Groden and Martin Kreiswirth (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), pp. 183-185. 

An overview of Dante’s works with regard to their intrinsic literary merit and their contribution to the tradition of literary criticism.

Barolini, Teodolinda. “‘Cominciandomi dal principio infino a la fine’ (V.N., XXIII, 15): Forging Anti-Narrative in the ‘Vita Nuova’.” In “La Gloriosa Donna de la Mente”... (q.v.), pp. 119-140. [1994]

Argues that “in the Vita Nuova Dante learns to play narrative time and lyric time against each other, ... as he would certainly later do in the Commedia, notably in the Paradiso.” Indeed, the Vita Nuova’s “alternating prose and verse offers us a literalization of the Paradiso’s alternation between ‘narrative’, based on an Aristotelian sense of time as duration and continuum, and ‘lyric’, based on an Augustinian sense of time as an indivisible instant. ... The Vita Nuova’s literal alternations between prose narrative and verse lyrics may thus be seen as an antecedent for the Paradiso’s more figurative alternations between a narrative and a lyrical mode.” Barolini seeks to demonstrate “the presence of a double contamination, whereby the libello is the locus not only of a narrativized—chronologized—lyric, but also of a lyricized—dechronologized—narrative. The circular time-resistant anti-narrative of the Paradiso is forged in that crucible of juvenile invention, the Vita Nuova.”

Barolsky, Paul. The Faun in the Garden: Michelangelo and the Poetic Origins of Italian Renaissance Art. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. xviii, 177 p. [1994]

Contains scattered references Dante, including one short section (pp. 164-165) on Leah and Matilda in Purgatorio XXVII-XXVIII in connection with the autobiographical nature of Michelangelo’s sculpture of the “Active Life” for the tomb of Pope Julius II.

Bellamy, Elizabeth J. “From Virgil to Tasso: The Epic Topos as an Uncanny Return.” In Desire in the Renaissance: Psychoanalysis and Literature, edited by Valeria Finucci and Regina Schwartz (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 207-232.

In the more general discussion of the “uncanny” in literature Bellamy devotes several pages to this theme as it appears in the episode of Pier delle Vigne in Inferno XIII.

Bloom, Harold. “The Strangeness of Dante: Ulysses and Beatrice.” In The Western Canon: The Books and Schools of the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994. pp. 76-104. 

“If we are to see what makes Dante canonical, the very center of the canon after Shakespeare, then we need to recover his achieved strangeness, his perpetual originality.” This requires discarding the “unrecognizable theologian” Dante as crafted by American scholarship. The uniqueness of the Comedy is demonstrated by Dante’s use of Ulysses, now “one who does not seek home and wife in Ithaca but departs from Circe in order to break all bounds and risk the unknown” and by Dante’s creation of Beatrice for whom there is no precedent. She is Dante’s knowing, his prophet, the “single image of things that represents not God, but Dante’s own achievement.” Dante belongs to the great canonical writers for his “literary individuality” and “poetic autonomy.” “Does anyone pray to Beatrice, except Dante the Pilgrim of Eternity?”

Boswell, John E. “Dante and the Sodomites.” In Dante Studies, CXII (1994), 63-76. 

There are no persuasive reasons to deny that the sodomites in Dante’s afterlife are homosexual, either in the case of Brunetto Latini and the “noble Florentines” of Inferno XV-XVI or of those judged to be guilty of the “sin of Caesar” on Purgatory’s Terrace of Lust (Purg. XXVI). With regard to Latini, there are traditional medieval associations of homosexuality with Sodom, with clerks and scholars, and with violence. What is strikingly unconventional about the Purgatorial treatment, however, is that Dante diverges from the prevailing notions of his day (not to mention those of Aquinas in the Summa) by regarding the “sin against nature,” popularly viewed as among the most grievous, merely as a subset of lust, and only marginally more culpable than heterosexual fornication. This assessment is revolutionary given the theological climate of the early fourteenth century. [Peter Hawkins]

Botterill, Steven. Dante and the Mystical Tradition: Bernard of Clairvaux in the “Commedia”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. x, 269 p. (“Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature,” 22) 

The author “explores the intellectual relationship between...Dante and...Bernard of Clairvaux. Botterill analyses the narrative episode involving Bernard as a character in the closing cantos of the Paradiso, against the background of his medieval reputation as a contemplative mystic, devotee of Mary, and, above all, a preacher of outstanding eloquence. Botterill draws on a wide range of materials to establish and illustrate the connections between Bernard’s reputation and his portrayal in Dante’s poem. He examines in detail two areas in which a direct intellectual influence of Bernard on Dante has recently been posited: the portrayal of Mary in the Commedia, and the concept of ‘trasumanar’ (Paradiso, I.70). Botterill proposes a fresh approach to the analysis of the whole episode, re-evaluating its significance and its implications.” Contents: Acknowledgements (x); 1. (Re-)reading Dante: an unscientific preface (1-9); Part I. Reading: 2. The image of St Bernard in medieval culture (13-63); 3. Bernard of Clairvaux in the Commedia (64-115); Part II. Re-reading: 4. Bernard in the Trecento commentaries on the Commedia (119-147); 5. Dante, Bernard, and the Virgin Mary (148-193); 6. From deificari to trasumanar? Dante’s Paradiso and Bernard’s De diligendo Deo (194-241); 7. Eloquence—and its limits (242-253); Bibliography (254-263); Index (264-269).

Botterill, Steven. “Dante in North America: 1991-93.” In Lectura Dantis, XIV-XV (Spring-Fall, 1994), 116-128.

Bibliographical-critical study of North American scholarship in the two-year period, with particular attention being given to two books: Teodolinda Barolini, The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante (see Dante Studies, CXI, 269-270) and Giuseppe Mazzotta, Dante’s Vision and the Circle of Knowledge (see Dante Studies, CXII, 318).

Botterill, Steven. “‘Però che la divisione non si fa se non per aprire la sentenzia de la cosa divisa’ (V.N., XIV, 13): The ‘Vita Nuova’ as Commentary.” In “La Gloriosa Donna de la Mente”... (q.v.), pp. 61-76. [1994]

Argues that the status of the divisioni as a commentary has all too often been “overlooked, disparaged, or even denied outright” by critics of the Vita Nuova. To counterbalance these opinions Botterill takes “it as axiomatic that these much-maligned essays in criticism are both interesting in themselves, as documents of at least one set of medieval practices and assumptions for the reading and composition of poetry, and also significant for the broader concerns of the Vita Nuova as a textual entity.”

Bowen, Arlene. “‘Colui da cu’ io tolsi / lo bello stilo’: Dante’s Presence in Mary Shelley’s Mathilda.” In Italian Culture, XII (1994), 59-84.

Discusses how extensively the Comedy has influenced Mary Shelley’s novel Mathilda insofar as the protagonist is “an obverse representation of Dante’s Matelda in Purgatorio, a correspondence in negative apparent in Mathilda’s verbal associations with the poet’s lady and even with Dante himself.”

Cacciari, Massimo. The Necessary Angel. Translated by Miguel E. Vatter. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. xi, 124 p.

A philosophical analysis of the angel in the Christian, Islamic and Judaic traditions. Contains some references to Dante.

Cachey, Theodore J., Jr. “‘Renaissance Dante in Print (1472-1629)’ on Exhibit.” In A Newberry Newsletter, No. 55 (Spring, 1994), 2-4. 

Provides an historical overview of the exhibit of some forty Renaissance editions of the Comedy, jointly sponsored by the Newberry Library and the University of Notre Dame.

Carugati, Giuliana. “Retorica amorosa e verità in Dante: il De Causis e l’idea della donna nel Convivio.” In Dante Studies, CXII (1994), 161-175. 

Explores the possibility that the “filosofia” of the Convivio “possa essere non altro che una tappa lungo il cammino che Dante percorre verso la verità della donna e verso la verità tout court, ... che l’idealizzazione della donna gentile non faccia che ripetere, raffinando, la trasformazione della fanciullina leggiadra della Vita nuova in Beatrice, e anticipare la complessa figurazione della Commedia.”

Ciccarelli, Andrea. “Dal frammento all’unità: per una lettura dantesca della poesia di Luzi.” In Italica, LXXI, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), 78-95. 

Investigates the pervasive influence of Dante on the poetry of Mario Luzi.

Cioffi, Caron Ann. “The Anxieties of Ovidian Influence: Theft in Inferno XXIV and XXV.” In Dante Studies, CXII (1994), 77-100. 

Examines Inferno XXIV-XXV from an intertextual perspective in an attempt to demonstrate “1) that there are continuities as well as differences between Ovidian and Dantesque metamorphoses; 2) that Dante views Ovid as a rival and an inspiring source, for of all the classical poets he most possessed the visual imagination that Dante admires; and 3) that Dante is, in the long run, free to create truer and more complicated versions of transformation because he has knowledge of Christological history—the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection—something that Ovid lacks.”

Costa, Gustavo. “Il canto X del Paradiso.” In Filologia e critica, XIX, No. 1 (gennaio-aprile, 1994), 3-38.  

A thorough reading of the tenth canto from an interdisciplinary perspective and with respect to the medieval “mentalité” and with special attention to the aesthetics of the canto as it was understood in the medieval period—as objective, sacred and sublime.

Denman, Kamilla, and Sarah Smith. “Christina Rossetti’s Copy of C. B. Cayley’s Divine Comedy.” In Victorian Poetry, XXXII, Nos. 3-4 (Autumn-Winter, 1994), 315-338. 

Treats Christina Rossetti’s relationship with Charles Bagot Cayley and her annotations on his translation of the Divine Comedy (in four volumes: The Vision of Hell [1851]; The Purgatory [1853]; The Paradise [1854]; and a volume of notes [1855]).

Di Robilant, Paola Francesca Nicolis. “Displacement as Theme and Concept in the Nineteenth-Century Novel.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LIV, No. 12 (June, 1994), 4431. Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University, 1993. 328 p.

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

Dronke, Peter. Verse with Prose from Petronius to Dante: The Art and Scope of the Mixed Form. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994. x, 148 p. 

Wide-ranging survey of Menippean satire from antiquity to the end of the thirteenth century that contains a discussion of the Vita Nuova in the fourth chapter. Contents: Preface; I. Menippean Elements; II. Allegory and the Mixed Form; III. Narrative and the Mixed Form; IV. The Poetic and the Empirical “I”; Notes; Index.

Eliot, T. S. The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry. The Clark Lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1926 and The Turnbull Lectures at The Johns Hopkins University, 1933. Edited by Ronald Schuchard. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994.

Contains numerous references to Dante.

Emiliani, Cesare. “Dante’s Fugitives.” In Romance Notes, XXXV, No. 2 (Winter, 1994), 125-127. 

Suggests that if we read fuia as a “contraction of fugia, meaning fugitive” then our understanding of the three passages in which it occurs will be improved: Inf. XII, 90: “né io anima fuia” (i.e., “nor am I [= Virgil] a soul fugitive [from another circle]; Purg. XXXIII, 44: “anciderà la fuia” (the “fuia [fugitive] is the Roman Curia which ... was fugitive from Rome”; Par. IX, 75: “where one reads that God sees everything, so that nulla / voglia di sé a te puot’esser fuia ...[i.e.] no wish of his may be fugitive for you (meaning that no wish of God may miss you).” Along the same lines Emiliani proposes a different derivation for Plutus’s word aleppe < Latin ales [= “fleeting”], or < Greek [= “wanderer” or “fugitive”], so that he would be saying: “Alas Satan, alas Satan, a fugitive! ... referring to Virgil who ... must have been a fugitive from somewhere else in the afterworld.”

Ferretti Cuomo, Luisa. Anatomia di un’immagine: Inferno 2.127-32: saggio di lessicologia e di semantica strutturale. New York: Peter Lang, 1994. ix, 200 p. (Studies in Italian Culture: Literature in History, 14)

Detailed examination of the simile in Inferno II: “Quali fioretti dal notturno gelo / chinati e chiusi....” Each of the words and phrases in these six lines is investigated in itself and in its relationship with the others, and each term is evaluated with regard to its affective, moral and theological meaning and function in the narrative. The authors concludes: “La similitudine dei fioretti . . . ha . . . un significato complessivo che è centrale alla concezione di tutta l’opera; facendosene metonimia anticipatrice e insieme mise en abîme, essa propone il momento del riscatto, il percorso di pentimento e di perdono, il recupero della conoscenza e dell’amore nella simbiosi del divino e dell’umano: il rapporto salvifico Beatrice-Dante vi si articola nei suoi momenti cruciali, ponendosi insieme come significante del rapporto Cristo-Umanità. È questo rapporto esistenziale . . . a rivelarsi centrale, ed è esso che organizza tutti gli altri percorsi semantici, i quali gli sono sottoposti” (141). Contents: Parte I: I prodromi della riconciliazione. 1. Introduzione: (1-10); 2. I termini chiave (10-13); 3. Scampar dal naufragio è recuperare il nome di Beatrice (13-29); 4. La dottrina d’amore e la virtù di Dante (29-41); 5. Il prologo e i canti edenici, figura della Redenzione (41-45); 6. Il prologo e i canti edenici: l’inversione e il recupero delle Petrose (45-51); 7. Beatrice, il sol de li occhi miei (51-57); 8. Nonostante tutto, i “precedenti” (57-67); Parte II: Chiudere, Aprire, Chinare, Drizzare: profili semantici. 1. chiudere (68-82); 2. aprire (82-97); 3. chinare (97-110); 4. drizzare (110-136); 5. Le antonimie <drizzare> vs. <chinare> e <drizzare> vs. <torcere> (136-140); Conclusione (141-142); Note (143-170); Tavole delle ricorrenze (171-188); Bibliografia (189-194); Indice delle citazioni (195-200).

Franke, William. “Dante and the Poetics of Religious Revelation.” In Symplok, II, No. 2 (Summer, 1994), 103-116. 

Argues that “Dante’s praxis of poetic interpretation as mediating a theological revelation of truth fundamentally challenges modern assumptions about the nature of interpretation that have governed and constricted the conception of truth among hermeneutic thinkers no less than among moderns in general.” Suggests how “a hermeneutic perspective can render intelligible and even possible once again the sort of experience of truth in which art like Dante’s originates. It enables us to understand how the theological revelation which Dante takes over as his and humanity’s truth can be made to be experienced in an originary fashion, as convincingly true, by the interpretive mediation of poetry. ... Dante is employing in his poem a way of disclosing truth through interpretation.” Notes the “truly extraordinary originality of Dante’s poem as an interpretive act. The poem claims, as becomes explicit in direct addresses to the reader in the name of truth, to involve readers and their whole historical world in a journey of interpretation leading to a disclosure of their vital reality and final destiny.”

Franke, William. “Dante’s Address to the Reader and its Ontological Significance.” In Modern Language Notes, CIX, No. 1 (January, 1994), 117-127. 

Treats the uniqueness and significance of the addresses to the reader and the “ontological perspective ... that the poem opens” through them. “The addresses to the reader, then, enable the poem to be seen in its being, from the standpoint of its origination of a world. To the extent that a whole new ontological order is made possible in this event, it may be called, following Heidegger, an event of Being. Being happens in being understood, and the address with its call to interpret signals this. By thematizing the kind of being the poem has, the way it is and long with this that it is, what ultimately the addresses bring into view is Being itself in its own meaning.”

Franke, William. “Dante’s Hermeneutic Rite of Passage: Inferno 9.” In Religion and Literature, XXVI, No. 2 (Summer, 1994), 1-26. 

The hermeneutic practice in Inferno IX has implications for the entire poem. Argues that the threshold scene before the gates of Dis “is clearly of central importance to Dante’s theme in “the realization of the poem as a hermeneutic event, that is, as a knowing that proceeds not from disinterested representation, fundamentally, but from existential involvement. ... Each breakthrough for understanding is accompanied by some kind of shattering violence. The violence inherent in hermeneutics is the means of a certain breaking down and shaking out that characterizes an uncompromisingly radical interpretive apocalypse such as Dante sets out to achieve, beginning in the Inferno.”

Franke, William. “Resurrected Tradition and Revealed Truth: Dante’s Statius.” In Quaderni d’italianistica, XV, Nos. 1-2 (Primavera-Autunno, 1994), 7-34. 

Analyzes the episode of Statius in Purgatorio XXI-XXII with regard to those themes that are central to the Commedia as a whole—textual hermeneutics, conversion and resurrection. “Dante resurrects the tradition of a Golden Age that was so central a myth for pagan poetry, letting it coalesce with the mount of inspiration of classical poetry in general, Parnassus..., and proceeds to interpret the originary identity of this resurrected tradition with the revealed truth of the Biblical Garden of Eden. The guiding insight of the Purgatorio, pivoting on the Statius encounter, we have seen many times over to be this correspondence between, indeed this coincidence of, the interpretive resurrection of tradition and the revelation of transcendent truth. ... Dante’s insisting on how even pagan tradition, when given new life through Christian interpretation, can be understood to lead to revealed truth underscores yet more conspicuously how revelation works precisely through the resurrection of tradition achieved in and by hermeneusis.”

Gavin, Kevin Matthew. “Toward a Theory of Epic Forms: Mimesis, Symbol, and Allegory.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LV, No. 4 (October, 1994), 956. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1994. 227 p.

The author sketches the “outlines of Dante’s poetic technique...in the preface and conclusion.” Argues that “[b]oth Hesiod and Dante...are allegorical poets. Allegory, as both a tendency and a technique, leads them to ascribe moral import to the events represented within their works.”

“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. vii, 305 p. (“Italian Medieval and Renaissance Studies,” 5) 

This collaborative volume commemorates the 700th anniversary of the publication of the Vita Nuova and features thirteen essays, each of which takes its point of departure a line from the libello. The book includes studies by three North American scholars: Teodolinda Barolini, Steven Botterill, and Robert Harrison. Each essay is listed separately in this bibliography under the individual author’s name. We should also note that Vincent Moleta’s contribution to this volume—”‘Voi le vedere Amor pinto nel viso’ (V. N., XIX, 12): Prehistory of a Metaphor” (pp. 77-95)—first appeared in Dante Studies, CX (1992), 57-75.

Goldfarb, Nancy Dena. “The Poetics of Drowning: Readings in the Poetry of Höldelin, Wordsworth, Shelley, Mallarmé, and Stevens.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LV, No. 4 (October, 1994), 957. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1994. 176 p.

“Though drowning is thematized in western poetry long before the Commedia, Dante transforms drowning and, with it, the definition of the lyric. The shipwreck metaphor that sets into motion the journey of the Commedia joins the epic assumption of the shaping power of the past with the typically lyric notion of survival as an act of bearing witness. In poetry from Dante to Wallace Stevens and beyond, drowning is the site at which the poetic subject is said to be dissolved. Once believed to pre-exist signification, the subject is revealed to be a product of a set of signifying practices. His disappearance is, in effect, his being revealed in the text as a linguistic construct.”

Gorni, Guglielmo. “Il ‘copyright’ della Vita Nuova.” In Rivista di letteratura italiana, XII, Nos. 2-3 (1994), 481-490.

Review-article on the edition-translation of Dante’s Vita Nuova by Dino S. Cervigni and Edward Vasta (see above under Studies).

Grant, John N. “Taide in Inferno 18 and Terence Eunuchus 937.” In Quaderni d’italianistica, XV, Nos. 1-2 (Primavera-Autunno, 1994), 151-155.  

Indicates “an unnoticed connection between the medieval scholiastic tradition of Terence’s plays and Dante’s description of Alessio and Taide in the second pouch of the Malebolge.” In Eunuchus “the private life of courtesans is characterized by inluvies,” a term that “the commentum Monacense of Terence glosses...with the phrase nimiam satietatem ventris earum: ‘the excessive fullness of their stomachs.’ Now saturitas, a synonym of satietas, can refer to excrement as the result of the superfluity of the food that has been eaten.... So here in the Terence commentary tradition we find a picture of prostitutes, like Taide in Dante, befouled with excrement.”

Grimaldi Pizzorno, Patrizia. “Matelda’s Dance and the Smile of the Poets.” In Dante Studies, CXII (1994), 115-132. 

Disputing previous interpretations of Matelda as a “pastorella,” the author suggests that Matelda represents an opportunity for Dante to “look at his most accomplished poetic creation, the canzone.” As Matelda represents the innocence of “poetics before sin” (and not, as some critics have suggested, prelapsarian “human nature”), she is elegy “viewed with the eyes of a poet who has sinned and therefore has symbolically lost her.” The elegiac tone points to the alignment of the canzone and tragedy in De vulgari eloquentia. The smile of the poets marks the final gloss of Dante’s self-confidence as he has offered “the most refined essence, nettare, of all the previous representations” of esto loco, the Earthly Paradise.

Gualtieri, Teresa F. “Le gru di Dante: pellegrinaggio attraverso la poesia.” In L’Alighieri, XXXV, Nos. 3-4 (gennaio-dicembre, 1994), 95-110. 

Examines the imagery of cranes and their migration in the Comedy as a metaphor for pilgrimage. This includes both the spiritual journey of the souls whom the poet encounters in the afterlife and, more particularly, the development of Dante himself as a poet. Taken in the order in which they appear, the four crane similes in the Comedy chronicle the stages in Dante’s quest to write divinely inspired poetry. [TFG]

Guzzardo, John.Paradiso XXXIII: St. Bernard’s Prayer.” In Italian Culture, XII (1994), 45-57. 

Examines the final canto of the Comedy by linking Bernard’s prayer to the Virgin both with the beatific vision and with the cantos of Statius (Purg. XXI-XXII).

Harrison, Robert. “‘Mi parea vedere una persona dormire nuda’ (V.N., III, 4): The Body of Beatrice.” In “La Gloriosa Donna de la Mente”... (q.v.), pp. 21-35. [1994]

Reprints the first chapter (“Dante’s Dream”) of his book, The Body of Beatrice (Baltimore, Maryland, and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988) (See Dante Studies, CVII, 139-140.)

Herzman, Ronald B., and Gary W. Towsley. “Squaring the Circle: Paradiso 33 and the Poetics of Geometry.” In Traditio, XLIX (1994), 95-125. 

Suggests that “the image of squaring the circle is a clue both to the meaning of that ineffable vision and to other aspects of Dante’s artistry as well.” After providing a brief overview of the problem of squaring the circle which is “a problem concerned with knowledge at its deepest levels and with the relationship between the infinite and the finite. ... The poem is both the pilgrim’s journey and the poet’s record of that journey, as far as memory allows. ... The image of squaring the circle has its part to play in understanding this dialectic. From the perspective of the pilgrim, the journey is linear, all the way until the end of the poem. Not only linear but ... a linear dead end, with the pilgrim ‘lacking the principle which he needs’ (Par. 33.135) in order to understand the mysteries to which his journey has been leading him, and thus lacking the principle which would make sense out of the whole. But his journey ... looked at from the point of view of its completion, the journey which included the final vision, is more accurately in a circle than a line. At the end of the poem, the square has been circled, the human is capable of receiving the divine, and Dante now has the principle that he needs, which turns out to be something other than the principle that enables him to square the circle and understand the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Trinity—it turns out to be nothing less than the principle that enables him to generate the poem. ... Thus the poem itself is an especially effective analogue to what we wee in the last image of the poem. The poem is Dante’s attempt to square the circle by legitimate means. The poem, no less than Dante, is a circle that has been squared, a square that has been circled.”

Hollander, Robert. “Dante and Cino da Pistoia.” In Le Forme e la Storia, n.s. VI, Nos. 1-2 (1994), 125-157.  

Reprint of the essay that first appeared in Dante Studies, CX (1992), 201-231.

Hollander, Robert. “Response to Henry Ansgar Kelly.” In Lectura Dantis, XIV-XV (Spring-Fall, 1994), 96-110. 

Defends the position he took in Dante’s Epistle to Cangrande (see Dante Studies, CXII, 314) against the observations by Henry Ansgar Kelly (see below).

Honess, Claire. “Expressing the Inexpressible: The Theme of Communication in the Heaven of Mars.” In Lectura Dantis, XIV-XV (Spring-Fall, 1994), 42-60. 

Emphasizes the importance “given throughout this episode to the theme of communication, culminating in the stress at the end of canto XVII on the need for Dante to communicate his experience and the lesson to be drawn from it. This theme is built up through recurrent references to language and its use; to linguistic comprehensibility, and to the difficulty or even impossibility, in certain circumstances, of comprehension; and, above all, to the need for communication as a means to eventual salvation.”

Jacoff, Rachel. “Charles Eliot Norton’s Medicean Dante.” In Harvard Library Bulletin, V, No. 3 (Fall, 1994), 45-52. 

Discusses the handsome portrait of Dante in the Houghton Library incunable (Florence, 1481: Inc 6120A)—once owned by Charles Eliot Norton—with regard to the possible identity of its artist and its owner-patron. Heraldic details point to a branch of the Medici family (the Magnifico’s second cousin, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici) as the patrons, and stylistic considerations suggest that the artist might be either Francesco di Antonio del Chierico or Francesco Roselli.

Jankofsky, Klaus P.Launcelot in Hell: John Ciardi’s Medievalism.” In Studies in Medievalism, VI (1994), 163-173. 

Discusses the poem Launcelot in Hell (1961) and its sources in Inferno V, with particular attention to Ciardi’s borrowing of “the Dantean concept of the punishment of sin for his portrayal of Launcelot.” Ciardi “creates an anti-romantic, anti-heroic Launcelot for whom the self is the greatest good....”

Kay, Richard. Dante’s Christian Astrology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. xii, 395 p. (“Middle Ages Series”) 

Kay’s study is probably the “first systematic attempt to identify astrological allusions in the Commedia ... to establish that Dante filled the planetary heavens of his Paradiso with allusions to astrology.” In the medieval period “astronomy and astrology ... were synonymous, but today they designate two distinct and seemingly irreconcilable disciplines. In modern usage, the term astronomy is reserved for the scientific study of the physical universe, while astrology is restricted to attempts to discern the occult influence of heavenly bodies on terrestrial, and especially human, events. ... This distinction ... was unknown in the university culture of the Latin Middle Ages. ... To sum up Dante’s views on astrology, then, we can say that he believed that the stars were God’s instruments for expressing his will through Nature.” The “chief practical value ... of a science of astrology ... lies in discovering the innate strengths and weaknesses of human character that fit individuals for particular social functions. Because people have free will, however, astrology cannot predict how they are going to use the talents with which they were endowed by the stars. Finally, because whatever the stars have impressed with their influence continues to be subject to them, everything on earth is constantly responding to the ebb and flow of astral impulses, which God used to regulate human affairs. Thus God’s will concerning mankind as a whole, as well as his will in particular cases, can be ascertained from the stars. In short, astrology is for Dante the highest and most useful study of nature.” On the basis of the well-documented properties of the planets, Kay analyzes their correspondences in each of Dante’s seven heavens and concludes that astrology plays a major role in the poem. Contents: List of Abbreviations (ix-x); Preface (xi-xii); Introduction (1-16); 1. The Moon (17-37); 2. Mercury (38-65); 3. Venus (66-97); 4. The Sun (98-136); 5. Mars (137-186); 6. Jupiter (187-217); Saturn (218-242); Conclusion (243-259); Appendix 1: Biobibliography (261-282); Appendix 2: Planetary Positions for Paradiso (283-285); Notes (287-363); General Index (365-385); Citation Index (386-395).

Kay, Richard. “The Sin(s) of Brunetto Latini.” In Dante Studies, CXII (1994), 19-31. 

In his review of discussions of Inferno XV since 1971 (bibliography appended), Kay finds strong but not widespread support for his 1978 thesis that Brunetto’s sin was not sexual but rather that of Sodom as understood by medieval biblical exegetes. Kay seeks confirmation of his thesis by pointing out correspondences between Inferno XV and its parallel cantos, Purgatorio XIV and Paradiso XIV. Argues that these conclusions are further substantiated by astrological allusions in Inferno XV. [RK]

Kelly, Henry Ansgar.Cangrande and the Ortho-Dantists.” In Lectura Dantis, XIV-XV (Spring-Fall, 1994), 61-95. 

Responds to Robert Hollander’s critical observations (in Dante’s Epistle to Cangrande) on his book, Tragedy and Comedy from Dante to Pseudo-Dante (see Dante Studies, CVIII, 137).

Kelly, Henry Ansgar. “Reply to Robert Hollander.” In Lectura Dantis, XIV-XV (Spring-Fall, 1994), 111-115. 

A further response to Hollander’s observations (see above).

Kleiner, John. Mismapping the Underworld: Daring and Error in Dante’s ‘Comedy’. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994. [xvi] 182 p. (“Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture”) 

Mismapping the Underworld investigates the place of error in the moral and aesthetic system of Dante’s Comedy. It argues that Dante’s delight in finely wrought patterns does not exclude an interest in patterns of disorder, that his pursuit of harmony intensifies his interest in dissonance. The three central chapters of the book each examine a different type of error or anomaly: a mismeasured giant, a self-defeating experiment, an erring citation of Virgil. These apparently trivial discrepancies are linked...to much larger questions: What is the status of mimetic realism in Dante’s poem? By what right does a poet pretend to represent the order of God’s mind? Where does aggressive allegoresis cross over into interpretive error? Through the study of error, the author offers an alternative account of Dante’s poetic project, one that gives priority to wit and self-irony rather than didactic seriousness. In the author’s words, ‘If there is a moral to this study, it is that instead of suppressing anomalies, cruxes, and contradictions, we might as well learn to enjoy them.’ In the pursuit of this enjoyment, we encounter analyses of such topics as science and the role of experimentation in the Comedy, monsters and medieval aesthetics, numerology, and the Renaissance tradition of mapping Hell. In addition to analyzing Dante’s enthusiasm for error, the author also investigates the reluctance of Dante scholars to admit its existence. This discussion...clarifies the critical motives and preoccupations that have shaped the history of the Comedy’s reception.” Contents: Acknowledgments (ix); A Note on Texts Used (xi); Contents (xiii); Figures (xv); Introduction (1-4); 1. Finding the Center (5-22); 2. Mismapping the Underworld (23-56); 3. The Learned Dante (57-84); Vanishing Acts (85-116); “O Brave Monster” (117-137); Reading in the Asylum (138-140); Reference Matter: Notes (143-175); Index of Passages Cited from Dante (177-178); Index (179-182).

Kleinhenz, Christopher. “American Dante Bibliography for 1993.” In Dante Studies, CXII (1994), 301-338. 

With brief analyses.

Kopper, John M. “Dante in Russian Symbolist Discourse.” In Comparative Literature Studies, XXXI, No. 1 (1994), 25-51. 

Traces the fortunes of Dante’s reception in Russia from 1890 to 1921.

Land, Norman E. The Viewer as Poet: The Renaissance Response to Art. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. xx, 216 p. 

Discusses the depiction of art in works of fiction and art criticism from antiquity through the Renaissance. In a short section on Dante (in chapter 3: “The Poet’s Eye, I”), Land examines the artistic examples provided in Purgatorio X and XII and notes the differences in the use of ekphraseis by the Florentine poet and by Virgil: Dante constructs a scene of much greater dramatic intensity and focuses on the Pilgrim’s empathetic response to the “naturalistic and expressive qualities of the carvings.”

Lansing, Richard. “Narrative Design in Dante’s Earthly Paradise.” In Dante Studies, CXII (1994), 101-113. 

An analysis of events in the closing cantos of the Purgatorio reveals that Dante sought by design to create a symmetric correspondence between the Earthly Paradise and the seven terraces below. He does this by replicating at the summit of Purgatory the formal tripartite structure of events that governs the presentation of narrative episodes in each of the lower terraces, as described originally by Edward Moore, reinforcing the connection by a number of deliberate collateral correspondences. The Earthly Paradise replicates the tripartite model exactly: the Procession of Scripture constitutes the exempla of virtue surrounding the ideal Church, the Historical Masque presents a series of exempla of vice that have corrupted the Church, and in the intervening narrative section the pilgrim Dante enacts, as a penitent, the ritual of his own purgation of sin. The division of the narrative into three major sections finds a correlative, moreover, in a narrative pattern at the center of the sixth book of Vergil’s Aeneid, whereby Aeneas’s meeting with his father Anchises serves as a model for the pilgrim’s encounter with Beatrice in Eden. Both figures entrust their protégés with a mission, prophesy political events of great consequence, and envision the coming of a redeemer who will usher in a period of peace. [RL]

McDevitt, Mary Katherine. “With a Worde, of the Mayden Spoke: Medieval Marian Poetics.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LIV, No. 9 (March, 1994), 3430. Doctoral Dissertation, Stanford University, 1993. 276 p.

Investigates “the influence of Marian doctrine and devotion on medieval language theory and poetics” and “initiates a poetics for religious writers such as Dante, Chaucer, and John Lydgate who, in imitation of Mary, want to be ‘bearers of the Word’ for their audience.”

Maisch, William C. “The Narrative Agents of the Vita Nuova and Their Awareness of the Issues of ‘Reading’.” In Romance Languages Annual 1993, V (1994), 234-238. 

Examines the two voices that address the reader in the Vita Nuova—the poet and the prose writer—and discusses how attention to the issue of reading “sheds light on three traditionally enigmatic and seemingly unrelated issues: 1) the young poet’s motivation to write; 2) the prose narrator’s addresses to the reader on the issue of reading, including the divisioni; and, 3) the notable vagueness of descriptive details throughout the text.”

Meegan, William John. Dante’s Use of Mathematics to Organize the “Commedia.” N.p.: n.p., 1994. xi, 155 p. 

In the General Introduction the author states the “three main reasons for this volume: (1) introduce new ideas in mathematics that comes from antiquity and to give several examples of how these ideas were used to organize works of Art and Literature, (2) To analyze Dante Alighieri’s Commedia mathematically demonstrating his use of this science to organize the compositional structure of his work, (3) To discuss ways that modern academicians can utilize this science to research Ancient Art and Literature to facilitate re-acquiring this lost science for humanity.” Contents: General Introduction (i-vii); Introduction [by Professor F. Boni] (ix-xi); Chapter One: A Mathematical Philosophy Used to Organize Works of Art and Literature (1-32); Chapter Two: Dante Alighieri’s Application of Universal Mathematics to Organize the Commedia (33-55); Chapter Three: Conclusion (57-60); Appendix (61-98); Addendum (99-118); Bibliography (119-146); Index (147-155).

Menocal, María Rosa. Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric. Durham, N.C., and London: Duke University Press, 1994. xv, 295 p. 

“With the Spanish conquest of Islamic Granada and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, the year 1492 marks the exile from Europe of crucial strands of medieval culture. The cultural fragments left behind following this exile form the core of Shards of Love, as [the author] confronts the difficulty of writing their history. It is in exile that Menocal locates the founding conditions for philology—as a discipline that loves origins—and for the genre of love songs that philology reveres. She crosses the boundaries, both temporal and geographical, of 1492 to recover the ‘original’ medieval culture, with its Mediterranean mix of European, Arabic, and Hebrew poetics. The result is a form of literary history more lyrical than narrative and ... more appropriate to the Middle Ages than to the revisionary legacy of the Renaissance.” Contains many references to Dante and particularly to his lyrics and treatise on the volgare and poetry in the vernacular, De vulgari eloquentia.

Misan-Montefiore, Jacques. “L’oeuvre de Dante vue par les doctrinaires.” In Dante Studies, CXII (1994), 229-243. 

La Restauration française se caractérise par le foisonnement de la presse. Particulièrement dignes d’attention sont les journaux des doctrinaires, groupe d’une cohésion et d’une homogénéité extraordinaires, qui occupent le centre de la carte idéologique de la France du temps, aussi bien sur le plan politique que sur celui de la littérature. Le plus connu est Le Globe (1824-1830). Au terme d’une longue éclipse, Dante prend à l’époque romantique la place qui est la sienne et qu’il ne quittera plus. Les doctrinaires apprécient la traduction de L’Enfer d’Antony Deschamps et en donnent des extraits. Entre les deux thèses qui se partagent alors la faveur de la critique, Le Globe opte pour la solution du poète savant, adoptée aussi par A.-G. Schlegel et Fauriel. Les journaux des doctrinaires invitent leurs lecteurs à sortir de L’Enfer en appréciant aussi le Purgatoire et le Paradis. Savante, La Divine Comédie est aussi une et éminemment moderne prouvent les doctrinaires. Remarquable par leur sérieux et leur densité, les pages consacrées par les revues des doctrinaires à l’oeuvre de Dante le sont aussi par leur ouverture sur la critique du temps. [JM-M]

Moevs, Christian Robert. “The Metaphysics of the Primo Mobile: Love, Mind, and Matter in Dante’s Comedy.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LV, No. 6 (December, 1994), 1555. Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University, 1994. 401 p.

“This study explores Dante’s metaphysical understanding of reality, in the effort to understand the project of the Comedy. It focuses on the Primo Mobile (Pd 27-29), the nexus between unqualified being and the world of finite form; that nexus is the crucible of artistic inspiration, and the fulcrum of christic revelation.”

Moleta, Vincent. (Editor). See “La Gloriosa Donna de la Mente”... (q.v.).

Mussio, Thomas Edward. “Models of the Soul and Versions of Conversion in Renaissance Poetry from Dante to Milton.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LIV, No. 11 (May, 1994), 4084. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1993. 273 p.

Argues that “within the poetry of seven major poets of the Western European tradition one finds that poetry and theological-philosophical discourses interacted in a fruitful tension to produce new models of desire and the soul, and consequently, new conceptions of transgression, virtue, and spiritual growth.” In the second chapter he “focuses on Dante’s manipulation in the Commedia of the orthodox model of the soul he inherits from the philosophical tradition to resolve the conflict between his converted self and his poetic self which is still connected vestigially through language to his pre-converted self.”

Najemy, John M. “Brunetto Latini’s ‘Politica’.” In Dante Studies, CXII (1994), 33-51. 

What is implied in Giovanni Villani’s claim that Brunetto Latini taught the Florentines “how to guide and rule our republic secondo la politica”? In the Tresor Latini associates “politique” with the language of “arts” and “trades” and describes the ideal citizen as a guildsman formed by his “art” and trained in the civic virtues of judgment, moderation, and justice. This language reveals the influence of the Florentine guild community, which on several occasions during the thirteenth century (including the primo popolo of 1250-60 for which Latini served as chancellor) challenged the hegemony of the often violent upper classes of elite families. The Tesoretto reveals the controversial implications of these notions for the politics of Florentine class relations in the lesson of civic education it offers to a knight, a representative of the unruly elite, to whom the Virtues teach the same ethic of civic moderation that the Tresor associates with guildsmen. Latini’s politica is grounded in this civic ethic of the Florentine guild community. [JMN]

Nassar, Eugene Paul. Illustrations to Dante’s “Inferno”. Rutherford-Madison-Teaneck, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1994. 398 p. 

“This volume is intended to fill a need long felt by teachers who, year after year, have their students read Dante’s Inferno in world literature or Italian language courses. The student is fascinated by Dante’s overpowering visual imagination, and illustrative material directly treating or at least influenced by the Inferno is often sought. ... [This volume] offers to a general readership ... a critical overview of illustrations to the Inferno from the age of Dante to modern times. ... Nassar has selected more than 400 plates (many in color) for inclusion in this volume. His criteria for selection are those of a literary critic seeking fidelity to the tone and texture of a literary masterpiece.... He has organized the selections in a canto-by-canto format, which will prove convenient for both the teacher and student and will also allow for comparative studies.” Contents: Acknowledgments (8); Preface (9-10); Introduction (11-25); Notes to the Plates (28-29); Plates (30-387); Select List of Illustrated Editions (388-390); Select Bibliography (391-395); Index (396-398).

Peterson, Thomas E. “Parallel Derivations from Dante: Fortini, Duncan, Pasolini.” In South Atlantic Review, LIX, No. 4 (November, 1994), 21-45. 

Provides a general overview of Dante’s presence in the works of Franco Fortini, Robert Duncan and Pier Paolo Pasolini. The author concludes: “The profiles of Fortini, Duncan, and Pasolini reveal an open-ended sense of derivation; each poet has evolved a personalist means to enter Dante’s works, to educe the formal unities and structures of his universe, and to ascertain its grounding in history. ... Fortini’s closeness to Dante is to be seen in his technical mastery of the ars poetica and in his rigorous morality, directed finally ... to the silent masses, somewhere beyond this vale of tears, in posterity. Pasolini more than any other has embodied the historical Dante, imitating his epic voice with its expressionistic force and plurilingualism, also in his aborted prose rewrite of the Commedia set in contemporary Rome. Duncan praised Dante as a vessel of the marvelous and imitated his genial arrogance, his ‘making up the poem as he went along’; more than the others, he has interpreted Dante’s poetic system within a syncretic lineage of magic and mysticism.”

Pike, David Lawrence. “Facilis Descensus Averno: History and the Autobiographical Voice, Medieval and Modern.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LIV, No. 12 (June, 1994), 4433. Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University, 1993. 436 p.

“This dissertation explores the use of medieval texts to derive a model for reading texts of this century. The model is based on the formal affinities and historical disjunctions between uses of the autobiographical voice in the two periods, with chapters on Augustine, Bernard Silvestris, Dante, and Christine de Pizan; and on Walter Benjamin, Virginia Woolf, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, and Peter Weiss.”

Poole, Gordon. “Local Autonomy in Dante’s Conception of World Order.” In Italiana VI (1994): Essays in Honor of Nicolas J. Perella, edited by Victoria J. R. DeMara and Anthony Julian Tamburri (West Lafayette, Indiana: Bordighera, 1994), 27-36. 

Attempts to provide answers to the questions of the “role, in the judicial system of his ideal monarchy, [that Dante] intended to assign to local statutes” and further of the way in which Dante “posed the problem of autonomy for the towns in his empire.” According to a passage in De Monarchia (I.xii), Dante “indicates that his position, in contrast with the rigid centralism of the glossers of ius commune, was elastic enough to envision a decree of local autonomy and perhaps more popular government than the ‘popolo grasso’ itself would have preferred to grant.” According to Poole, “Dante was working in the context of shared convictions as to the absolute necessity that positive law, including the ius proprium of the towns, be rooted in natural law and, through it, in eternal law. The institution guaranteeing this juridical hierarchy could only be the empire...just as the institution to which divine law was entrusted could only be the Church.” (See also Poole’s article in Dante Studies, XCVIII, 1980, 123-144.)

Quinones, Ricardo J. Foundation Sacrifice in Dante’s “Commedia.” University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. [viii], 138 p.  

This book takes “an anthropological approach to the Divine Comedy, applying it to a previously unexplored dimension of Dante’s great poem. ... Quinones examines foundation sacrifice—the death of another that has become a parable for existence—as a unifying theme that connects the three parts of the poem. In the process, [he] gives new life to the Purgatorio, treating it not only as a sequel but actually as a dramatic response—in revealing detail—to the Inferno. His motif allows him to reintegrate the Paradiso into the poem as a whole, thus restoring it as a poetic event to critical appreciation.” Contents: Introduction (1-6); Part One: The Inferno. 1. Foundation Sacrifice in Florentine History (9-29); 2. Foundation Sacrifice in Religious History (31-46); Part Two: The Purgatorio. 3. Pilgrimage, Brotherhood, and Foundation Sacrifice (49-71); 4. The Exclusion of Virgil (73-98); Part Three: The Paradiso. 5. The World the Father Has Created (101-122); 6. From Mars to Martyrdom (123-135); Index (137-138).

Rossellini, Isotta Ingrid. “Nel ‘trapassar del segno’ della poesia petrarchesca: per una lettura delle Rime sparse.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LIV, No. 7 (January, 1994), 2603. Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University, 1993. 358 p.

The author “presents a close reading of Petrarch’s Rime sparse analyzed according to its various metaphors and its use of myths (derived mainly from Ovid and Dante). One metaphor in particular is used as a ‘guiding light’: Dante’s definition of human transgression as the ‘trapassar del segno’ (Par. XXVI, v. 117), which is reminiscent of the episode of Ulysses in Inferno XXVI.”

Russell, Anthony Presti. “The ‘Subtle Knot’: Spirits and the Hermetic Imagination in the Poetics of Dante, Michelangelo, Sidney and Donne.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LIV, No. 12 (June, 1994), 4435. Doctoral Dissertation, Yale University, 1993. 473 p.

Investigates “the influence of hermetic notions of the imagination on ideas about poetry and the poetic imagination in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. The principal hypothesis is that in this period concepts of the imagination as a pneumatic power intimately related to cosmic spirits were revived for the purpose of expanding traditional views regarding poetic epistemology. ... The second chapter argues that in the Vita Nuova Dante attempted to describe his love for Beatrice as a hermetic imaginative experience closely linked to poetic epistemology.”

Sanguineti, Federico. “Dante in Italia (1988-1990).” In Dante Studies, CXII (1994), 245-288. 

Provides a thorough index to the large amount of Dante scholarship published in Italy during the three-year period 1988-1990.

Senior, Matthew. In the Grip of Minos: Confessional Discourse in Dante, Corneille, and Racine. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1994. xi, 243 p. 

“Tracing the history of confession from the Desert Fathers through the Lateran decree (1215) and the Council of Trent (1543-63), [the author] examines the significance of these events and the role of confessional discourse in works by Dante, Corneille, and Racine. Using a multidisciplinary approach, Senior focuses his study on Minos, the legendary king of Crete and judge of both Homer’s and Virgil’s underworlds. Dante transforms Minos into a demon who forces the souls of the damned to confess as they enter the underworld; likewise, the ritual of confession opens the gates of Purgatory. Dante’s afterlife, according to Senior, is an extrapolation of the Lateran decree, a total vision of humanity governed and punished by its own verity.” Devotes a large part of chapter 1 (“In the Grip of Minos, at the Gates of Purgatory”) to Dante; the several subsections are titled: “Dante: ‘Tutta si confessa’” (48-51); “Minos” (51-59); “Inferno: ‘Parole e sangue’” (59-62); “Analysis with a Vengeance” (62-66); “Purgatorio: ‘I buon sospiri’” (66-70); “The Simplicity of Confession” (71); “One Flesh” (72-74).

Smith, Sarah. (Joint Author). See Denman, Kamilla, “Christina Rossetti’s Copy....”

Stone, Gregory B. “Dante’s Averroistic Hermeneutics (On ‘Meaning’ in the Vita Nuova).” In Dante Studies, CXII (1994), 133-159. 

In the Vita Nuova Dante formulates a theory of interpretation according to which meaning is radically “subjective”—not a timeless entity inherent in the text but rather the historical product of the capacities, interests, and desires of various communities. Like the medieval Arabic philosopher Averroes, Dante suggests that the simplicity (singularity) or sophistication (plurality) of a text’s meaning has nothing to do with the text per se but rather is the reflection of the audience’s habitual concerns. [GBS]

Storey, H. Wayne. “Revision and Vision in Purgatorio XXXI.” In Lectura Dantis, XIV-XV (Spring-Fall, 1994), 26-41. 

A detailed reading of the canto. “Purgatorio XXXI is a canto of dynamic physical and spiritual movement and events: Dante’s cleansing confession, the crossing of the Lethe, the unveiling of Beatrice. The canto moves from tension and tears to rapturous joy, from spiritual fatigue to enlivened happiness, from the poet’s speechlessness to poetic ecstasy. It is a canto framed literally by Beatrice’s fearful vocative (‘O tu che se’ di là dal fiume sacro’) and the poet’s phatic cry (‘O isplendor di viva luce etterna’).”

Towsley, Gary W. (Joint Author). See Herzman, Ronald B., “Squaring the Circle....”

Treip, Mindele Anne. Allegorical Poetics and the Epic: The Renaissance Tradition to “Paradise Lost.” Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1994. xviii, 368 p. 

In her more general treatment of allegory and allegorical interpretation Treip includes a discussion of Dante. She notes that “Dante’s poem and criticism, together with the medieval view of theoria, provide a premodel for the ways in which later Renaissance epic narrative allegory would be written, and the ways in which it was expected that it should be read: one broad (largely moral) ‘undivided’ second theme, not uninterrupted yet a continuum, with occasional further ‘levels’ suggested from time to time—all amidst a sustained sense of the ‘historical’ actuality of the fable. It cannot be sufficiently emphasized how essential is an understanding of this early perspective toward a correct interpretation of later epic or other forms of poetic allegory.”

Trovato, Mario. “The True Donna gentile as Opposed to the Apocalyptic Whore.” In Dante Studies, CXII (1994), 177-227. 

Questions the traditional interpretation of Donna Gentile, seen as an Aristotelian-Averroistic goddess of wisdom ennobled by biblical qualities—hence, as a hybrid character, resulting in a “poetic and philosophical mistake.” Through a close reading of the text in the light of its historical and biblical context, Trovato argues that by Philosophy Dante implies the dianoetic activity (Phil) and its object (Sophia). Donna Gentile has been portrayed as the revealed human-divine Wisdom, the Head of the corpus Christianum, and as the beloved Lady who satisfies the human desire for beatitude. The prosopopoeia was intended to oppose Pope Boniface VIII’s vision of ecclesiastical power, as expounded in the Bull Unam sanctam, written in 1302. Dante agrees on the premise—the absolute authority of Divine Wisdom (“one Head”)—but disagrees on the identification of the Pope with the Head. Hence, he portrays Donna-Wisdom as a visible reality in her three modi essendi: in her cosmic body, in her humanity, and in her mystic body, the Ecclesia. As Ecclesia, she lives in history and directs her body through two different and independent organs: the eyes and the mouth (i.e., smile), reason and faith, the Emperor and the Pope. Dante’s discourse, therefore, overturns Boniface’s thesis: the Donna Gentile will turn into a monster if she, instead of having two distinct organs, has eyes and lips joined together in a single entity. [MT]

Valesio, Paolo.Inferno V: The Fierce Dove.” In Lectura Dantis, XIV-XV (Spring-Fall, 1994), 3-25. 

Proposes to “look at this...canto as...a metonymy of the whole poem, not as an isolated niche.” This detailed lectura Dantis examines, among other things, the significance of the canto’s number (5), the archetypal image of the dove, the relationship of this episode to courtly romance (especially Tristan and Isolt), the commentary of Giovanni Boccaccio, and the elements surrounding the Paolo and Francesca’s kiss.

Vander Weele, Michael. “Mother and Child in Paradiso 27.” In Religion and Literature, XXVI, No. 3 (Autumn, 1994), 1-17. 

Examines Beatrice’s invective against greed, cupidigia (Par. XXVII, 121-135), and the particular image of the mother and child. Drawing on Augustine, Alan of Lille (Plaint of Nature) and pseudo-Dionysius, Vander Weele notes in conclusion “how the cosmological and the historical, the familial and the social, power and nurture seem to intersect in this canto. Perhaps it is not the substitution of the mother for the father, read against the Roman Civil Law or against the male tradition of pietas inherited from Virgil or even against Alan’s allegory of Nature, that we should end with but with Beatrice’s stern recognition of rupture in family, society, discourse—and her equally powerful efforts to heal the fracture that occurs when desire breaks against guidance.”

Williamson, Alan. “Dante Our Contemporary?” In American Poetry Review, 23 (September 1, 1994), 43-53.

This review essay compares two recent English renderings of the Inferno--one by Robert Pinsky (see Dante Studies, 113 [1995], 210), the other by twenty contemporary poets (including Pinsky; edited by Daniel Halpern [see Dante Studies, 112 (1994), 302]) and proposes an interpretation of the Commedia along the lines of a Jungian “Night Journey.” Emphasizing the psychological dimension of Dante’s journey over allegorical readings informed by theology, Williamson examines three episodes from the Inferno--Francesca, Brunetto, and Ulysses--to show how the poet “is often at his greatest . . . when his feelings seem to strain against the limits of his system” (44). From his comparison of the two volumes, he concludes that while the Halpern collection “will remain an uneven, fascinating museum of contemporary taste,” Pinsky’s version “is likely to define Dante for a generation, as Lattimore and Fitzgerald did Homer” (46). [GPR]

Witt, Ronald G. “Latini, Lovato and the Revival of Antiquity.” In Dante Studies, CXII (1994), 53-61. 

Beginning in the 1260s both Lovato dei Lovati (in classicizing Latin) and Brunetto Latini (as a vernacular translator) initiated a new interest in the ancient Roman authors in Italy. Both were in part responding to the need to develop a civic ethic in opposition to the values of chivalry which produced chaos in the urban centers. Ancient Roman writings embodied the ethic they sought. Although more elitist, Lovato’s initiative was in the long run more effective because it rendered the attitudes and values of chivalry literally unspeakable, while Brunetto’s translations were effected in a vernacular already impregnated with chivalric language. [RGW]

Wood, Gary Frederick. “The Choral Music of Donald Martino.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, LIV, No. 12 (June, 1994), 4304. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1993. 369 p.

In the analysis of Martino’s choral compositions—in particular Paradiso ChorusesBthe author relates his compositional constructs to the cosmology of Dante’s Divine Comedy. In Paradiso Choruses Martino “creates a musical drama based on Dante’s Paradiso which also refers to the other two books of Dante’s trilogy, Inferno and Purgatorio.”

Zatter, Jane Dick. “Chaucer’s Monk: ‘A Mighty Hunter before the Lord’.” In Chaucer Review, XXIX, No. 2 (1994), 111-133. 

Contains references to Inferno XXXIII and the Ugolino episode.

 

Reviews

Alighieri, Dante. Commedia con il commento di Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi. Milano: Arnaldo Mondadori (= «I Meridiani». Collezione diretta da Luciano de Maria). Volume primo: Inferno, 1991. Volume secondo: Purgatorio, 1994. Reviewed by:

            Gino Casagrande, in Dante Studies, CXII (1994), 289-299.

Alighieri, Dante. Dante’s Lyric Poems. Translated into English Verse by Joseph Tusiani. Introduction and Notes by Giuseppe C. Di Scipio. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Legas, 1992. (See Dante Studies, CXI, 268.) Reviewed by:

Charles Franco, in Forum Italicum, XXVIII, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), 174-176;

Guy P. Raffa, in Lectura Dantis, XIV-XV (Spring-Fall, 1994), 129-131.

The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages. Edited by Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn. Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 1992. (See Dante Studies, CXI, 278.) Reviewed by:

            Zdenko Zlatar, in Parargon, XII, No. 1 (July, 1994), 136-138.

Astell, Ann W. Job, Boethius, and Epic Truth. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994. Reviewed by:

            James Finn Cotter, in Christianity and Literature, XLIII, No. 2 (Winter, 1994), 231-232.

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

            Mauro Cusietti, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCVIII, Nos. 1-2 (1994), 243-244.

Barolini, Teodolinda. The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992. (See Dante Studies, CXI, 269-270.) Reviewed by:

Zygmunt G. Baranski, in Speculum, LXIX, No. 4 (October, 1994), 1106-1109;

Steven Botterill, in Italica, LXXI, No. 3 (Autumn, 1994), 404-405;

Gustavo Costa, in Romance Philology, XLVIII, No. 1 (August, 1994), 77-80;

Regina Psaki, in Annali d’Italianistica, XII (1994), 327-329.

Barolsky, Paul. Why Mona Lisa Smiles and Other Tales by Vasari. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991. (See Dante Studies, CX, 281.) Reviewed by:

Giancarlo Maiorino, in Italica, LXXI, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), 125-126;

Giancarlo Maiorino, in Renaissance Quarterly, XLVII, No. 2 (Summer, 1994), 454-456.

Boccaccio, Giovanni. Diana’s Hunt: Caccia di Diana. Boccaccio’s First Fiction. Edited and translated by Anthony K. Cassell and Victoria Kirkham. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. (See Dante Studies, CXI, 304.) Reviewed by:

            Eugenio L. Giusti, in Italica, LXXI, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), 121-123.

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

            Michael Calabrese, in Philosophy and Literature, XVIII, No. 1 (April, 1994), 173-174.

Borst, Arno. The Ordering of Time: From the Ancient Computus to the Modern Computer. Trans. Andrew Winnard. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Reviewed by:

            H. J. Manzari, in Lectura Dantis, XIV-XV (Spring-Fall, 1994), 144.

The Cambridge Companion to Dante. Edited by Rachel Jacoff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. (See Dante Studies, CXII, 306-307.) Reviewed by:

            August Buck, in Romanische Forschungen, CVI, Nos. 1-4 (1994), 382-384;

            J. H. Whitfield, in Modern Language Review, LXXXIX, No. 2 (April, 1994), 504-506.

Chaucer’s “Troilus and Criseyde”: “Subgit to alle Poesye”: Essays in Criticism. Edited by R. A. Shoaf. Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1992. Reviewed by:

            William Watts, in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, XVI (1994), 260-263

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:

            Thomas Brückner, in Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch, LXVIII-LXIX (1993-1994), 248-258.

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

Bodo Guthmüller, in Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch, LXVIII-LXIX (1993-1994), 276-278;

James H. McGregor, in Speculum, LXIX, No. 1 (January, 1994), 261-262.

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:

August Buck, in Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch, LXVIII-LXIX (1993-1994), 213-217;

Marguerite Chiarenza, in Quaderni d’italianistica, XV, Nos. 1-2 (Primavera-Autunno, 1994), 257-258;

Thomas E. Mussio, in Annali d’Italianistica, XII (1994), 325-327;

            Daniele Simoncini, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCVIII, No. 3 (1994), 171-172.

Dante Studies, CX (1992). Reviewed by:

            Massimo Seriacopi, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCVIII, No. 3 (1994), 159-162.

Dasenbrock, Reed Way. Imitating the Italians: Wyatt, Spenser, Synge, Pound, Joyce. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. (See Dante Studies, CX, 288-89.) Reviewed by:

            Robert Spoo, in English Language Notes, XXXII, No. 2 (December, 1994), 78-81.

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

            Ronald R. MacDonald, in Speculum, LXIX, No. 1 (January, 1994), 128-130.

Dozon, Marthe. Myth et symbole dans la “Divine Comédie”. Firenze: Olschki, 1991. Reviewed by:

Giancarlo Alessio, in Rivista di Studi Italiani, XII, No. 1, (Giugno, 1994), 184-186;

Jon Usher, in Lectura Dantis, XIV-XV (Spring-Fall, 1994), 131-133.

Dronke, Peter. Verse with Prose from Petronius to Dante: The Art and Scope of the Mixed Form. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994. (See above, under Studies.) Reviewed by:

            Kenneth Lloyd-Jones, in Classical and Modern Literature, XV, No. 1 (Fall, 1994), 80-83.

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

Teodolinda Barolini, in Comparative Literature, XLVI, No. 1 (Winter, 1994), 104-106;

Joachim Leeker, in Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, CX, Nos. 3-4 (1994), 642-646.

Eliot, T. S. The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry. The Clark Lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1926 and The Turnbull Lectures at The Johns Hopkins University, 1933. Edited by Ronald Schuchard. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994. Reviewed by:

            Dominic Manganiello, in Christianity and Literature, XLIII, 3-4 (1994), 420-422.

Emmerson, Richard K., and Ronald B. Herzman. The Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. (See Dante Studies, CXI, 275.) Reviewed by:

Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, XVI (1994), 189-192;

Steven F. Kruger, in Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XCIII, No. 1 (1994), 109-112.

Ferrante, Joan M. Dante’s Beatrice: Priest of an Androgynous God. Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1992. (See Dante Studies, CXI, 276.) Reviewed by:

            Michael Vander Weele, in Christianity and Literature, XLIII, No. 2 (1994), 237-238.

Frasca, Gabriele. La furia della sintassi. La sestina in Italia. Napoli: Bibliopolis, 1992. Reviewed by:

            Antonia Arveda, in Modern Language Notes, CIX, No. 1 (January, 1994), 145-147.

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

Giovanni Cecchetti, in Italica, LXXI, No. 3 (Autumn, 1994), 425-427;

Helmut Müller-Sievers, in Modern Language Notes, CIX, No. 3 (April, 1994), 538-541;

Judith S. Neaman, in Speculum, LXIX, No. 1 (January, 1994), 158-160.

Kay, Richard. Dante’s Christian Astrology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. Reviewed by:

            Ingrid De Pourcq, in Les Lettres romanes, XLVIII, Nos. 3-4 (1994), 346-347.

            Chauncey Wood, in Christianity and Literature, XLIV, No. 1 (Autumn, 1994), 93-95.

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

John M. Fyler, in Modern Language Review, LXXXIX, No. 1 (January, 1994), 186-187;

A. C. Spearing, in Medieval et Humanistica, XX (1994), 228-233.

Kleiner, John. Mismapping the Underworld: Daring and Error in Dante’s Comedy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. Reviewed by:

            A[ntonio] F[ranceschetti], in Quaderni d’italianistica, XV, Nos. 1-2 (1994), 308-309;

Ronnie H. Terpening, in Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, XV (1994), 90-93.

Lettura del “Fiore.” Ciclo curato da Zygmunt G. Baranski, Patrick Boyde, e Lino Pertile. Ravenna: Longo, 1993. Reviewed by:

            A[ntonio] F[ranceschetti], in Quaderni d’italianistica, XV, Nos. 1-2 (1994), 307.

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

            Guy P. Raffa, in Lectura Dantis, XIV-XV (Spring-Fall, 1994), 129-131.

Manlove, Colin. Christian Fantasy: From 1200 to the Present. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992. (See Dante Studies, CXI, 285.) Reviewed by:

            Cristina Della Coletta, in Lectura Dantis, XIV-XV (Spring-Fall, 1994), 133-135;

            Stephen J. Reno, in Literature and History, III, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), 101-103.

Mazzocco, Angelo. Linguistic Theories in Dante and the Humanists: Studies of Language and Intellectual History in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy. Leiden-New York-Köln: E. J. Brill, 1993. (See Dante Studies, CXII, 317-318.) Reviewed by:

Martin L. McLaughlin, in Italian Studies, XLIX (1994), 167-168;

David Marsh, in Annali d’Italianistica, XII (1994), 329-331.

Mazzotta, Giuseppe. Dante’s Vision and the Circle of Knowledge. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993. (See Dante Studies, CXII, 318.) Reviewed by:

Elizabeth Mozzillo, in Lectura Dantis, XIV-XV (Spring-Fall, 1994), 135-137;

Brenda Deen Schildgen, in Modern Language Notes, CIX, No. 1 (1994), 142-145;

William Wilson, in Lectura Dantis, XIV-XV (Spring-Fall, 1994), 137-139.

McGregor, James H. The Image of Antiquity in Boccaccio’s “Filocolo,” “Filostrato” and “Teseida.” New York: Peter Lang, 1991. (See Dante Studies, CX, 299.) Reviewed by:

            Dennis Looney, in Speculum, LXIX, No. 2 (April, 1994), 531-533.

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

Charles Franco, in Forum Italicum, XXVIII, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), 176-178;

Roberta Gentile, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, XCVIII, No. 3 (1994), 164.

Nelson, Lowry, Jr. Poetic Configurations: Essays in Literary History and Criticism. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992. (See Dante Studies, CXII, 336.) Reviewed by:

            Sarah Spence, in Speculum, LXIX, No. 4 (October, 1994), 1237-1238.

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

            Dario Del Puppo, in Forum Italicum, XXVIII, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), 170-172;

            Marion Wynne-Davies, in Modern Language Review, LXXXIX, No. 1 ( 1994), 180-182.

Parker, Deborah. Commentary and Ideology: Dante in the Renaissance. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1993. (See Dante Studies, CXII, 320-321.) Reviewed by:

Steven Botterill, in Italian Studies, XLIX (1994), 161-163;

Alison Cornish, in Speculum, LXIX, No. 4 (October, 1994), 1240-1242;

Carolynn Lund-Mead, in Quaderni d’italianistica, XV, Nos. 1-2 (1994), 258-261.

Pavlock, Barbara. Eros, Imitation, and the Epic Tradition. Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 1990. Reviewed by:

            David Quint, in Comparative Literature, XLVI, No. 2 (Spring, 1994), 197-199.

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

            Rebecca S. Beal, in Medieval et Humanistica, XX (1994), 236-238.

The Portable Dante. Edited by Paolo Milano. New York: Viking Penguin, 1993. Reviewed by:

            Wallace Fowlie, in Sewanee Review, CII, No. 2 (Spring, 1994), xl-xlii.

Quinones, Ricardo. The Changes of Cain: Violence and the Lost Brother in Cain and Abel Literature. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991. (See Dante Studies, CX, 304-305.) Reviewed by:

Neil Forsyth, in Comparative Literature, XLVI, No. 1 (Winter, 1994), 84-91 (review article: “The Cain Tradition”);

            Charles Jernigan, in Italica, LXXI, No. 2 (Summer, 1994), 228-229.

Sabbatino, Pasquale. L’Eden della Nuova Poesia: saggi sulla “Divina Commedia.” Firenze: Olschki, 1991. Reviewed by:

            Fernando Di Mieri, in Rivista di Studi Italiani, XII, No. 1 (Giugno, 1994), 187-188.

Sanguineti, Edoardo. Dante reazionario. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1992. Reviewed by:

            Lino Pertile, in Lectura Dantis, XIV-XV (Spring-Fall, 1994), 139-141.

Saturn from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Edited by Massimo Ciavolella and Amilcare A. Iannucci. Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1992. (See Dante Studies, CXI, 280.) Reviewed by:

            Mark Balfour, in Lectura Dantis, XIV-XV (Spring-Fall, 1994), 141-143.

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:

Pamela J. Benson, in Medieval et Humanistica, XX (1994), 225-228;

R. Ian Jack, in Parergon, XII, No. 1 (July, 1994), 168-169;

Miranda Johnson-Haddad, in Forum Italicum, XXVIII, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), 192-193.

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

            Lori Repetti, in Forum Italicum, XXVIII, No. 2 (Fall, 1994), 434-435.

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

            Tim Redman, in Italica, LXXI, No. 2 (Summer, 1994), 233-234.

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:

            Caron Cioffi, in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, XVI (1994), 282-293.

Storey, H. Wayne. Transcription and Visual Poetics in the Early Italian Lyric. New York and London: Garland, 1993. (See Dante Studies, CXIII, 241-242.) Reviewed by:

            Marcello Ciccuto, in Italianistica, XXIII, Nos. 2-3 (1994), 243-244.

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:

            Peter S. Hawkins, in Christianity and Literature, XLIII, No. 2 (Winter, 1994), 235-237.

The Uses of Manuscripts in Literary Studies: Essays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen, edited by Charlotte Cook Morse, Penelope Reed Doob, and Marjorie Curry Woods. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992. Reviewed by:

            Caroline D. Eckhardt, in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, XVI (1994), 229-231.

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:

A[ntonio] F[ranceschetti], in Quaderni d’italianistica, XV, Nos. 1-2 (Primavera-Autunno, 1994), 307-308;

Karla Mallette, in Rivista di studi italiani, XII, No. 2 (Dicembre, 1994), 76-78.