American Dante Bibliography for 1975

Anthony L. Pellegrini

This bibliography is intended to include the Dante translations published in this country in 1975 and all Dante studies and reviews published in 1975 that are in any sense American. The latter criterion is construed to include foreign reviews of American publications pertaining to Dante. 

 

Translations

The Divine Comedy. Translated, with a commentary, by Charles S. Singleton. [III.] Paradiso ... Bollingen Series, LXXX. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975. 2 v. (389; [viii], 610 p.) illus., pl., diagrs., maps.

Same as the Inferno and Purgatorio volumes (see Dante Studies, LXXXIX, 107-108, and XCII, 182; for reviews, see XC, 189, XCI, 193, XCII, 199, XCIII, 257, and see below, under Reviews).

Purgatorio—from Canto XI.” Translated by Todd Boli. In Ploughshares, II, No. 4 (1975), 244-245.

A rendering in blank verse of Purgatorio XI, 58-117.

 

Studies

Baldassaro, Lawrence. “Structure and Movement in Purgatorio X.” In Lingua e stile, X (1975), 261-274.

Contends that the bas-reliefs on the first terrace described in Purgatorio X, far from being a mere appendage exemplifying Dante’s verbal artistry, contribute organically to the aesthetic unity of the canto and are integrated with the general didactic function of art in the poem as a whole. They visually figure the purpose of the pilgrim’s journey on the dritta via in a set of three parallel and contrastive images of the conflicting natures of pride and humility and they maintain and reinforce the sense of movement to the right by their arrangement.

Baumble, H. David, III. “Dante’s Statius.” In Cithara, XV, No. I (1975), 56-67.

Cites from Pietro Alighieri, Fulgentius, and Thomas Aquinas to support the contention that the author of the Monarchia and Commedia chose Statius, representing the union of Christian race and Roman rule, as a perfect figure of moral philosophy to guide the Wayfarer through Purgatory.

Bergin, Thomas G. “Dante Shelf.” In Italian Quarterly, XIX, Nos. 73-74 (1975), 67-83.

An omnibus review of recent Dante publications. Individual items discussed at some length are separately listed in the review section of this bibliography.

Berrigan, Joseph. “Prehumanist Views of Domestic Violence in the Early Trecento.” In Studies in Medieval Culture, V (1975), 159-163. 

Cites the views of Dante, Benzo d’Alessandria, and Marsiglio of Padua on the rampant urban unrest and its causes in Trecento Italy—deliberate urban destruction, human avarice, the “bad seed,” declining respect for authority, usurpation of political power by the Church. According to the author, Dante, though he had willing listeners at the time, was still captive of the papal and imperial myths and so was an absolutist voice of the past, while Marsiglio recommended as a solution to violence that the people rule themselves and so was the voice of the future.

Bidney, Martin. “The ‘Central Fiery Heart’: Ruskin’s Reading of Dante.” In Victorian Newsletter, No. 48 (Fall 1975), 9-15.

Examines how Ruskin took Dante’s image of the Wayfarer’s shadow showing ruddy against the wall of fire in Purgatory (XXVI, 4-8) and related it to his theory of the imagination as a fire and of the fiery center or heart as an image of essential reality. Ruskin applied this association of imagination and reality in the image of “central fiery heart” to characterize Dante-poet himself who now looms before him as a master of unruly forces and is transformed “into a symbol of the highest stage of ‘grotesque’ awareness, of psychological and poetic synthesis.”

Boccaccio, Giovanni, and Leonardo Bruni. The Earliest Lives of Dante. Translated from the Italian ... by James R. Smith. Folcroft, Penn.: Folcroft Library Editions, 1975.

Reprint of the 1901 edition (New York: Holt. There have been other recent reprints (see Dante Studies, XCIII, 226).

Brown, Lloyd W. “Jones (Baraka) and His Literary Heritage in The System of Dante’s Hell.” In Obsidian, I, No. 1 (Spring 1975),

Contends that Le Roi Jones’s novel, The System of Dante’s Hell (see Dante Studies, LXXXIV, 90), evokes the art and intellectual criteria of Dante, T. S. Eliot, and James Joyce to reject the Western philosophical and literary heritage they represent. Where the Dantean structural parallels specifically are concerned, Jones dispenses with Dante’s Christian schema and concentrates on hell as a strictly socio-cultural experience localized in the Black ghetto. Autobiographically, the novel projects Jones’s own development as a descent into the psychological hell of racial self-hatred.

Charity, A. C. “T. S. Eliot: The Dantean Recognitions.” In “The Waste Land” in Different Voices . . . edited by A. D. Moody (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975), pp. 117-162.

Questioning the critical value of Eliot’s famous essay on Dante (1929), the author seeks to analyze the Dantean influence in Eliot’s poetry from the standpoint of craft and significance, which are ultimately determined by the two poets’ respective attitudes towards experience. Charity stresses the dependence of the Divine Comedy on the lyrical love tradition, which with the experience of Beatrice, heightened Dante’s vital sense of encounters, which led in turn to “clear visual images” (Eliot’s phrase) and his clear apprehension and articulation of the processes of vision and sensation—in short, what Charity calls the “Dantean recognitions.” Examples are elaborated particularly from the Vita Nuova and Inferno XV, stressing the poet’s insistence on the visual process and the replacement in the second work of the old spiriti by external, sensory, and more “representative” apprehension. The effective tension created in Inferno XV stems from the combination of the emotion-laden encounter represented and the element of judgment inhering in the work. Another important aspect of Dante’s methodology to which Eliot was especially bound to be sensitive is, as Charity puts it, that “the allegorical significance or meaning . . . moves out of an occasion which inspires or embodies it.” However, Eliot fails to appreciate the connection of Beatrice with Dante’s poetic practice in the Commedia and the intimate interplay between judgment and the individually represented case. For Dante’s universe, rooted in love and events and encounter as the key to transcendent meaning, was beyond the grasp of Eliot, whose poetry deals with “the experience of the distrust of experience,” “the experience of existential insecurity.” Indeed, despite the influences and similarities detectable in Eliot’s poetry, Dante represents the portentous opposite of his poetic world and its protagonists. Stressing the two poets’ very different engagements with the idea of the experience of love, Charity specifically traces differences, along with similarities, in The Waste Land and related “Limbo” poetry, and in Four Quartets, especially “Little Gidding.” In Eliot, therefore, Dante’s is an influence less of imitation than of radical inspiration. Not to be minimized is the greatness of Eliot in his kind of poetry, in which the state of Limbo is anatomized finely and courageously—under the influence and recognitions of Dante’s model—to the point of giving identity to and rendering memorable the nonentities who are the hollow men. he volume in which this essay appears was originally published in England in 1974 (London: Edward Arnold).

Chiarenza, Marguerite Mills. “Bypassing the Bible: New Approaches to Dante’s Allegory.” In Dante Studies, XCIII (1975), 215-221. 

Review-article on: David Thompson, Dante’s Epic Journeys (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), and John G. Demaray, The Invention of Dante’s Commedia (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974). (See Dante Studies, XCIII, 242-243, and 229, respectively.)

Chiarenza, Marguerite Mills. “Pagan Images in the Prologue of the Paradiso.” In Proceedings, Pacific Northwest Council on Foreign Languages, XXVI (1975), Part 1, 133-136. 

Construes the Apollo-Marsyas myth (Par. 1, 16-21) cited in the invocation to Apollo at the beginning of the Paradiso as a transcendence image, in which Dante, exceptionally, has Apollo drawing Marsyas from his flesh. The poet seeks help to exceed his human powers in order to recapture in natural means (language) the supernatural experience of the Pilgrim here in Paradise. This first myth invoked by Dante in the Paradiso is related by the author to the last myth invoked—of Neptune and Jason. Whereas through the first Dante speaks of the divine descending into the human, through the last he speaks of the human ascending to the divine. The result of the god Apollo’s entering the mortal poet’s flesh (“entra nel petto mio”) is an “incarnation” that would effect the transcendence of the human, the poetic journey’s ultimate goal.

Cioffari, Vincenzo (editor and translator). “Guido da Pisa’s Basic Interpretation (A Translation of the First Two Cantos).” See Guido da Pisa....

Clivio, Gianrenzo P. “J. Tusiani: sette secoli di poesia italiana in traduzione inglese.” In Forum Italicum, IX (1975), 113-118. 

Review-article on three volumes of Italian verse translated by Joseph Tusiani including The Age of Dante: An Anthology of Early Italian Poetry Translated into English Verse (New York: Baroque Press, 1974), which contains selected poems from the Vita Nuova, Convivio, and Rime. (See Dante Studies, XCIII, 224.)

Colish, Marcia L. “Medieval Allegory: A Historiographical Consideration.” In Clio, IV, No. 3 (1975), 341-355. 

Includes ample reference to Dante criticism to punctuate her thesis that, despite some recent revisionism, modern literary scholars have not entirely shaken off the classical bias or the Romantic bias in their approach to medieval allegory. Also, students of medieval literature have yet to correct their tendency to view the Middle Ages as a cultural unity. Since allegory was defined by both the ancients and the medievals as a rhetorical figure, more attention should be paid not only to the diversity of medieval theological and philosophical opinion, but also to the no less variegated rhetorical tradition with its many ars dictandi manuals which conditioned the works of the poets.

Costa, Elio Gabriel. “Brunetto Latini between Boethius and Dante: The Tesoretto and the Medieval Allegorical Tradition.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, XXXVI (1975), 1551A-1552A. 

Doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto, 1974.

Cotes, Rosemary A. Dante’s Garden, with Legends of the Flowers. Folcroft, Penn.: Folcroft Library Editions, 1975. 110 p. illus., Port.

Reprint of the 1899 edition (London: Methuen). Treats of the various flowers referred to by Dante and the symbolism associated with them. Includes bibliographical references.

Cowgill, Bruce Kent. “The Parlement of Foules and the Body Politic.” In Journal of English and Germanic Philology, LXXIV, No. 3 (July 1975), 315-335.

Contends that a more unified and consistent interpretation of Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules is possible if the poem’s dichotomous allegory is seen as contrasting “the ordered state wisely governed according to natural law and the chaos of a state whose leadership is selfish and irresponsible.” Such a reading would explain the prominent role of Scipio and the many echoes of the Divina Commedia, especially of the earthly paradise at the top of Purgatory, which is the ideal state attainable through the active life by the exercise of man’s natural powers. The author also discusses the symbolism of the garden for the state as a common theme among Chaucer’s contemporaries, and concludes that the Parlement represents a fusion of varied background materials.

Davis, Charles T. “Dante’s Vision of History.” In Dante Studies, XCIII (1975), 143-160. 

Outlines Dante’s vision of human history based on statements and allusions in his various works. The term “vision,” borrowed from W.H.V. Reade, is used by the author to suggest Dante’s perception of God’s providence acting through the Romans as chosen people and the eschatological aspect of Dante’s thought, focused on a future deliverer of Christendom from contemporary chaos and fulfiller of the promise of ancient Roman order. Virgil was not only Dante’s acknowledged poetic master, but also his “historical master considered divinely inspired and, as was common in the Middle Ages, to be cited as the supreme authority on the meaning of pagan Roman history. (In Nardi’s words, the Aeneid was “la Bibbia dell’Impero,” based on divine revelation.) Although in the Commedia Dante addresses himself to various problems of his own time in terms of the root cause, avarice, and to the solution in the form of the unidentified (evidently imperial figure of the) “veltro,” Dante as less interested in secondary causes of history than the general providential pattern. Dante’s perception of all the evil of his time as apocalyptic and his envisioning the mystic rose of Paradise as nearly full, indicate that the poet believed the end of time was near, that, according to Pietro di Dante, just as the Emperor Augustus had prepared the earthly stage for Christ’s first coming, a second emperor, a rex romanorum et christianorum, would eradicate avarice and generally do the work of the “veltro” and thus prepare the world for Christ’s final coming. Dante’s vision of history was therefore both archaic, looking back to an idealized past of good empire and church, and eschatological, looking forward to their restoration in anticipation of the final victory of the heavenly emperor, Christ. In this historical theology, his vision was essentially a vision of Rome, Rome both providentially determined guardian of earthly peace and justice and symbol of salvation.

Della Terza, Dante. “Istanze tradizionali e prospettive di aggiornamento nella critica dantesca.” In Lettere italiane, XXVII (1975), 245-262.

Examines several established positions in Dante criticism and some prospects for revision thanks perhaps to the efforts of certain scholars selected for discussion, including two Americans—E.K Rand, who as early as 1912 offered internal evidence for dating the Monarchia towards the end of Dante’s life, after the inception of the Paradiso, rather than around 1310, and C. S. Singleton, who however at times misunderstood in his application of the allegory of theologians has opened important perspectives to Dante criticism.

Di Girolamo, Costanzo. “Microscopia di un sonetto di Dante.” In MLN, XC (1975), 22-37. 

Presents a detailed structural analysis, with accompanying diagrams, of Dante’s sonnet for Lisetta, Per quella via che la bellezza corre, applying theories and methods of Jakobson and his school. This provides insights into the dynamic relationship between the linguistic or syntactical composition of the poem and its metrical structure, along with the contributing effects of lexical details, phonic texture, and strophic patterns, which are also analyzed.

Dronke, Peter. “Francesca and Héloïse.” In Comparative Literature, XXVII (1975), 113-135. 

Examines comprehensively Dante’s various sources for creating the Francesca episode in Inferno V—the moving Virgilian scene of Dido snubbing her former lover, Aeneas; the buffeting of souls formerly given to sensualism in life in Cicero’s Dream of Scipio; the medieval morality lyric expressing the poet’s reflection, filled with compunction and nostalgia, on the transience of former earthly lovers; the meager historical evidence for Francesca’s Story; Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy with its idea of gentilezza associated with virtue and love as a universal power; the French Lancelot with the declaration of love and kiss between Guinevere and Lancelot—and discusses the various interpreters of the episode, who fall into the two basic groups of “doves,” romantically sympathetic with Francesca, and “hawks,” morally reprehensive of her as a wanton. In the latter controversy, Dronke takes a middle ground, contending that Dante deliberately weighted certain details in divergent ways, in order to ensure a mixed reaction on our part. In Francesca herself, as evidenced by her mannered articulacy, is seen an intellectual (originally suggested by Contini) who knows her French romances and her Boethius, in fact actually lives on the plane of the literary language of high love. However, even as Dante questions Francesca in the language of his earlier lyrics, he qualifies and refines (as is his wont) the concept of love to a larger, more complex darker vision, which, he implies in this episode, involves more than the gentle heart and the forever oneness of the lovers. The fallacy of this love of courtly tradition is staged, in this tragic experience of Francesca, from the perspective of divine justice. The author closes the essay with a discussion of the celebrated lover Héloïse presented by Jean de Meung in the Roman de la Rose as another possible source for Dante’s Francesca: both women are ardent, intellectual, and rhetorically articulate; both are unrepentant and self-justifying of their love; both had fallen in love while reading with their respective lovers; both openly defend their love, even as they know it to be guilty.

Dronke, Peter.Orizzonti che rischiari: Notes towards the Interpretation of Paradiso XIV.” In Romance Philology, XXIX (1975), 1-19. 

Sees Paradiso XIV as structured in three movements evolving climactically, with a crescendo of light-imagery, from the spoken words of the initial two concentric circles of shining spirits to visions alone of the third circle, which appears like a “luminous horizon,” and the candent cross of the next heaven (Mars). Attention is focused on the significance of the “orizzonte che rischiari,” for which the author contends Dante was inspired by the prophetic treatment of the Trinity in the Liber Figurarum of Joachim of Fiore and the Averroist speculations of Siger of Brabant (referred to in Par. X and XII, respectively). The spirits’ eager anticipation (Par. XIV) of the perfecting bodily resurrection on Judgment Day and the Poet’s reference to the “orizzonte che rischiari” are related to a discussion of (1) Joachim’s prophecy of the third and final status mundi, when the established church will be superseded by a condition of complete justice, brotherly love and freedom under the Holy Spirit; and (2) Siger’s speculation on the unity of the possible intellect in mankind and its mysterious differentiation among individuals. These ideas were applied by Dante with brilliant electicism in the Monarchia (III, xvi), where he envisions as the earthly goal of mankind a humana civilitas combining a collective socio-political ideal of justice and freedom in an intellectual commonalty. There Dante, echoing references in Proclus’ Liber causis, Albert the Great’s and Aquinas’ commentaries on this, and related Aristotelian ideas, likens man, in his position between the corruptible and the incorruptible, to a horizon. Thus, this canto with the third circle appearing as a luminous horizon contains a complex reference to the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and the ultimate ideal goal of mankind of a perfect state of blessedness combining the physical and the spiritual, intellection and love.

Durling, Robert M. “‘Io son venuto’: Seneca, Plato, and the Microcosm.” In Dante Studies, XCIII (1975), 95-129. 

Presents a close structural analysis of Dante’s petrosa poem, lo son venuto al punto de la rota, as a microcosm of the macrocosm, noting the many and complex correspondences between the cycles of the cosmos and those governing the life of the individual self and the further correspondences between various aspects of the natural world and the parts of the human body. To identify the tradition contributing to Dante’s conception of the macrocosmic-microcosmic relation, the author cites the suggestive Timaeus and subsequent Platonic tradition and more explicitly discusses Book III of Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones, on the cyclical movement of water. Elaborating on the connection between the Naturales Quaestions and Io son venuto, the author dwells especially on the system of ascent and descent in the canzone, whose complex cycles suggest a spiral pattern. While the stanzaic microcosm follows the macrcocosmic system, reflecting the human condition of embeddedness in nature, it also portrays human independence from it, exemplified by the lover’s contra-seasonal passion (in winter) and the lady’s contra seasonal coldness (in spring). In further correlation of the macro and microcosmic cycles suggested by the Timaeus and the Naturales Quaestiones, the poem is found to reflect a detailed parallelism between the realms of nature and the parts of the human body, which also has a long and rich tradition, illustrated here by Hildegard of Bingen’s Liber divinorum operum simplicis hominis and Bernardus Silvestris’ De mundi universitate. The poem as a whole, meanwhile is structured on the life cycle ending in death (suggested in the envoi) and beginning in birth (suggested by verse 3 of the first stanza), the latter reference being an allusion to Dante’s own birth under the sign of Gemini. For an example of inversion, moreover, the macrocosmic cycle of the alternation of day and night is described with a term proper to gestation and parturition. Hence the poem begins with the end of the process, parturition, and ends with the beginning of the process, orgasm, the start of the cycle of gestation. By way of conclusion, the author rejects past attempts at allegorizing the rime petrose and contends that Dante’s allegorical habits of mind must be seen in much broader terms, as reflected by the present reading of Io son venuto, in which Dante is representing the negative phase of an erotic experience as a natural event, which must in due time be overcome. But in the process Dante has created a new poetics, integrating poetic theme and technique and portraying the poet-lover’s total individuality within the macrocosm, with an interpenetration of all levels of meaning. Thus, finding in Io son venuto the major structural principles of the Commedia, the author loses with a few indications of the close relation of this canzone to the epic masterpiece—for example, Paradiso XXII, 106-123, in addition to many specific passages in the Inferno: the spiral path of the poetic journey, the spiral pattern of the terza rima itself, as well as other spiral-cyclical correspondences in the distribution of certain cantos in the three cantiche; and the very structure of the Inferno suggesting as in the petrosa poem, an analogical configuration of the human body.

Eliot, T. S. Selected Prose.... Edited with an introduction by Frank Kermode. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975.

Contains a substantial portion (pp. 205-230)—on the Inferno and the Purgatorio and Paradiso specifically—of Eliot’s well-known essay on Dante (1929) and some further reference to Dante in the introduction. Indexed.

Fergusson Francis. Dante. New York: Collier Books, Macmillan, 1975. x, 214 p. illus. (Masters of World Literature Series.)

Paperback reprint of the 1966 edition. (See Dante Studies, LXXXV, 101-102.)

Fergusson, Francis. Literary Landmarks: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Literature. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutger’s University Press, 1975. x, 149 p.

Contains two pieces of Dantean interest. (1) “Maritain’s Creative Intuition” (pp. 37-47), reprinted from Jacques Maritain, the Man and His Achievement, edited by Joseph W. Evans (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963), is in the nature of a review-article on Maritain’s Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (The A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington; Bollingen Series, xxxv-1; New York: Pantheon Books, 1954 [see 73rd Report, 65-66]), which makes liberal use of illustration from Dante to explain Maritain’s theory of inspiration and its translation into the work of art. (2) “The Divine Comedy as a Bridge across Time” (pp. 62-75) was originally written as a lecture for the Library of Congress, May 1, 1965, as “On Reading Dante in 1965: The Divine Comedy as a ‘Bridge across Time’ “ and published in Dante Alighieri: Three Lectures (Washington: Library of Congress, 1965 [see Dante Studies LXXXIV, 84]).

Fergusson, Francis. “Romantic Love in Dante and Shakespeare.” In Sewanee Review, LXXXIII (1975), 253-266. 

Contends that just as Shakespeare shares with Dante the same classical-Christian vision of the human condition, he also views the phenomenon of romantic love very much as Dante does. In all their pictures of it can be found the same three traits of restriction of romantic love to the gentili, or noble of heart, total commitment and obedience by the lovers, and the mystery associated with this kind of love when it strikes. Illustrating with the Paolo and Francesca episode in Inferno V and Romeo and Juliet, the author finds analogous treatment of romantic love in the plot, characterization, and symbolism of the two works. In each case in its way, moreover, romantic love is seen as a deviation from the divine order. The two poets, respectively at the beginning and end of the Renaissance, are so in agreement here that their works throw light on each other.

Ferrante, Joan M. Woman as Image in Medieval Literature, from the Twelfth Century to Dante. New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1975. 166 p.

In the context of her general thesis examining the symbolic treatment of women, either as corrupting or uplifting beings for men, in literature of the high Middle Ages, the author devotes a chapter to Dante (pp. 129-152), who “picks up all the strains of the earlier tradition and brings them together—the positive and negative symbols, the historical figures as exempla and the personified abstractions, the love of man and woman as a figure for and step towards the union of man and God.” Dante is seen to grant equality of the sexes and to suggest even a feminine side of God in the trinity Mary-Beatrice-Lucy and in the figure of his own beloved as Christ. Woman is redeemed in Dante’s universe as a complete human being and her influence looms large throughout the whole Commedia. Contents: Introduction; 1. Biblical Exegesis; 2. Allegory; 3. Courtly Literature; 4. In the Thirteenth Century; 5. Dante; Appendix: Medieval Interpretations of Classical Texts; Index.

Fiero, Gloria K. “Dante’s Ledge of Pride: Literary Pictorialism and the Visual Arts.” In Journal of European Studies, V (1975), 1-17. 

Examines the relief sculptures—three representing humility and thirteen, the sin of pride—described by Dante in Purgatorio X and XII. In the Middle Ages, the plastic arts, associated with order and considered as being ultimately derived from God, served didactic and devotional ends, and Dante himself utilized a naturalistic form of pictorial sculptures very effectively and meaningfully here in Purgatory, the realm which mirrors man’s earthly struggle. The author closes by citing likely visual sources of Dante’s literary pictorialism on the ledge of pride: examples of extant relief sculpture of imperial Rome and classically inspired contemporaries like Nicola and Giovanni Pisano and the Florence-based Arnolfo di Cambio, whose works were marked by narrative realism. The article is illustrated with six plates of reliefs.

Frankel, Margherita. Le Code dantesque dans l’oeuvre de Rimbaud. Paris: Editions A.-G. Nizet, 1975. 254 p. illus.

Contends that an important key to the understanding and appreciation of the poetry of Rimbaud is his close affinity with Dante, notable particularly in the Illuminations and Une Saison en Enfer. Contents: Introduction; I. La fortune littéraire de Dante en France; II. Le caractère visionaire de la Divine Comédie et le rêve de voyance de Rimbaud; III. La Divine Comédie, une des clefs de Rimbaud; IV. Les éléments dantesques dans les Derniers vers; v. Images et correspondances dantesques dans les Illuminations; VI. Confrontation idéologique de Dante et Rimbaud dans Une Saison en Enfer; VII. Conclusions; Annexes [three illustrations]; Bibliographie. See also her “Le Code dantesque dans l’oeuvre de Rimbaud,” in Dissertation Abstracts International, XXXIV (1974), 4260A (see Dante Studies, XCIV, 188).

Freccero, John. “Dante’s Ulysses: From Epic to Novel.” In Concepts of the Hero in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; Papers of the Fourth and Fifth Annual Conferences of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, 2-3 May 1970, 1-2 May 1971; edited by Norman T. Burns and Christopher J. Reagan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975), pp. 101-119. 

Distinguishes between the circular and the linear forms of human time characteristic of the narrative structures, respectively, of the ancient epic and the modern novel, and examines in the Divine Comedy the contrasting treatment of the hero Ulysses and the protagonist Dante, whose journeys are considered on the same plane of reality, each being a journey of the body which stands for a journey of the soul. Citing the new view of linearity with respect to time and therefore of both universal history and individual progress, as expressed by St. Augustine—the “circles have been shattered” forever by Christ’s Advent (City of God, Bk. XII), the author interprets the Comedy as a unique synthesis of the old circularity of the epic and the new linearity of the novel. The navigational metaphor, moreover, is seen to play a vital structural role in the poem not only in the Ulysses canto itself but also at the beginning of the Purgatorio. The respective journeys of the Christian protagonist Dante and the pagan hero Ulysses are contrasted, while another pagan hero, the Virgilian Aeneas, serves as an intermediate figure who, like Ulysses, has the quality of pietas and a Providential destiny as founder of Rome. Dante in turn shares with Aeneas a linear destiny as the pilgrim who will return to tell his story. But Aeneas, like Ulysses, cannot hope for the Christian reward of eternity after death, as can Dante, for whom death is but a new beginning. The unity of the poem is based on the new Christian concept: “The point where circle and line, poet and pilgrim meet, is the poem’s ending, specifically a vision of the incarnation.”

[Fucilla, Joseph G., compiler.] “Italian Literature.” In 1973 MLA International Bibliography, Vol. II (1975), pp. 63-90. 

Contains a substantial Dante section, Items 3983-4205.

Giacone, Roberto. “Ugo Capeto e Dante.” In Aevum, XLIX (1975), 437-473. 

Investigates the information contained in the not always consistent historical records and popular legends on Hugh Capet, who as key figure in Purgatorio XX is the chief cause of difficulty and uncertainty surrounding the reading of this canto. The record shows that, despite the long series of adverse French reaction to the harsh criticism of the Capetian line implicit in the canto, Dante did not invent or distort, though he did select and harmonize from the available information certain details to coincide with his own political ideals, particularly that of universal empire as opposed to supremacy of national entities. Furthermore, the author examines at length the much-debated verse, “Figliuol fu’ io d’un beccaio di Parigi” (52) and its historical precedents in an attempt to resolve its interpretation, and he treats such structural elements as the canto’s tone-setting opening invective against the all-besetting evil of avarice in relation to the powerful in general and the Capetians in particular, and Hugh’s initial speech with its fourfold lapidary phrases in the first person, defined by the author as “io cosciente, io genealogico, io morale ed io politico,” which are subsequently elucidated in the details of Hugh’s account. In the end, Dante’s denigratory treatment of the Capetian line in France is vindicated by the many available historical records. This essay, here only slightly revised, was awarded the Dante Prize of the Dante Society of America in 1975.

Grandgent, Charles H. Companion to the Divine Comedy. Commentary by C. H. Grandgent as edited by Charles S. Singleton. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975. xii, 316 p. illus.

Edited primarily “for those students of the poem who are obliged to read their Dante in English,” this volume offers “a generous extract of those parts of Grandgent’s well-known edition of the poem which can be understood by a reader who has little or no Italian. The companion contains the introduction, the preliminary note to each cantica, the canto arguments, footnotes, diagrams and other illustrations, bibliographical abbreviations, and index from the Grandgent edition, La Divina Commedia, as recently re-issued, revised by Singleton (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972) (See Dante Studies, XCI, 163-164.) Available in paper as well as cloth binding.

Grundmann, H. “Dante und Joachim von Fiore zu Paradiso X-XII.” In Joachim of Fiore in Christian Thought: Essays on the Influence of the Calabrian Prophet, edited by Delno C. West (New York: Burt Franklin and Co., 1975), Vol. II, pp. 329-375. 

This essay by an authoritative student of Joachim of Fiore, originally published in Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch, XIV, (1932), 210-256, treats of the relation of Dante to the Calabrian monk. The author addresses in particular the significance of Dante’s placing Joachim together with the Averroistic Siger of Brabant among the blessed in company with such critics of his thought as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure, and finds that the poet with his sense of prophetic mission felt an affinity with the Calabrian prophet, but especially could Dante reconcile Joachim’s apparently aberrant ideas along with many other kinds of thinkers striving each in his way towards truth, within his vision of humankind ultimately living in an ideal condition of political, intellectual, and spiritual unity, or humana civilitas. Annotating the text of the essay are four appendices summarizing the interpretations of Paradiso XII, 140, by the early commentators; the views about Joachim in contemporary writings up to the year 1250; Dante and the literature of prophecy at the beginning of the thirteenth century (also in connection with Inf. XIX, 54); and Dante and the expectation of the end of the world (in connection with Par. XII, 118-124).

Guido da Pisa. “Guido da Pisa’s Basic Interpretation (A Translation of the First Two Cantos).” [Edited and translated by] Vincenzo Cioffari. In Dante Studies, XCIII (1975), 1-25. 

Presents an English version of the most significant portions of the first two cantos of Guido’s Expositiones et Glose super Comediam Dantis, edited in its entirety for the first time by Dr. Cioffari (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974) (see Dante Studies, XCIII, 223-224). Since Guido’s basic principles are clearly exhibited here at the beginning of his commentary, this excerpt is representative of his interpretation as a whole. Cf. Cioffari’s translation of Guido’s Prologue which appeared recently in these pages (Dante Studies, XC, 125-137).

Headings, Philip R. “Among Three Worlds: Ward, Eliot, and Dante.” In T. S. Eliot Review, II, No. 2 (Fall 1975), 11-14.

Review-article on T. S. Eliot, Between Two Worlds . . . by David Ward (see below). The author points out Ward’s “not having understood sufficiently Dante or Eliot’s uses of Dante in some of his most admired passages,” such as The Waste Land, Ash Wednesday, and Little Gidding.

Heilbronn, Denise. “Dante’s Gate of Dis and the Heavenly Jerusalem.” In Studies in Philology, LXXII (1975), 167-192. 

Elaborating from the general interpretations of Auerbach and Musa, the author shows that in Inferno VII-IX literal narrative and allegory are combined to represent dramatically and symbolically the First Advent with all its far-reaching implications. The explication traces the poet’s complex system. of polysemy adapted from traditional symbolism as derived from patristic scriptural exegesis and dwells on such details as the tower, related to Mary in the two senses of porta clausa, signifying her virginity, and coeli porta, signifying the gate of Paradise (her reopening of the way to salvation); the verghetta (IX, 89) of the heavenly envoy, also fraught with Marian symbolism; Virgil’s exclamation of impatience for the envoy’s arrival (IX, 9), reflecting the Messianic yearning of the pre-Christian world; the temporary blinding of Virgil (by the Medusa to his task) and the Pilgrim (made to cover his eyes), representing the pre-Christian time of darkness pending the advent of the liberating Messiah; imagery of the “veil” and its removal, recalling the New Law brought by Christ’s Advent and thus revealing the previously hidden mystery of the Old Law; and many other scriptural echoes. Thus, the setting and the drama enacted by Virgil and the Pilgrim at the Gate of Dis are construed to symbolize the First Advent of Christ fulfilling one expectation of the Messiah and creating the further hopeful expectancy of the final Advent of Judgment Day and the opening of the Heavenly Jerusalem, signified by the reverse image of the City of Dis. The meaning of these details is unveiled retrospectively, so that even some puzzling aspects of the Filippo Argenti episode are now seen to anticipate the larger drama at the Gate of Dis.

Higgins, David H. “Cicero, Aquinas, and St. Matthew in Inferno XIII.” In Dante Studies, XCIII (1975), 61-94. 

Analyzes Pier delle Vigne’s speech in Inferno XIII, 55-78, according to the Ciceronian precepts of classical rhetoric, as Dante knew it from the De inventione and the Rhetorica ad Herennium, the specific contemporary practice of which is perceptible in Brunetto Latini’s Rettorica and Livres dou Tresor. The author interprets each part of the speech in the framework of classical judicial oratory—exordium, narratio, partitio, argumentatio, reprehensio, and peroratio—the whole designed by Piero to persuade his audience of his own high moral and intellectual integrity and unwavering commitment to justice. The result is a most impressive speech in which even more important than the rhetorical brilliance is the whole tone, the artistic unity, “achieved by the interplay of three elements: the artful ‘colour’ of the passages such as we have been considering, the controlled forensic treatment of the issues, and, as a setting for these, the ordered framework of the speech conceived in the Ciceronian manner.” In a second part, the author discusses St. Thomas Aquinas’ definitive modification of the Aristotelian view of suicide as dramatized in Dante’s treatment here. Thirdly, the author suggests, contrary to other critics, that the central theme of the Piero episode is the Biblical position “that self-destruction is the inevitable end of divided loyalties,” as expressed specifically in Matthew 12:25-37, which may well have afforded Dante both the moral doctrine and suggestive imagery.

Hollander, Robert. “Babytalk in Dante’s Commedia.” In Mosaic, VIII, No. 4: “On the Rise of the Vernacular Literatures in the Middle Ages” (1975), pp. 73-84. 

Examining Dante’s use of the Italian vernacular versus the Latin grammatica and his linguistic theories expressed in the Convivio and De vulgari eloquentia as well as references in the Commedia, the author addresses certain contradictions particularly in Dante’s statements concerning the relative “nobility” of the vernacular vis-á-vis Latin and the relation of “babytalk” to the vernacular and of this in turn to the primal language of Adam. He concludes that “what Dante has set out to accomplish in the Commedia’s skein of references to the speech of infants, with its related thread that involves the relation of the vernacular to Latin and to Adamic speech, is a défense et illustration de la langue italienne which insists upon the stylistic equivalence of Italian and Latin and the theological equivalence of Italian and the first vernacular spoken in Eden.”

Hollander, Robert. “Literary Consciousness and the Consciousness of Literature.” In Sewanee Review, LXXXIII (1975), 115-127. 

Includes significant reference to Dante in this meditation, stimulated by Blackmur’s remark, “poetry is life at the remove of form and meaning,” on the relation of literature to life, on the question of “imitation” (of literature) versus “mimesis” (of life), on the relation between the realms of sense data and phantasm, on the authenticity of fiction, and on the possibility of composing life into art working together with a literary consciousness. The greatest writers, including Virgil and Dante, have combined the two techniques of imitation and mimesis.

Hollander, Robert.Purgatorio II: Cato’s Rebuke and Dante’s Scoglio.” In Italica, LII (1975), 348-363.  

Examines certain aspects of the Casella episode in Purgatorio II—the encounter and Dante’s invitation to Casella to sing, Casella’s singing of Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona from the Convivio, Cato’s rebuke, Dante’s other ode from the Convivio mentioned in the Commedia, Dante’s Boethius, the rest of Psalm 113, and Dante’s scoglio and St. Paul’s—in order to show that the episode in this “musical” canto with its two songs, In exitu Israël de Aegypto and Dante’s ode, poses no difficulty if we consider that the ode is really a “siren’s song” which has no proper place here alongside the psalm, indeed is harmful and perverse in this Christian context. Dramatized by Cato’s rebuke, the episode represents Dante’s shedding of the scoglio of his former poetic life, or in larger terms, his replacement of the pastura of the Convivio by the pastura of the Commedia, the first being as but chaff to the wheat of the second.

Howe, Kaye. “Dante’s Beatrice: The Nine and the Ten.” In Italica, LII (1975), 364-371. 

Against Dante’s well-known fondness for number and symmetry, the author notes the asymmetrical parallelism in the ninth cantos of the Inferno and Purgatorio and the tenth of the Paradiso, all involving “entrances,” and offers an explanation of this significant shift in pattern. While Dante associated the number nine with miracle and identified (in the Vita Nuova) Beatrice as an analogue of divinity with the number nine, under her guidance he enters Heaven proper beyond the shadow of earth in Paradiso X (for him the perfect number) to mark a shift from the analogue of divinity, Beatrice, to divinity itself.

Kermode, Frank. The Classic: Literary Images of Permanence and Change. New York: Viking Press, 1975. 141 p.

The first (pp. 15-45) of these “T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures” (University of Kent, Canterbury, 1973) is on the definition of “classic,” focusing on a discussion of Eliot’s identification of the notion with Virgil as its exemplar and with the idea (or mystique) of Empire (imperium). The essay includes ample reference to Dante, leading the author to conclude: “What we owe to Dante is not only that he explained, with beautiful accuracy, the position of Virgil in world history, but also that he found for modern literature a language as noble as Latin (nobilior, he ventured to assert) which should be fit for a culture continuous with that of Rome and yet consistent with political and linguistic nationality.” The essay was pre-printed in Denver Quarterly, IX, No. 1 (Spring 1974), 1-33.

Kleinhenz, Christopher. “Infernal Guardians Revisited: ‘Cerbero, il gran vermo’ (Inf. VI, 22).” In Dante Studies, XCIII (1975), 185-199. 

Brings to bear, along with Virgil’s Aeneid (VI, 417-423), the passage on the Serpent in Genesis 3:14-15 and 19, as well as other relevant passages in the Commedia itself, to show that the significance and the relationship of Cerberus to the overall structure of Dante’s Hell is deeper and more complex than previously noted. As adapted and modified from classical monster to demonic figure, with its Biblical accretions of meaning, to be re-inforced by its dog-like aspect associated with the lupa and the latter’s concupiscible appetites, its serpentine necks with the Serpent of Genesis, its three heads with the similar appearance of Lucifer, etc., together with other vermo allusions and associations in the poem, Cerberus is seen (in accordance with Servius’ interpretation) as the devourer of flesh and therefore, in the Biblical equation, terra, supported again by the demon’s association with the Serpent in Eden. Also, the notions of gluttony and pride embodied in Cerberus and Lucifer are bound together and carry implications of disobedience and subsequent punishment. As two figures fallen from former magnificence, then, Cerberus and Lucifer stand in the allegorical texture of the poem as “negative exempla representing the causes of man’s earthly exile.” Thus, from the highly suggestive correlation of this demonic figure with the Serpent and Lucifer, heightened by the poet’s repeated play on the charged word vermo, involving the notions of insignificance, imperfection, and loss of former magnificence, Cerberus is seen to occupy the most prominent place among the infernal guardians and a pivotal role in the multifaceted structure of the Commedia.

Kleinhenz, Christopher. “A Nose for Art (Purgatorio VII): Notes on Dante’s Iconographical Sense.” In Italica, LI (1975), 372-379. 

Points out Dante’s skillful joining of the pictorial art to the poetic art by painting scenes in words, for example, in Purg. VII, where the poet characterizes each former ruler by his pose and spatial setting especially by their variations in the prominent feature of profile, the nose.

Kuder, Stephen R. “The Literature of Conversion: Religious Background and Literary Achievement in Dante Alighieri, John Bunyan and James Joyce.” In Dissertation Abstracts International, XXXVI (1975), 3655A. 

Doctoral dissertation, Graduate Theological Union, 1975.

La Favia, Louis M. “Benvenuto da Imola’s Dependence on Boccaccio’s Studies on Dante.” In Dante Studies, XCIII (1975), 161-175. 

Adduces textual and chronological evidence to disprove the commonly accepted derivation of Benvenuto’s Commentary from Boccaccio’s. Benvenuto was a close friend of Boccaccio and did depend implicitly on his close friend for knowledge of the historical Dante, the man, his personality, the events surrounding his life, to the point, for example, of repeating in Latin virtually verbatim Boccaccio’s description of the poet in his Vita di Dante. But in his own interpretation of the Commedia itself Benvenuto owes nothing to Boccaccio’s Commentary, which he could not have known, both because of external circumstances and because of internal elements in Benvenuto’s glosses (samples of which are cited by the author to substantiate his thesis). More generally speaking, like all the earlier commentators, Boccaccio, looking to the parenetic [sic] effect, considered the Commedia an opus theologicum, while Benvenuto, looking to the literary result, considered it an opus rhetoricum.” Benvenuto, in fine, is the most modern of the ancient commentators and the oldest of the moderns.”

Longen, Eugene M. “The Grammar of Apotheosis: Paradiso XXX, 94-99.” In Dante Studies, XCIII (1975), 209-214. 

Sees in Paradiso XXXIII, 94-99, a syntactical tour de force suggesting an apotheosis, to explain the rapturous experience of the Pilgrim, whose own marveling here in the Empyrean is likened to that of the god Neptune at seeing the Argo (and even Dante’s “bark” if he were here). This is further supported by a similar experience of Dante-Pilgrim at the beginning of the Paradiso when he gazes into Beatrice’s eyes and feels metamorphosed as was Glaucus to godhood (Par. I, 67-79).

Mazzotta, Giuseppe. “Poetics of History: Inferno XXVI.” In Diacritics, No. 2 (Summer 1975), 37-44.

Recognizing rhetoric (a medium of both disclosing and concealing) as the primary theme of Inferno XXVI, the author examines a number of other specific elements and allusions in the canto, such as Ulysses’ oration and journey, the tongues of fire, the sun references, the recall of Troy’s fall and the subsequent translatio imperii westward to Rome, and finds that they are all related to a common motif of concealment and disclosure. Reflected in Dante’s treatment is Brunetto Latini’s translation of Ciceronian ideas about rhetoric into the myth of rhetoric as a theory of education, as a means for acting upon the formlessness of the world in order to build the city. The canto is thus seen to enact “a protracted reflection on the secular city and the pattern of secular history.” But Dante implicitly acknowledges the failure of Brunetto’s political rhetoric because of the very ambiguous nature of language which, subject to the world of contingency, gets separated from the truth and can easily become a deceptive instrument of fraud. In his orazion Ulysses is himself self-deceived, trapped by the literality of language/rhetoric, and his journey in pursuit of the sun, whose course is a perennial circular movement of appearance and concealment, inevitably and tragically fails, because it is contrary to linear history as a translation of the providential order. The example of Ulysses serves as an admonishment to Dante of the possible treachery of his own language and journey.

Murtaugh, Daniel M. “‘Figurando il paradiso’: The Signs that render Dante’s Heaven.” In PMLA, XC (1975), 277-284. 

Examines Dante’s dialectic of vision and his poetic for rendering the inexpressible, and finds that the structure of the Paradiso, with the poet’s and pilgrim’s relation to the figure of Beatrice punctuating the progress in Dante’s apprehension of the Beatific Vision, serves as a mediating sign of the Divinity and His Love. Beatrice’s smile with its increasing beauty, her words and intensifying brightness of her eyes communicate semantically, without actually Signifying the matter apprehended. In the end, Dante-Pilgrim is seen to transcend Beatrice as mediatrix, even as Dante-Poet’s expressive power falls decisively short of her ineffable beauty. In the final cantos it is only through the metaphorical transformations of the poet’s language that can be perceived inklings or vestiges of the ultimate reality which transforms itself according to the Pilgrims intensifying power of vision.

Owen, D. D. R. Noble Lovers. New York: New York University Press, 1975. 191 p. illus.

Contains a chapter on “Dante and Petrarch” (pp. 145-160) relating their lady-inspired poetry to his general thesis of the formalized literary transformation of a lofty conception of love, along with a new view of woman, and of woman as the beloved, beginning with Courtly Love in the Middle Ages and its subsequent evolution down to the present day. Profusely illustrated.

Paolucci, Anne. “Exile among Exiles: Dante’s Party of One.” In Mosaic, VIII, No. 3: “The Literature of Exile” (1975), 117-125. 

Discusses the pervasive theme of exile in Dante’s Comedy especially as highlighted in the Farinata (Inf. x) and Cacciaguida (Par. XVII) episodes, underscoring the poet’s sense of aloneness to the point of considering himself a “party of one,” because of his disgust with fellow exiles, and relating this solitary condition to the uniqueness of his genius (Par. II, 1-15) that has attempted to set in verse the highest religious and philosophical experience. This represents a spiritual prolongation of Dante’s political exile and combines his earthly nostalgia to return to his beloved city of Florence (Par. XXV, 1-9) with the Christian soul’s yearning to return to God.

Pellegrini, Anthony L. “American Dante Bibliography for 1974.” In Dante Studies, XCIII, 223-259. 

With brief analyses.

Picchio Simonelli, Maria. “Vernacular Poetic Sources for Dante’s Use of Allegory.” In Dante Studies, XCIII (1975), 131-142. 

Seeks to explain Dante’s felt need to give in the Convivio (II, i, 2-4) a clear definition of his allegorical method, specifically “a modo de li poeti.” With the flourishing of classical studies in the twelfth century came wide-spread application of the allegory of poets (as distinguished by Augustine from that of theologians) to the interpretation of ancient authors (e.g., Virgil and Ovid) and fables. This kind of allegory became fashionable among the poets writing in Latin. In his own time Dante had to be more deliberate in his justification of his allegory of poets to cope with the intense thirteenth-century polemic on the issue, in which even Thomas Aquinas argued against the use of allegory by the poets and for its restriction to the province of the exegetes. Actually, allegory could be introduced only gradually by the vernacular poets because of the nature of the non-clerical public of lay poetry. But, far from truly an innovator here, Dante could draw upon, re-interpret, and renew an existing rhetorical heritage of long tradition, traceable among vernacular poets in the three major Romance domains, viz., Jaufré Rudel, Chrétien de Troyes, the unidentified author of De David li prophecie, Adam de Perseigne, Raoul de Houdenc, Robert Grosseteste, Huon de Mery, Guillaume de Lorris, and Jean de Meung.

Plater, Edward M. V. “The Figure of Dante in Die Hochzeit des Mönchs.” In MLN, XC (1975), 678-686.

Contends that in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer’s novella, Die Hochzeit des Mönchs, beyond the author’s using Dante as the narrator of the story, there are more substantive parallels between Dante himself and two of the characters, Ezzelin and Astorre the monk. In the latter figure, moreover, can be seen the association of monkhood with the poet’s vocation, an aspect of Meyer’s Dante myth which relates to his own life.

Poggioli, Renato. The Oaten Flute: Essays on Pastoral Poetry and the Pastoral Ideal. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975. vi, 340 p.

Contains his essay on the Earthly Paradise (Purg. XXVIII-XXXIII), “Dante ‘poco tempo silvano’: A Pastoral Oasis in the Commedia” (pp. 135-152), reprinted from 80th Annual Report of the Dante Society (1962), 1-20. (See 81st Report, 27.)

Quint, David. “Epic Tradition and Inferno IX.” In Dante Studies, XCIII (1975), 201-207. 

Contends that the alternatives faced by Dante-Pilgrim at the Gate of Dis, i.e., to continue the descent or return to earth, both have epic precedents, that of Virgil’s Aeneid, finally chosen by Dante, and that of Lucan’s Pharsalia and Statius’ Thebaid. Dante’s heavenly messenger come to help him get into Dis is seen to parody the ‘Demogorgon” invoked from below by Lucan to free shades out of Hades by conjuration. While in Inferno IX heavenly aid breaks the impasse and reaffirms the Virgilian pattern, “the messenger himself, by his allusive association with Statius’ Mercury and with ‘Demogon,’ draws attention to the road not taken.” Originating in the historical situation of Roman civil strife, the epics of republican Lucan and Statius represent attempts at demystification and rejection of the imperial Virgil’s ideology based on divine historical Plan. In Dante’s frightening episode at the gate of Dis, the countertradition of Lucan and Statius, with its renunciation of possible divine significance in a poetic universe, “is recognized as an inversion of Dante’s poetics, a literary alternative which must be confronted and discarded before the pilgrim-poet may proceed.”

Schless, Howard. “Transformations: Chaucer’s Use of Italian.” In Geoffrey Chaucer, edited by Derek S. Brewer (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975), pp. 184-223. 

Discusses the problematics of influence studies in general and with respect to Chaucer in particular; addresses the important questions of when and how Chaucer learned Italian, stressing the non-literary, historical circumstances of the conspicuous presence of Italian bankers in the English world of affairs in which Chaucer officially moved, especially the Bardi family with its obvious Dantean connection through the marriage of Beatrice Portinari to Simone de’ Bardi, along with the spreading fame of Dante at the time; and examines three of Chaucer’s Italian sources, his response to and transformation of them in his Parlement of Foules, Troilus and Criseyde, and The Canterbury Tales: respectively, Boccaccio’s Teseide, his Filostrato, and Dante’s Commedia. Concerning the last, the author points out that analysis of the Dantean ascriptions leaves one with the sense that Dante’s influence, though extensive over time, is in effect particularized and sparse. Generally, Chaucer’s indebtedness falls into two major categories: many shorter images borrowed for their verbal and dramatic force, chiefly from the opening and closing cantos of the three cantiche, and a few direct adaptations and translations specifically for their content. Chaucer’s borrowing is qualified by the difference that, where Dante with his universal view depicted the historical personality to represent a particular vice or virtue in an allegorical background, Chaucer, who was interested mainly in people not doctrines, sought to create credible persons of a particular character enhanced by placement in a realistic situation. The essay closes with an examination of a especially telling instance of transformation: Chaucer’s version, in The Monk’s Tale, of Dante’s Ugolino episode (Inf XXXIII), where the English poet shifts the emphasis from terror to pity and sentiment.

Shapiro, Marianne. “The Gran Lombardo: Vittorini and Dante.” In Italica, LII (1975), 70-77. 

Points out Dantean echoes in Vittorini’s Conversazione in Sicilia, dwelling particularly upon father-figure parallels between the Gran Lombardo and Cacciaguida (Par. XVI-XVII) and exile parallels between Silvestro and Dante in a mythico-historical situation of the world gone awry.

Shapiro, Marianne. “Semiramis in Inferno V.” In Romance Notes, XVI, No. 2 (1975), 455-456.  

Contends that, coming first and for lengthy mention among the lustful, Semiramis serves as a defining type in Inferno V: together with other suggestive references, as queen of Babylonia, she stands for this circle’s confusion, reflecting Augustine’s interpretation of the Scriptural Babylon as chaos.

Shapiro, Marianne. “Spatial Relationships in Dante’s Vita Nuova.” In Romance Notes, XVI, No. 3 (1975), 708-711. 

Suggests that, despite the lack of concrete physical setting in the Vita Nuova, the text yields many spatial cues and images which develop dialectical correspondences between inner and outer space, in effect marking the gradual withdrawal of the poet-lover from the outer world into an Edenic condition of mind, thanks to his inner beatitudinous relationship to Beatrice.

Shapiro, Marianne. Woman Earthly and Divine in the “Comedy” of Dante. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1975. 187 p. (Studies in Romance Languages, 12.) 

Examines “the development of Beatrice’s personality and her relationship to the protagonist in the direction of male ideals and attributes in terms of maternal protection fully subordinated to a masculine system of values.” In Dante’s world of universal hierarchy, the love of God is a father’s love and the ideality of God the Father is not of the senses. Thus, “the male principle of consciousness which desires permanence and not change, eternity and not transmutation, may discriminate against the feminine and demonize it.” The author concludes that to be part of God’s approved hierarchy in the Middle Ages “the complete woman had to be virtually discarded and her sexual role derogated or denied.” A positive view was based on woman as mother with transformative powers. Dante’s Beatrice in her role of the Lady may have effected a reconciliation of love of woman with love of God, but left unresolved is woman as woman and her identity in the world. Contents: Introduction; 1. Love Poetry in a Patrist Society; 2. Wives and Virgins; 3. Lovers; 4. Mothers and Maternal Figures; Conclusion; Index. The work originated as the author’s doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1968 (see Dante Studies, XCI, 192).

Sheridan, James J. “Mailer’s An American Dream.” In Explicator, XXXIV (1975), Item 8.

Notes that the lion and serpent as symbols of Barney Kelly in the climactic chapter of the novel are drawn from Dante’s Inferno (I and XXIV-XXV).

Shoaf, R. A. “Dante’s colombi and the Figuralism of Hope in the Divine Comedy.” In Dante Studies, XCIII (1975), 27-59. 

Proceeding from a recent article by John Freccero on “Casella’s Song (Purg. II, 112,” which includes a view of the dove as associated with poetry as well as human desire, the author investigates Dante’s use in the Commedia of the dove as a symbol of desire and hope, along with the relation of the latter to the nature of poetic language as conceived by Dante. Of the three major instances of dove simile, in Inferno V, 82-87, Purgatorio II, 124-133, and Paradiso XXV, 19-24, the second, considered of focal importance, is interpreted initially in the light of its internal function and Biblical, patristic, and bestiarial material from previous tradition, particularly Hosea 7:11, Jerome’s gloss of this, Rupert of Deutz on the same in relation to Exodus typology, and the Liber de Moralitatibus on the dove’s properties. It is seen that Dante, Virgil, and the spirits are here likened to doves because the latter were traditionally considered neglectful of their welfare. But being a flexible symbol, the doves also stand for the elect who have momentarily lapsed and turned back to the world instead of God. With this symbol Dante has combined his own in the form of Casella’s song to stand for the kind of temptation the newly elect are subject to, viz., the displacement of hope by the intensity of desire. In their eagerness to reach the promised land, the newly elect indiscriminately take Dante Pilgrim’s appearance in the flesh as a sin of arrival. Moreover, they have seized upon the lesser hope of Lady Philosophy in Casella’s song, as confirmed later by Beatrice’s reference to the “pargoletta” (in Purg. XXXI). The author next shows how the dove simile applies symbolically in Inferno V, where Paolo and Francesca are presented literally as colombe because of their disordered desire in “cultivating the loins.” Since the two lovers sought a reflection of the self in the narcissistic mirror of the book of Lancelot, the dove symbolism in Inferno V thus represents desire which corrupts by literalism/carnality, both hope and the object of hope. The spirits in Purgatorio II are equally misled by the image of the Lady in Casella’s song, for, failing to read according to the spirit, they are guilty of narcissistic allegorism. In each case, the veritade is not properly distinguished from the menzogna; language, being the mirror of the self, can lead astray. Finally, Paradiso XXV, in which St. James, the Doctor of Hope, and St. Peter, the Doctor of Faith, meet with Dante, the dove symbolism as interpreted here is confirmed within a systematic figuralism of hope in the Commedia. “As Hell is the space of no hope (. . . v, 44) where the doves are forever and ceaselessly ‘dal disio chiamate,’ so Purgatory is the space of hope militant where doves must leave their temporary feeding and prepare themselves for the banquet eternal; and therefore, Paradise is the space of hope fulfilled but as a virtue still loved (XXV, 82-86) where doves praise the food of which Casella’s song is only a meagre foretaste.”

Singleton Charles S., editor. Companion to the Divine Comedy. Commentary by C. H. Grandgent.... See Grandgent, Charles H. (1975).

Snodgrass, W. D. In Radical Pursuit: Critical Essays and Lectures. New York: Harper and Row, 1975. xiii, 364 p.

Contains an essay, “Analysis of Depths: The Inferno” (pp. 275-319), in which the author, without rejecting the more conscious theological and philosophical interpretations, offers a reading of the cantica based on modern psychology and sexual imagery and the development of the child whose fixations shape the pattern of his later thoughts and actions. His thesis is that Dante’s poem is an analysis probing the soul’s sickness exemplified in the Pilgrim. The sinners encountered are images of Dante’s own soul at a deeper level, and “each ring of the Inferno tends to reflect an earlier layer in the development of the psyche, though one still present in the rationalizing adult.” This essay was originally “delivered in the Spaulding Distinguished Lecture Series, 1969, at the University of New Hampshire and published for limited circulation in their monograph series.”

Steiner, George. After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1975. [xi], 507 p. illus., front.

Chapter 5, “The Hermeneutic Motion,” on translation and its relation to hermeneutics, contains a discussion (pp. 335-342) of the attempts at synchronicity by Emile Littré and Rudolf Borchardt, that is, of rendering Dante’s Commedia in an archaic form of French and German, respectively. There is some occasional further reference to Dante, passim. Indexed.

Tozer, Henry Fanshawe. An English Commentary on Dante’s Divina Commedia. New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1975. viii, 62 p.

Reprint of the 1901 edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press), designed as a companion of notes to the Oxford edition of the Commedia by Edward Moore (1900), including a prefatory note to each cantica and argument to each canto.

Vallone, Aldo. “Guido da Pisa nella critica dantesca del Trecento.” In Critica lettoraria, III, Fasc. iii, No. 8 (1975), 435-469.

Contains remarks on Vincenzo Cioffari’s edition of Guido da Pisa’s Expositiones et glose super Comediam Dantis, or Commentary on Dante’s Inferno. . . (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974 [see Dante Studies, XCIII 223-224]).

Villari, Pasquale. The Two First Centuries of Florentine History: The Republic and Parties at the Time of Dante. Translated by Linda Villari. New York: AMS Press, 1975. xvi, 576 p. illus., 23 lvs. of pls.

Reprint of the 1908 edition (London: T. F. Unwin). Contents: Introduction; 1. The Origin of Florence; 2. The Origin of the Florentine Commune; 3. The First Wars and the First Reforms of the Florentine Commune; 4. State of Parties—Constitution of the First Popular Government and of the Greater Guilds in Florence; 5. Florence the Dominant Power in Tuscany; 6. The Commercial Interests and Policy of the Greater Guilds in Florence; 7. The Family and the State in Italian Communes; 8. The Enactments of Justice; 9. The Florentine Republic in Dante’s Time; 10. Dante, Florentine Exiles and Henry VII; Index. Comes with 23 plates of illustrations.

Vincent, Eric Reginald Pearce. Re-reading the Divine Comedy. Folcroft, Penn.: Folcroft Library Editions, 1975. 15 p.

Reprint of the 1946 edition (London: Geoffrey Cumberledge). As the “Annual Italian lecture . . . read 23 January 1946” before the British Academy, the paper was originally published in the Proceedings of the Academy for 1945 (Vol. XXXI), pp. 223-237. The lecture constitutes an appreciation of Dante’s poem in what it has to offer the general reader of today: “a comprehensive view of life that sanctifies politics, accepts the discoveries of science, reconciles both with Virtue and encourages Faith, Hope, and Charity.”

Vittorini, Domenico. The Age of Dante: A Concise History of Italian Culture in the Years of the Early Renaissance. Illustrated by Fred Haucke. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975. vi, 188 p. illus.

Reprint of the 1957 edition (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press). Contains three chapters (pp. 85-128) dealing with Dante specifically: “Dante Alighieri: His Minor Works,” on the Vita Nuova and rime; “Dante as a Thinker,” on the Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia, and De Monarchia; and “The Divine Comedy.” (See 76th Report, 54, 77th Report, 59, and 78th Report, 41.) The work was also reprinted in 1964 (New York: The Citadel Press). (See 83rd Report, 58.)

Weatherby, Harold L. The Keen Delight: The Christian Poet in the Modern World. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1975. 167 p.

Contains a chapter on Dante, “The Scale of the Comedy” (pp. 6-26), and further Dantean references, passim, in the context of an examination of the difference between medieval and modern Catholicism as represented respectively, on the one hand, by St. Thomas Aquinas and Dante and, on the other, by Cardinal Newman and G. M. Hopkins and T. S. Eliot, who evince “the modern shift of emphasis from reason to experience.” Distinguishing three wisdoms or knowledges, the metaphysical, theological, and mystical, the author submits that the medieval, or Thomistic, mode of knowing God, by embracing all three knowledges incorporates a broader range of human experience including both reason and faith, both knowledge and experience, whereas the modern mode of knowing tends to place its whole emphasis on faith interpreted as experience. With a comprehensive and intellectually consistent image of the cosmos and its relation to God, Dante was able in the Divine Comedy to translate all three knowledges into convincing and valid Poetic imagery (e.g., the symbolic light of the sun, which dramatizes the intellectual system that supports the poem as it leads from the physical world of sense and potential being to the mystical level of simple being, God. In the modern mode of knowing God, however, the poet, such as Eliot, limits himself to a single knowledge, the experiential without reason, and thus his poetry is characteristically fragmentary.

Werge, Thomas. “The Sin of Hypocrisy in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Inferno XXIII.” In Mark Twain Journal, XVIII (Winter 1975-76), 17-18.

Notes that Twain’s delineation of the nature of hypocrisy and its effects in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, with all its Dantean echoes, points to Inferno XXIII as one of the most important sources and analogues for the American writer’s conception.

Wigodsky, Michael. “‘Nacqui sub Iulio’ (Inf. I, 70).” In Dante Studies, XCIII (1975), 177-183.

Finds previous readings of this passage (Inf. 1, 70-72) wanting and submits his own, which also accounts for Dante’s use of Latin here as follows: “I was born sub Iulio—you know that it was Pompeio et Crasso consulibus, but I say sub Iulio, even though he was late to take the place beside and above the other two for which Heaven intended him, and it is by virtue of this intention that I call that entire time sub Iulio.”

Wlassics, Tibor. Dante narratore: saggi sullo stile della Commedia. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1975. 235 p. (Saggi di “Lettere italiane,” 20.) 

Collects together ten of his Dantean essays: 1. Ambivalenze dantesche; 2. L’anacoluto di Dante; 3. Isterologia e iperbato nella Commedia; 4. L’anadiplosi nella Commedia; 5. Le ‘postille’ di Dante alla Commedia; 6. L’ottica di Dante; 7. Antropomorfismo dantesco; 8. La ‘percezione’ limitata nella Commedia; 9. Sceneggiature dantesche; 10. Coreografie dantesche. All of these essays, except possibly No. 6, have appeared elsewhere (see Dante Studies, respectively, for No. 1, XCIII, 255; for No. 2, XCIII, 244; for No. 3, see below; for No. 4, see below, under Addenda; for No. 5, XCIII, 257; for No.7, XCIII, 256; for No. 8, XCII, 198-199; for No. 10, XCIII, 256-257. Essay No. 6, treats of the “optical” aspect of Dante’s poetic art in the Commedia, which makes such frequent use of the verbum videndi, typically involving movement towards the object observed, with the effect or gradual seeing through the eyes of Dante as observer-narrator. This in turn enhances the precision, vividness, and credibility of the narrative. The volume comes with an index of the Dantean passages referred to in the essays. (For reviews, see below.)

Wlassics, Tibor. “Isterologia e iperbato nella Commedia di Dante.” In Revue de littérature comparée, XLIX (1975), 355-364. 

Discusses Dante’s effective use of hysteron proteron and hyperbaton as stylistic devices in the Commedia. Reprinted in his collected essays, Dante narratore . . . (see above).

 

Reviews

Antonelli, Roberto. La poesia del Duecento e Dante. Firenze: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1974. Reviewed by:

            Lauren E. Mueller, in Italian Quarterly, XIX, Nos. 73-74 (1975), 86.

Auerbach, Erich. Dante, Poet of the Secular World. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Paper reprint. (See Dante Studies, XCIII, 225, and 80th Report, 23.) Reviewed by:

            Francis Fergusson, in Sewanee Review, LXXXIII (1975), xii-xvi.

Bergin, Thomas G. Dante’s Divine Comedy. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971. (See Dante Studies, XCI, 185-186.) Reviewed by:

            Glenn Pierce, in Italian Quarterly, XIX, Nos. 73-74 (1975), 89-90.

Cardini, Roberto. La critica del Landino. Firenze: Sansoni, 1973. 393 p. (Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento. Studi e testi, 4.) Reviewed by:

            Revilo P. Oliver, in Renaissance Quarterly, XXVIII (1975), 396-399.

Cerulli, Enrico. Nuove ricerche sul “Libro della Scala” e la conoscenza dell’lslam in Occidente. Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1972. 340 p. (Studi e testi, 271.) Of Dantean interest for the question of Arabo-Spanish sources of the Divina Commedia, specifically the Islamic pamphlet, Kitāb al-Miʿrāj (Book of the Ascension). (See 73rd Report, under Gabrieli.) Reviewed by:

            James Kritzeck, in Speculum, L (1975), 298-300.

Cope, Jackson I. The Theater and the Dream: From Metaphor to Form in Renaissance Drama. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973. Contains a chapter on “Theater of the Dream: Dante’s Commedia, Jonson’s Satirist, and Shakespeare’s Sage.” (See Dante Studies, XCII, 183, and XCIII, 245-246.) Reviewed by:

            Raymond B. Waddington, in English Language Notes, XII (1975), 200-202;

            Terence Hawkes, in Renaissance Quarterly, XXVIII (1975), 122-124;

            Bruce W. Wardropper, in Comparative Literature, XXVII (1975), 166-168.

Costa, Gustavo. La leggenda dei secoli d’oro nella letteratura italiana. Bari: Editori Laterza, 1972. Contains a discussion of the Golden Age myth in Dante. Reviewed by:

            Aldo Scaglione, in Romance Philology, XXVIII (May 1975), 692-696.

Demaray John G. The Invention of Dante’s “Commedia.” New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974. (See Dante Studies, XCIII, 215-221 and 229.) Reviewed by:

            Thomas G. Bergin, in Italian Quarterly, XIX (1975), Nos. 73-74 (1975), 67-83, esp. 74-76;

            A.R.C. Duncan, in Queen’s Quarterly, LXXXII (1975), 288-290;

            Colin Hardie, in Renaissance Quarterly, XXVIII (1975), 59-61;

            John A. Scott, in Modern Language Review, LXX (1975), 643-644.

The Divine Comedy. Translated, with a commentary, by Charles S. Singleton.... Bollingen Series, LXXX. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970-1975. 6 v. (See Dante Studies, LXXXIX, 107-108, XCII, 182, and see above, under Translations; for reviews, XC, 189, XCI, 193, and XCII 199.) Reviewed by:

            Thomas G. Bergin, in Italian Quarterly, XIX, Nos. 73-74 (1975), 67-83, esp. 80-82;

            D. S. Carne-Ross, in New York Review of Books, 1 May 1975, pp. 3-4, 6 and 8;

            Doris Grumbach, in The New Republic, CLXXII, No.10 (8 March 1975), 32-33.

The Divine Comedy. [II.] Purgatorio.... 1973. 2 v. (see Dante Studies, XCII, 182.) Reviewed by:

            Daniel J. Donno, in Renaissance Quarterly, XXVIII (1975), 219-221.

The Divine Comedy. [III.] Paradiso . . .1975. (See Dante Studies, XCIV, 155-156.) Reviewed by:

            Cecil Grayson, in Times Literary Supplement, 29 August 1975, p. 974.

L’edizione “principe” mantovana della “Commedia.” A cura di Luigi Pescascio. Mantova: Editoriale Padus, 1972. (Incl. facs. of entire text.) Reviewed (briefly) by:

            [Lawrence S. Thompson], in Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, LXIX (1975), 302.

Grayson, Cecil. Cinque saggi su Dante. Bologna: Pàtron, 1972. 153 p. (Le miscellanee, 5.) Reviewed by:

            A. Bartlett Giamatti, in Speculum, L (1975), 309-311;

            Marie S. Harubin, in Italian Quarterly, XIX, Nos. 73-74 (1975), 88.

Guido da Pisa. Expositiones et Glose super Comediam Dantis, or Commentary on Dante’s Inferno. Edited with notes and introduction by Vincenzo Cioffari. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974. (See Dante Studies. XCIII, 223-224, XCV, 178, and XCVI, 239 and 254.) Reviewed by:

            Vittore Branca, in Corriere della sera, 14 settembre 1975, p. 16;

            LVR [Lawrence V. Ryan], in Neo-Latin News [published jointly with Seventeenth-Century News (with higher volume number by ten)], XXIII, No. 4 (Winter 1975), 114-115.

Harvard University Library. Italian History and Literature....Widener Library Shelflist, Vols. 51 and 52. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974. 2 v. (xi, 870; 705 p.) Contains about 5000 items in the Dante classification. Reviewed by:

            Robert Di Pietro, in Modern Language Journal, LIX (1975), 394.

Iacomuzzi, Angelo. Il palinsesto della retorica e altri saggi danteschi. Firenze: Olschki, 1972.  Reviewed by:

            Denise Heilbronn, in Italica, LII (1975), 389-392.

Jenaro-MacLennan, L. The Trecento Commentaries on the “Divina Commedia” and the Epistle to Cangrande. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1974 (See Dante Studies, XCIII, 232, XCV, 178 and 189, and XCVI, 240.) Reviewed by:

            Kenelm Foster, in Italian Studies, XXX (1975), 100-102.

Kremers, Dieter. Rinald und Odysseus: Zur Frage der Diesseitserkenntis bei Luigi Pulci und Dante Alighieri. Heidelberg: C. Winter Universitätsverlag, 1966. Reviewed by:

            Lionel J. Friedman, in Romance Philology, XXVIII (1975), 417-420.

Literary Criticism of Dante Alighieri. Translated and edited by Robert S. Haller. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973. (See Dante Studies, XCII, 182-183.) Reviewed by:

            Thomas G. Bergin, in Italian Quarterly, XIX, Nos. 73-74 (1975), 67-83, esp. 79-80;

            Marcia L. Colish, in Renaissance Quarterly, XXVIII (1975), 61-62.

Musa, Mark. Advent at the Gates: Dante’s “Comedy.” Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1974. (See Dante Studies, XCIII, 236-237.) Reviewed by:

            Thomas G. Bergin, in Italian Quarterly, XIX, Nos. 73-74 (1975), 67-83, esp. 72-74.

Pipa, Arshi. Dante and Montale. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1968. (See Dante Studies, LXXXVII, 167, LXXXVIII, 197, LXXXIX, 126, and XC, 191.) Reviewed by:

            Marianne Shapiro, in Romance Philology, XXVIII (1975), 420-422.

Quinones, Ricardo J. The Renaissance Discovery of Time. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972. Contains a chapter on Dante, pp. 28-105. (See Dante Studies, XCI, 176-177 and 184, XCII, 201, and XCIII, 246 and 259.) Reviewed by:

            Samuel L. Macey, in Shakespeare Quarterly, XXVI (1975), 307-310.

Ralphs, Sheila. Dante’s Journey to the Centre: Some Patterns in His Allegory. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1973. (See Dante Studies, XCII, 194.) Reviewed by:

            Thomas G. Bergin, in Italian Quarterly, XIX, Nos. 73-74 (1975), 67-83, esp. 71-72.

Richards, I. A. Beyond. New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974. Contains a chapter on the Divine Comedy, pp. 106-158. (See Dante Studies, XCIII 239-240; also, XCII, 194-195.) Reviewed by:

            John Carey, in New Statesman, LXXXIX (28 Feb. 1975), 280-281;

            John Paul Russo, in Times Literary Supplement, 2 May 1975, p. 480;

Russell, Rinaldina. Tre versanti della poesia stilnovistica: Guinizzelli, Cavalcanti, Dante. Bari: Adriatica Editrice, 1973. (See Dante Studies, XCII, 195-196.) Reviewed by:

            Thomas G. Bergin, in Italica, LII (1975), 388-389;

            Robert Laggini, in Italian Quarterly, XIX, Nos. 73-74 (1975), 85-86;

            Mario Marti, in Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, CLII (1975), 608-612.

Sarolli, Gian Roberto. Prolegomena alla “Divina Commedia.” Firenze: Olschki, 1971. (Biblioteca dell’Archivum Romanicum.) (See Dante Studies, XCI, 191-192.) Reviewed by:

            Thomas G. Bergin, in Italian Quarterly, XIX, Nos. 73-74 (1975), 67-83, esp. 67-70;

            Joan M. Ferrante, in Speculum, L (1975), 149-152.

Steadman, John M. The Lamb and the Elephant: Ideal Imitation and the Context of Renaissance Allegory. San Marino, Calif.: The Huntington Library, 1974. Contains ample reference to Dante. Reviewed by:

            Jonathan Goldberg, in Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism XXXIV (Fall 1975), 89-90;

            A.D. Nuttall, in Review of English Studies, N.S., XXVI (1975), 463-464.

Studi di filologia romanza offerti a Silvio Pellegrini. Padova: Liviana Editrice, 1971. Contains four Dantean studies: Giulio Marzot, on Purgatorio XVII (pp. 315-337); Giancarlo Mazzacurati, on Purgatorio XXXII (pp 339-353); Vittorio Russo on Purgatorio XXV (pp. 507-543); and Francesco Tateo, on the Vita Nuova (pp. 629-653). Reviewed by:

            Marianne Shapiro, in Romance Philology, XXlX (1975), 265-273.

Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, X (1973). Contains: Larry Peterman, “Dante’s Monarchia and Aristotle’s Political Thought,” pp. 1-40. (See Dante Studies, XCIII, 253-254.) Reviewed by:

            Warman Welliver, in Renaissance Quarterly, XXVIII (1975), 368-370.

Thompson, David. Dante’s Epic Journeys. Baltimore and London. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974. (See Dante Studies, XC 215-221, 242-243, and 247.) Reviewed by:

            Thomas G. Bergin, in Italian Quarterly, XIX, Nos. 73-74 (1975), 67-83, esp. 70-71;

            Colin Hardie, in Renaissance Quarterly, XXVIII (1975), 59-61;

            Eugene Webb, in West Coast Review, IX, No. 3 (Jan. 1975), 61-62.

Wilhelm, James J. Dante and Pound: The Epic of Judgement. Orono: University of Maine Press, 1974. (See Dante Studies, XCIII, 243-244, XCV, 179, and XCVI, 241.) Reviewed by:

            [Anon.], in Choice, XII (1975), 674, 676;

            Douglas R. Butturff, in Paideuma, IV (1975), 539-545.

Wlassics, Tibor. Dante narratore: saggi sullo stile della Commedia Firenze: Olschki, 1975. (See above, under Studies.) Reviewed by:

            Thomas G. Bergin, in Italian Quarterly, XIX, Nos. 73-74 (1975), 67-83, esp. 76-79;

            Ermanno Scuderi, in Rivista di studi crociani, XII (1975), 97-98.

Wlassics, Tibor. Interpretazioni di prosodia dantesca. Roma: Signorelli, 1972. (See Dante Studies, XCII, 210; also 202 and 211.) Reviewed by:

            Aldo S. Bernardo, in Italica, LII (1975), 97-99;

            Carli V. Rogers, in Italian Quarterly, XIX, Nos. 73-74 (1975), 89.