As Virgil leads Dante through Limbo, the uppermost portion of Hell, they are joined by four classical poets, and Virgil describes one of them as "Horace the satirist" ("Orazio satiro," 4:89). This collection of essays applies the expression to Dante himself in order to emphasize the satirical elements of his works. Although Dante is not typically described as a satirist, anyone familiar with his works will recognize the strong satirical element in his many writings. By exploring the satiric elements in Dante's literature, these essays explore the primary literary tool at his disposal for his prophetic objectives: the castigation of vice. This collection of essay is the first comprehensive study on Dante and satire within his entire corpus that has ever been published.

This collection of essays is the first comprehensive study on Dante and satire within his entire corpus that has been published. Its title evokes the moment when Virgil leads Dante through Limbo, the uppermost portion of Hell. There, they are joined by four classical poets, and Virgil describes one of them as "Horace the satirist" ("Orazio satiro," 4:89). By applying the expression to Dante himself, this volume seeks to explore the satirical elements in his works. Although Dante is not typically described as a satirist, anyone familiar with his works will recognize the strong satirical element in his many writings. Ultimately, this study shows that Dante engages in satire in order to attain the primary literary tool at his disposal for his prophetic objectives: the castigation of vice.

Dante's Comedy and the Ethics of Invective in Medieval Italy proposes a new approach to invective and comic poetry in Italy during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and opens the way for an innovative understanding of Dante's masterpiece. The Middle Ages in Italy offer a wealth of vernacular poetic invectives-polemical verses aimed at blaming specific wrongdoings of an individual, group, city or institution- that are both understudied and rarely juxtaposed. No study has yet provided a scholarly examination of the connection between this medieval invective tradition, and its elements of humor, derision, and reprehension in Dante's Comedy. This book argues that these comic texts are rooted in and actively engaged with the social, political, and religious conflicts of their time. Political invective has a dynamic ethical orientation that is mediated by a humor that disarms excessive hostility against its individual targets, providing an opening for dialogue. While exploring medieval comic poems by Rustico Filippi (from Florence), Cecco Angiolieri (from Siena), and Folgore da San Gimignano, this study unveils new biographical data about these poets retrieved from Italian state archives (most of these data are published here in English for the very first time), and ultimately shows what the medieval invective tradition can add to our understanding of Dante's Comedy.