The twenty-five original essays in this remarkable book constitute both a state of the art survey of Dante scholarship and a manifesto for new understandings of one of the world’s great poets. The fruit of an historic conference called by the Dante Society of America, the essays confront a range of important questions. What theories, methods, and issues are unique to Dante scholarship? How are they changing? What is the essence of the distinctive American Dante tradition? Why—and how—do we read Dante in today’s global, postmodern culture? From John Ahern on the first copies of the Commedia to Peter Hawkins and Rachel Jacoff on Dante after modernism, the essays shed brilliant new light on Dante’s texts, his world, and what we make of his legacy. The contributors: John Ahern, H. Wayne Storey, Guglielmo Gorni, Teodolinda Barolini, Gary P. Cestaro, Lino Pertile, F. Regina Psaki, Steven Botterill, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Alison Cornish, Robert M. Durling, Manuele Gragnolati, Giuliana Carugati, Susan Noakes, Zygmunt Baranski, Christopher Kleinhenz, Ronald L. Martinez, Ronald Herzman, Amilcare Iannucci, Albert Russell Ascoli, Michelangelo Picone, Jessica Levenstein, David Wallace, Piero Boitani, Peter Hawkins, and Rachel Jacoff.

In this book, Teodolinda Barolini explores the sources of Italian literary culture in the figures of its lyric poets and its athree crownsa: Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Barolini views the origins of Italian literary culture through four prisms: the ideological/philosophical, the intertextual/multicultural, the structural/formal, and the social.The essays in the first section treat the ideology of love and desire from the early lyric tradition to the Inferno and its antecedents in philosophy and theology. In the second, Barolini focuses on Dante as heir to both the Christian visionary and the classical pagan traditions (with emphasis on Vergil and Ovid). The essays in the third part analyze the narrative character of Danteas Vita nuova, Petrarchas lyric sequence, and Boccaccioas Decameron. Barolini also looks at the cultural implications of the editorial history of Danteas rime and at what sparso versus organico spells in the Italian imaginary. In the section on gender, she argues that the didactic texts intended for womenas use and instruction, as explored by Guittone, Dante, and Boccaccioabut not by Petrarchawere more progressive than the courtly style for which the Italian tradition is celebrated.Moving from the lyric origins of the Divine Comedy in aDante and the Lyric Pasta to Petrarchas regressive stance on gender in aNotes toward a Gendered History of Italian Literatureaaand encompassing, among others, Giacomo da Lentini, Guido Cavalcanti, and Guittone daArezzoathese sixteen essays by one of our leading critics frame the literary culture of thirteenth-and fourteenth-century Italy in fresh, illuminating ways that will prove useful and instructive to students and scholars alike.

Accepting Dante's prophetic truth claims on their own terms, Teodolinda Barolini proposes a "detheologized" reading as a global new approach to the "Divine Comedy." Not aimed at excising theological concerns from Dante, this approach instead attempts to break out of the hermeneutic guidelines that Dante structured into his poem and that have resulted in theologized readings whose outcomes have been overdetermined by the poet. By detheologizing, the reader can emerge from this poet's hall of mirrors and discover the narrative techniques that enabled Dante to forge a true fiction. Foregrounding the formal exigencies that Dante masked as ideology, Barolini moves from the problems of beginning to those of closure, focusing always on the narrative journey. Her investigation--which treats such topics as the visionary and the poet, the One and the many, narrative and time--reveals some of the transgressive paths trodden by a master of mimesis, some of the ways in which Dante's poetic adventuring is indeed, according to his own lights, Ulyssean.

In this book, Teodolinda Barolini explores the sources of Italian literary culture in the figures of its lyric poets and its athree crownsa: Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Barolini views the origins of Italian literary culture through four prisms: the ideological/philosophical, the intertextual/multicultural, the structural/formal, and the social.The essays in the first section treat the ideology of love and desire from the early lyric tradition to the Inferno and its antecedents in philosophy and theology. In the second, Barolini focuses on Dante as heir to both the Christian visionary and the classical pagan traditions (with emphasis on Vergil and Ovid). The essays in the third part analyze the narrative character of Danteas Vita nuova, Petrarchas lyric sequence, and Boccaccioas Decameron. Barolini also looks at the cultural implications of the editorial history of Danteas rime and at what sparso versus organico spells in the Italian imaginary. In the section on gender, she argues that the didactic texts intended for womenas use and instruction, as explored by Guittone, Dante, and Boccaccioabut not by Petrarchawere more progressive than the courtly style for which the Italian tradition is celebrated.Moving from the lyric origins of the Divine Comedy in aDante and the Lyric Pasta to Petrarchas regressive stance on gender in aNotes toward a Gendered History of Italian Literatureaaand encompassing, among others, Giacomo da Lentini, Guido Cavalcanti, and Guittone daArezzoathese sixteen essays by one of our leading critics frame the literary culture of thirteenth-and fourteenth-century Italy in fresh, illuminating ways that will prove useful and instructive to students and scholars alike.

The twenty-five original essays in this remarkable book constitute both a state of the art survey of Dante scholarship and a manifesto for new understandings of one of the world’s great poets. The fruit of an historic conference called by the Dante Society of America, the essays confront a range of important questions. What theories, methods, and issues are unique to Dante scholarship? How are they changing? What is the essence of the distinctive American Dante tradition? Why—and how—do we read Dante in today’s global, postmodern culture? From John Ahern on the first copies of the Commedia to Peter Hawkins and Rachel Jacoff on Dante after modernism, the essays shed brilliant new light on Dante’s texts, his world, and what we make of his legacy. The contributors: John Ahern, H. Wayne Storey, Guglielmo Gorni, Teodolinda Barolini, Gary P. Cestaro, Lino Pertile, F. Regina Psaki, Steven Botterill, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Alison Cornish, Robert M. Durling, Manuele Gragnolati, Giuliana Carugati, Susan Noakes, Zygmunt Baranski, Christopher Kleinhenz, Ronald L. Martinez, Ronald Herzman, Amilcare Iannucci, Albert Russell Ascoli, Michelangelo Picone, Jessica Levenstein, David Wallace, Piero Boitani, Peter Hawkins, and Rachel Jacoff.

Set against the background of the Black Death of 1348, Boccaccio's undisputed masterpiece recaptures both the tragedies and comedies of medieval life and is surely one of the greatest achievements in the history of literature. Revised reissue.

By systematically analyzing Dante's attitudes toward the poets who appear throughout his texts, Teodolinda Barolini examines his beliefs about the limits and purposes of textuality and, most crucially, the relationship of textuality to truth. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

By systematically analyzing Dante's attitudes toward the poets who appear throughout his texts, Teodolinda Barolini examines his beliefs about the limits and purposes of textuality and, most crucially, the relationship of textuality to truth.

Originally published in 1984.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

A critical addition to Dante studies that illuminates the poet’s disruptive impact within Italian culture and foregrounds Barolini’s marked contribution to the field. In Dante’s Multitudes, the newest addition to the renowned William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante and Medieval Italian Literature, Teodolinda Barolini gathers sixteen of her essays exploring the revolutionary character of Dante’s work. Embracing the Vita Nuova, De vulgari eloquentia, Convivio, Epistles, Monarchia, and Rime, and of course the Divine Comedy, these essays together feature the many facets of the poet’s enduring legacy. Dante’s Multitudes showcases the poet’s embrace of multiplicity, difference, and disruption in five parts, each with its own general focus. It begins with an introductory essay on method and the use of history in order to set the stage for the expert analyses that follow. Barolini treats various topics in Dante studies, including sexualized and racialized others in the Comedy, Dante’s unorthodox conception of limbo, his celebration of metaphysical difference within the paradoxical unity of the Paradiso, and his use of Aristotle to think disruptively about wealth and society, on the one hand, and about love and compulsion, on the other. The volume closes with a final meditation on method and “critical philology,” highlighting the ways in which philology has been used uncritically to bolster fallacious hermeneutical narratives about one of the West’s most celebrated and influential poets. Barolini once again opens avenues for further research in this compelling collection of essays. This volume will be of interest to scholars in Dante studies, Italian studies, and medieval and Renaissance literature more broadly.

A critical addition to Dante studies that illuminates the poet’s disruptive impact within Italian culture and foregrounds Barolini’s marked contribution to the field. In Dante’s Multitudes, the newest addition to the renowned William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante and Medieval Italian Literature, Teodolinda Barolini gathers sixteen of her essays exploring the revolutionary character of Dante’s work. Embracing the Vita Nuova, De vulgari eloquentia, Convivio, Epistles, Monarchia, and Rime, and of course the Divine Comedy, these essays together feature the many facets of the poet’s enduring legacy. Dante’s Multitudes showcases the poet’s embrace of multiplicity, difference, and disruption in five parts, each with its own general focus. It begins with an introductory essay on method and the use of history in order to set the stage for the expert analyses that follow. Barolini treats various topics in Dante studies, including sexualized and racialized others in the Comedy, Dante’s unorthodox conception of limbo, his celebration of metaphysical difference within the paradoxical unity of the Paradiso, and his use of Aristotle to think disruptively about wealth and society, on the one hand, and about love and compulsion, on the other. The volume closes with a final meditation on method and “critical philology,” highlighting the ways in which philology has been used uncritically to bolster fallacious hermeneutical narratives about one of the West’s most celebrated and influential poets. Barolini once again opens avenues for further research in this compelling collection of essays. This volume will be of interest to scholars in Dante studies, Italian studies, and medieval and Renaissance literature more broadly.