Prominent Dante scholars from the United States, Italy, and the United Kingdom contribute original essays to the first critical companion in English to Dante's "other works." Rather than speak of Dante's "minor works," according to a tradition of Dante scholarship going back at least to the eighteenth century, this volume puts forward the designation "other works" both in light of their enhanced status and as part of a general effort to reaffirm their value as autonomous works. Indeed, had Dante never written the Commedia, he would still be considered the most important writer of the late Middle Ages for the originality and inventiveness of the other works he wrote besides his monumental poem, including the Rime, the Fiore, the Detto d'amore, the Vita nova, the Epistles, the Convivio, the De vulgari eloquentia, the Monarchia, the Egloge, and the Questio de aqua et terra. Each contributor to this volume addresses one of the "other works" by presenting the principal interpretative trends and questions relating to the text, and by focusing on aspects of particular interest. Two essays on the relationship between the "other works" and the issues of philosophy and theology are included. Dante's "Other Works" will interest Dantisti, medievalists, and literary scholars at every stage of their career. Contributors: Manuele Gragnolati, Christopher Kleinhenz, Zygmunt G. Baranski, Claire E. Honess, Simon Gilson, Mirko Tavoni, Paola Nasti, Theodore J. Cachey, Jr., David G. Lummus, Luca Bianchi, and Vittorio Montemaggi.

Prominent Dante scholars from the United States, Italy, and the United Kingdom contribute original essays to the first critical companion in English to Dante’s “other works.” Rather than speak of Dante’s “minor works,” according to a tradition of Dante scholarship going back at least to the eighteenth century, this volume puts forward the designation “other works” both in light of their enhanced status and as part of a general effort to reaffirm their value as autonomous works. Indeed, had Dante never written the Commedia, he would still be considered the most important writer of the late Middle Ages for the originality and inventiveness of the other works he wrote besides his monumental poem, including the Rime, the Fiore, the Detto d’amore, the Vita nova, the Epistles, the Convivio, the De vulgari eloquentia, the Monarchia, the Egloge, and the Questio de aqua et terra. Each contributor to this volume addresses one of the “other works” by presenting the principal interpretative trends and questions relating to the text, and by focusing on aspects of particular interest. Two essays on the relationship between the “other works” and the issues of philosophy and theology are included. Dante’s “Other Works” will interest Dantisti, medievalists, and literary scholars at every stage of their career. Contributors: Manuele Gragnolati, Christopher Kleinhenz, Zygmunt G. Barański, Claire E. Honess, Simon Gilson, Mirko Tavoni, Paola Nasti, Theodore J. Cachey, Jr., David G. Lummus, Luca Bianchi, and Vittorio Montemaggi.

In the early spring of 1358 Francis Petrarch was invited by his friend Giovanni Mandelli, a leading military and political figure of Visconti Milan, to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Pleased at the invitation, Petrarch nevertheless declined to undertake the journey. Fear of the sea, of shipwreck, and of "slow death and nausea worse than death" held him back. While Petrarch would not make the literal journey he offered Mandelli a pilgrimage guide instead of his companionship: "nevertheless, I shall be with you in spirit, and since you have requested it, I will accompany you with this writing, which will be for you like a brief itinerary."

Composed over three days between March and April of 1358, the Itinerarium ad sepulchrum domini nostri Yesu Christi takes the characteristic Petrarchan form of an epistle to a friend. Delivered to his correspondent in the form of an elegant booklet, the work presents a literary self-portrait that was meant to stand as "the more stable effigy of my soul and intellect" as well as "a description of places." Although the Holy Land is the ostensible destination of the pilgrimage, more than half of this charming guidebook is devoted to Petrarch's leisurely and loving descriptions of Italy's physical and cultural landscape. Upon reaching the Holy Land, Petrarch transforms himself into one of the greatest ten-cities-in-four-days Baedekers of all time, as Mandelli and the reader race through sacred landmarks and sites and end up, not at the sepulchrum domini nostri, but at the tomb of Alexander.

Theodore Cachey has prepared the first English-language translation of the Itinerarium. Based on an authoritative 14th-century manuscript in the BibliotecaStatale of Cremona, which is, according to the explicit declaration of the scribe, a copy of Petrarch's 1358 autograph, the translation is accompanied by the manuscript reproduced in facsimile and by a transcription of the Latin text. Cachey's extensive introduction and notes discuss Petrarch's text within the multiple contexts of travel in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and contemporary political and cultural issues, including Petrarch's relation to emergent forms of "cartographic writing" and Renaissance "self-fashioning." Petrarch's little book reveals him to be a man of his time, but one whose voice speaks clearly to us across centuries. The Itinerarium is a jewel rediscovered for the modern reader.

Since the beginnings of Italian vernacular literature, the nature of the relationship between Francesco Petrarch and his predecessor Dante Alighieri has remained an open and endlessly fascinating question of both literary and cultural history. In this volume nine leading scholars of Italian medieval literature and culture address this question involving the two foundational figures of Italian literature. The authors examine Petrarch's contentious and dismissive attitude toward the literary authority of his illustrious predecessor; the dramatic shift in theological and philosophical context that occurs from Dante to Petrarch; and their respective contributions as initiators of modern literary traditions in the vernacular. Petrarch's substantive ideological dissent from Dante clearly emerges, a dissent that casts in high relief the poets' radically divergent views of the relation between the human and the divine and of humans' capacity to bridge that gap. Contributors: Albert Russell Ascoli, Zygmunt G. Baranski, Teodolinda Barolini, Theodore J. Cachey, Jr., Ronald L. Martinez, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Christian Moevs, Justin Steinberg, and Sara Sturm-Maddox.

Since the beginnings of Italian vernacular literature, the nature of the relationship between Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) and his predecessor Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) has remained an open and endlessly fascinating question of both literary and cultural history. In this volume nine leading scholars of Italian medieval literature and culture address this question involving the two foundational figures of Italian literature.Through their collective reexamination of the question of who and what came between Petrarch and Dante in ideological, historiographical, and rhetorical terms, the authors explore the emergence of an anti-Dantean polemic in Petrarch's work. That stance has largely escaped scrutiny, thanks to a critical tradition that tends to minimize any suggestion of rivalry or incompatibility between them. The authors examine Petrarch's contentious and dismissive attitude toward the literary authority of his illustrious predecessor; the dramatic shift in theological and philosophical context that occurs from Dante to Petrarch; and their respective contributions as initiators of modern literary traditions in the vernacular. Petrarch's substantive ideological dissent from Dante clearly emerges, a dissent that casts in high relief the poets' radically divergent views of the relation between the human and the divine and of humans' capacity to bridge that gap. "An absolute A-list of contributors here considers all that falls, all forms of regard and disregard, between two of the great poets and cultural legislators of the western world. Timely, original, and highly recommended." --David Wallace, Judith Rodin Professor, University of Pennsylvania "A collection of sparkling essays exploring Petrarch's efforts to conceal his enormous debt to Dante while seeking to replace Dante's authority with his own. I found it hard to stop reading." --Ronald Witt, Duke University ""Petrarch and Dante" is a magnificent volume of uniformly superb essays. Instead of surveying Petrarch's variety or his influence upon later culture, the authors have ingeniously focused on shifting relationships with the poet's most formidable Italian predecessor, Dante; in so doing, they have produced scholarship that teases out the issues with great subtlety and nuance." --William J. Kennedy, Cornell University

The second volume in the original William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante Studies, The Fiore in Context: Dante, France, Tuscany is the record of a milestone in the study of the Fiore, and perhaps in Dante studies: the international conference on the Fiore held at St. John's College, Cambridge, in September 1994. The conference, attended by most of the world's leading experts on the Fiore, examined many aspects of the poem, including textual questions, its cultural context, and its relations with the Roman de la Rose and the Comedy. Above all it constituted, in the judgment of the participants themselves, the most important discussion of the poem's attribution to Dante since Contini's pronouncement of the question in 1965. The published proceedings reproduce both the questionnaire that framed the conference, in which each participant weighs all the principal arguments for and against attributing the Fiore to Dante, as well as the lively discussion that followed each paper.

The second volume in the original William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante Studies, The Fiore in Context: Dante, France, Tuscany is the record of a milestone in the study of the Fiore, and perhaps in Dante studies: the international conference on the Fiore held at St. John's College, Cambridge, in September 1994. The conference, attended by most of the world's leading experts on the Fiore, examined many aspects of the poem, including textual questions, its cultural context, and its relations with the Roman de la Rose and the Comedy. Above all it constituted, in the judgment of the participants themselves, the most important discussion of the poem's attribution to Dante since Contini's pronouncement of the question in 1965. The published proceedings reproduce both the questionnaire that framed the conference, in which each participant weighs all the principal arguments for and against attributing the Fiore to Dante, as well as the lively discussion that followed each paper.

Written by ten distinguished Dante scholars, the essays in Dante Now represent the most significant areas of contemporary Dante studies. This collection, originating from a 1993 University of Notre Dame conference, includes some of the particular on three intensely cultivated areas of Dante studies: poetics, "minor works,"and reception. The stimulating ferment on the problem of Dante's poetics is well represented in the first three essays. These range in approach from the stylistic-ideological treatment of Zygmunt G. Baranski's essay to the inter-and intra-textual concerns presented by Christopher Kleinhenz, to the compelling hermeneutical and epistemological reflections on Dante's poetics given by Giuseppe Mazzotta. Dante's so-called "minor works" have increasingly become a focus of attention in contemporary Dante studies, and the textual problems represented by the Vita nuova are sweepingly reconsidered by Dino S. Cervigni and Edward Vasta. Ronald L. Martinez dedicates a substantial essay to Dante's poem of exile "Tre donne," and Albert Russell Ascoli addresses the issue of the relationship between Dante's Commedia and the minor works, especially the Monarchia. The final section of essays examines the phenomenon of the original and continuing vitality of Dante's work as a profoundly of influential, enduring, and enlivening literary classic. R.A. Shoaf addresses the literary influence of Dante in medieval England; Kevin Brownlee investigates Dante's most important medieval French connection in the works of Christine de Pizan; and Nancy Vickers illuminates Dante's translatability into avante garde films and videos. Finally, Brian Richardson considers the Commedia's Fortunes during the Renaissance in terms of its remarkable editorial and publishing history.