Description
This newly commissioned volume presents a focused overview of Dante's masterpiece, the Commedia, offering readers of today wide-ranging insights into the poem and its core features. Leading scholars discuss matters of structure, narrative, language and style, characterization, doctrine, and politics, in chapters that make their own contributions to Dante criticism by raising problems and questions that call for renewed attention, while investigating contextual concerns as well as the current state of criticism about the poem. The Commedia is also placed in a variety of cultural and historical contexts through accounts of the poem's transmission and reception that explore both its contemporary influence and its continuing legacy today. With its accessible approach, its unstinting focus on the poem and its attention to matters that have not always received adequate critical assessment, this volume will be of value to all students and scholars of Dante's great poem.
Table of Contents
Introduction Zygmunt G. Barański and Simon Gilson; 1. Narrative structure Lino Pertile; 2. Dante Alighieri, Dante-poet, Dante-character Giuseppe Ledda; 3. Characterization Laurence E. Hooper; 4. Moral structure George Corbett; 5. Title, genre, metaliterary aspects Theodore J. Cachey, Jr; 6. Language and style Mirko Tavoni; 7. Allegories of the corpus James C. Kriesel; 8. Classical culture Simone Marchesi; 9. Vernacular literature and culture Tristan Kay; 10. Religious culture Paola Nasti; 11. Doctrine Simon Gilson; 12. Politics Claire E. Honess; 13. Genesis, dating, and Dante's 'other works' Zygmunt G. Barański; 14. Transmission history Prue Shaw; 15. Early reception until 1481 Anna Pegoretti; 16. Later reception from 1481 to the present Fabio Camilletti.
