Dante

The Critical Heritage

Michael Caesar, Michall Caesar

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415604482
• eBook ISBN: 9781134552467
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

First published in 1995. The Critical Heritage series collects together a large body of criticism on major figures in literature. Each volume presents the contemporary responses to a particular writer, enabling the student to follow the formation of critical attitudes to the writer's work and its place within a literary tradition. This collection of critical writings about Dante, many of them published here in English for the first time, tries to offer a balanced survey of the poet's reception in both time and space. Its scope therefore differs from that of its main predecessors in both English and Italian.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• General Editor's Preface
• Contents
• Preface
• A Note on Translations
• Acknowledgements
• Standard References and Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Dante Alighieri, letter to Cangrande della Scala 1314–17 or 1319–20
• 2 Giovanni del Virgilio, epistle to Dante 1319 or first half 1320
• 3 Giovanni del Virgilio, epitaph intended for Dante's tomb 1321
• 4 Cecco d'Ascoli, against Dante's‘poetic' treatment of science Not later than 1327
• 5 Fra Guido Vernani, censure of Dante's Monarchia Between 1327 and 1334
• 6 Jacopo Alighieri, notes to the Inferno Between 1322 and 1333, prob. before 1324
• 7 Graziolo de' Bambaglioli, Proem to his commentary on the Inferno 1324
• 8 Jacopo della Lana, commentary on Purgatory XXXII, 109–41 Between 1323 and 1328, or 1327 and 1333
• 9 Guido da Pisa, Prologue to his commentary on the Inferno 1327–8, or 1328–33, or 1343–50
• 10 L'Ottimo (Andrea Lancia), commentary on InfernoXIII, 103–8 1333–40
• 11 Pietro Alighieri, Dante's seven kinds of meaning 1337–40
• 12 The six early commentaries on the opening lines of InfernoIII, the inscription above the gate of hell 1322–40
• 13 Giovanni Villani, Chronicle of Florence: the first biography of Dante Before 1348
• 14 Francesco Petrarca, letter to Boccaccio 1359
• 15 Giovanni Boccaccio, life of Dante After June 1351
• 16 Giovanni Boccaccio, commentary on InfernoX, 52–72 1373–4
• 17 Geoffrey Chaucer, Ugolino and gentillesse in The Canterbury Tales ?1374–?1396
• 18 Benvenuto da Imola, Guido da Montefeltro (InfernoXXVII, 25–30) 1375–80
• 19 Francesco da Buti, the allegorical interpretation of Beatrice Completed 1395
• 20 Filippo Villani, on the life and customs of the distinguished comic poet Dante 1395–7
• 21 Coluccio Salutati, appeal for a decent text of the Comedy 1399
• 22 Leonardo Bruni, censure and exaltation of Dante 1401–after 1402
• 23 Francisco Imperial, the seven virtues c. 1400
• 24 Christine de Pizan, the path of long study 1403
• 25 Alain Chartier, the Donation of Constantine After 1428
• 26 Leonardo Bruni, Life of Dante, and comparison with Petrarch 1436
• 27 St Antoninus, the Florentine poet Dante and his errors 1324
• 28 Marsilio Ficino, Preface to his translation of the Monarchia 1467-8
• 29 Cristoforo Landino, commentary to the Divine Comedy 1481
• 30 Hartmann Schedel, Chronicle of the World 1493
• 31 Pietro Bembo, the models for literary Italian are Petrarch and Boccaccio, not Dante 1525
• 32 Niccolo Machiavelli (attr.), Dante's hatred of Florence set against the‘Florentinity' of his language Between 1514 and 1525
• 33 Anon., Dante and the jester c. 540
• 34 Carlo Lenzoni, Dante defended against Bembo and his followers 1548-56
• 35 Giovan Battista Gelli, lectures on Dante 1553-63
• 36 Giovanni Delia Casa, Dante's bad example 1558 [1576]
• 37 Anton Francesco Grazzini ( ‘II Lasca'), sonnet against the pedants 1559?
• 38 Pier Paolo Vergerio, description of the Monarchia 1559
• 39 Etienne Pasquier, Dante's slur on the royal house of France After 1560
• 40 John Foxe,‘Dantes an Italian writer against the Pope' 1570
• 41 Ridolfo Castravilla, Dante's imperfections 1572
• 42 Jacopo Mazzoni, the genre to which the Divine Comedy should be ascribed 1572
• 43 Bellisario Bulgarini, the unsuitability in poetry of Dante's treatment of matters of art and science 1576 [1583]
• 44 Vincenzo Borghini, reading Dante's allegory; comparison with Petrarch Before 1580
• 45 Galileo Galilei, the shape of Dante's hell 1587-8
• 46 Tommaso Campanella, Dante teaches in a popular fashion, and is not confined by rules 1596
• 47 Alessandro Guarini, an analysis of Dante's stylistic qualities, illustrated by the Francesca episode 1610
• 48 Traiano Boccalini, Dante manhandled by the pedants 1612 [1656]
• 49 Paolo Beni, against the Crusca's exaltation of Dante's language 1614
• 50 Sir John Harington, an answer of Dante's 1615
• 51 Nicola Villani/Federigo Ubaldini, vehicle and tenor in a Dantean simile 1631/before 1657
• 52 Gabriello Chiabrera, the need to go beyond the metrical models left by Dante and Petrarch in love poetry Before 1638
• 53 John Milton, the love poetry of Dante and Petrarch 1642
• 54 Emanuele Tesauro, Dante's plebeian language 1654
• 55 Ren É Rapin, Dante too tepid, too obscure, too immodest, too profound 1674
• 56 John Dryden, Dante's restoration of a‘silver age' 1684
• 57 Lorenzo Magalotti, Dante as universal genius; a short‘reading-list' 1690
• 58 Giovan Mario Crescimbeni, analysis of a sonnet by Dante 1700
• 59 Lodovico Antonio Muratori, Dante's lyric poetry worthy of attention 1706
• 60 Gian Vincenzo Gravina, Dante as poet-theologian 1708
• 61 Giambattista Vico, Dante's‘barbarousness'; three reasons for reading him 1725,1728–9
• 62 Pietro Calepio, Volpi's edition of the Comedy 1730
• 63 Charles De Brosses, cannot understand the Italian preference for Dante over Ariosto 1740
• 64 Mark Akenside (attr.), Dante's place in‘The Ballance of Poets' 1746
• 65 Antonio Conti, exaltation of Dante's poem for the wealth and seriousness of its meaning Before 1749
• 66 Giuseppe Baretti, an‘Idea of Dante's Beauties' 1753
• 67 Fran Çois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, Dante's hotchpotch 1756
• 68 Saverio Bettinelli, Virgil judges Dante to be overrated 1757
• 69 Francesco Algarotti, Virgil and Dante compared in their use of science 1759
• 70 Johann Jakob Bodmer (attr.), against anachronism in the criticism of Dante; the poet's strengths 1763
• 71 Giuseppe Baretti, resoluteness and patience needed to read the Divine Comedy nowadays 1764
• 72 Martin Sherlock, Sherlock instructs the Italians; Sherlock pronounces on Dante 1780
• 73 Thomas Warton, Dante's compounding of the classical and the Gothic; comparisons with Milton, Shakespeare, and Virgil 1781
• 74 Gian Jacopo Dionisi, the allegory of the Divine Comedy; the Divine Comedy seen in relation to Dante's other works 1786
• 75 Friedrich Schelling, Dante in relation to philosophy 1803 [1867]
• 76 August Wilhelm Schlegel, for the reinstatement of Dante 1802-3
• 77 Francesco Torti, Dante's modernity, his unique genius 1806
• 78 Mme de Stael, Corinne's celebration of Dante 1807
• 79 William Hazlitt, Dante as‘self-will personified' [1815] 1818
• 80 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, lecture on Dante 1818
• 81 Ugo Foscolo, two articles on Dante 1818
• 82 Thomas Love Peacock, Dante becoming fashionable 1818
• 83 Percy Bysshe Shelley, Defence of Poetry 1821
• 84 Karl Witte, Dante's trilogy: Vita Nuova, Convivio, Divina Commedia 1823-31
• 85 Thomas Babington Macaulay, Dante and Milton 1825
• 86 Ugo Foscolo, Dante's religious mission; Dante the sole protagonist of his poem 1825
• 87 Carlo Troya, Dante's allegorical greyhound 1826
• 88 G. W.F. Hegel, the Divine Comedy as the artistic epic proper of the Christian Catholic Middle Ages Late 1820s
• 89 Giovita Scalvini, Dante and real life 1818?-1830s
• 90 Gabriele Rossetti, Dante's secret language 1832
• 91 Antoine Frederic Ozanam, Dante and Catholic philosophy 1839
• 92 Cesare Balbo, Dante's life and works 1839
• 93 Thomas Carlyle, Dante as poet-hero 1840
• 94 Vincenzo Gioberti, Dante the Catholic poet 1841, 1843
• 95 Leigh Hunt, Dante's‘nightmare' imagination 1844
• 96 Giuseppe Mazzini, Dante in history; Beatrice; the‘national aim' 1844
• 97 Margaret Fuller, translating Dante and teaching him 1845
• 98 Etienne-Jean Delecluze, Dante's poems, Platonic love, and the experimental method 1848
• 99 Julian Klaczko, against anachronistic readings of Dante 1854
• 100 C.A. Sainte-Beuve, the central role of Beatrice 1854
• 101 Francesco De Sanctis, Pier delle Vigne 1855
• 102 John Ruskin, Dante and medieval landscape 1856
• 103 Matthew Arnold, Dante and Beatrice 1863
• 104 La Festa di Dante; Il Giornale delCentenario; H.C. Barlow, The sixth-centenary celebrations of Dante's birth 1864–5
• 105 Francesco De Sanctis, the achievement of the Divine Comedy 1870
• Bibliography of works cited and other essential reading
• Subject index
• Name index
• Passages from the Divine Comedy of which special mention is made.