Poetics of Redemption

Dante's Divine Comedy

Andreas Kablitz

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9783110634181
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Italian Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The essays on Dante collected in this volume interpret his Commedia as the attempt of a renewal of the Christian work of salvation by means of literature. In the view of his author, the sacro poema responds to a historical moment of extreme danger, in which nothing less than the redemption of mankind is at stake. The degradation of the medieval Roman Empire and the rise of an early capitalism in his birth town Florence, entailing a pernicious moral depravation for Dante, are to him nothing else but a variety of symptoms of the backfall of the world into its state prior to its salvation by the incarnation of Christ.

Dante presents his journey into the other world as an endeavor to escape these risks. Mobilizing the traditional procedures of literary discourse for this purpose, he aims at writing a text that overcomes the deficiencies of the traditional Book of Revelation that, on its own terms, no longer seems capable of fulfilling his traditional tasks. The immense revaluation of poetry implied in Dante's Commedia, thus, contemporarily involves the claim of a substantial weakness of the institutional religious discourse.

List of Original Publications

The following list contains the bibliographic information of the original publications, published again in English translation in this volume. We thank the rights holders for granting the translation and reproduction rights for the texts in question.

Lecturae Dantis – Reflections of the Ulysses Canto:

“Il canto di Ulisse (Inferno XXVI) agli occhi dei commentatori contemporanei e delle indagini moderne”, in: Letteratura italiana antica 2 (2001), S. 61 – 91.

Art in the Afterlife or God as Sculptor:

“Jenseitige Kunst oder Gott als Bildhauer. Die Reliefs in Dantes Purgatorio (Purg. X – XII) “, in: A. Kablitz/G. Neumann (eds.), Mimesis und Simulation (= Rombach Wissenschaften, Reihe Litterae, vol. 52), Freiburg/Br.: Rombach, 1998, pp. 309 – 356.

Videre – Invidere:

“Videre – Invidere. Die Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung und die Ontologie des Purgatoriums (Dante, Divina Commedia, Purgatorio XIII)”, in: Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch 74 (1999), Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 137 – 188.

Temporality and Eternity in Dante’s Purgatorio:

“Zeitlichkeit und Ewigkeit in Dantes ‘Purgatorio’: Das Fürstental am Fuß des Läuterungsbergs (Dante, Divina Commedia, Pg VII – VIII)”, in: Dieter Ingenschay (ed.), Werk und Diskurs. Karlheinz Stierle zum 60. Geburtstag, Munich: Fink, 1999, pp. 32 – 72.

The End of the Sacrum Imperium:

“Das Ende des Sacrum Imperium. Verwandlungen der Repräsentation von Geschichte zwischen Dante und Petrarca”, in: Walter Haug (ed.), Mittelalter und frühe Neuzeit. Übergänge, Umbrüche und Neuansätze, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1999, pp. 499 – 549.

Poetics of Knowledge in the Paradiso:

“Poesie der Wissenschaft: Dantes Kosmologie”, in: B. Rommel et al (eds.), Domänen der Literaturwissenschaft, Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 1998, pp. 233 – 252.

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