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The Cambridge Companion to Dante
This book provides an introduction to Dante that is at once accessible and challenging. Fifteen specially-commissioned essays by distinguished scholars provide background information and up-to-date critical perspectives on Dante's life and work, focusing on areas of central importance. Three essays introduce the three canticles of the Divine Comedy, and others explore the literary, intellectual and historical background to Dante's writings, his other works and his reception in the commentary tradition and in literature in English. The book also includes a chronological table and suggestions for further reading.
290 pages, Paperback
First published May 28, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 16, 2016
This has been a godsend for me in my reading of Dante’s Commedia.
If The Complete Danteworlds: A Reader's Guide to the Divine Comedy was a perfect hand-to-hand companion that helped me descend the circles of Hell, ascend the cone of Purgatory and not lose my sight in the presence of an ever increasing blinding and enlightening Light, this other book helped me to gain perspective onto the whole quest.
Like most other Cambridge Companions it is a collection of scholarly essays written by various academics. Most of them are from the US. The editor is Rachel Jacoff, from Wellesley College.
It contains seventeen essays, and as is to be expected, the interest or quality of these varies somewhat. The average is not average, but is skewed towards greatness.
The thematic and panoramic approach was a brilliant complement to the microscopic approach of the hoards of footnotes with which any edition of Commedia is loaded.
The seventeen essays could be grouped as follows:
Introductory (1):
The first is dedicated to Dante’s life. To know about what happened to him is important, since the Commedia is the spiritual quest of Dante’s fictional alter-ego. It helps tremendously to know something about his position in Florence, his Beatrice, his family, the Guelfs and Ghibellins, his confrontation with the Pope, his hope in the Emperor, and his exile.. His poem is the exile from his life and vice-versa.
On Dante the Poet (2-4):
In these we learn about the novel literary traditions before Dante changed them with his Still Nuovo. Vernacular literature was in its early days. To me it was particularly interesting to read about the Provence and Sicily as foci of literature in the vernacular, and the influence of Muslim lyrics. It makes me think of how literature in the vernacular started developing in the Iberian peninsula precisely in the areas which had been occupied by Islam, since Latin in its various corrupted versions had never stopped to be used.
One brilliant chapter tackles the concept of Autore and Auctoritas, and how Dante proposes a Narrator that stands in the middle between the impersonal and former Auctoritas from classical times and the modern Author.
The Core to Commedia (5-7):
There are three brilliant Introductions to the three books that compose the Commedia. I found myself going back to these in my Dante read, since they give the overall structure of the Inferno/Purgatorio/Paradiso. And the inner structure of this long poem is one of its most elaborate aspects.
Thematic and Literary (8-13):
The chapter on Religion discusses closely the debt to the Bible (the Vulgate which had been newly edited in the University of Paris with great success), and to other church fathers such as Saint Augustine. Of particular relevance is the discussion of the wall friezes and sculpted pavements, as a reenactment of Liturgy, in the Purgatory.
Dante’s attitude to the Classical authors (Virgil, Statius, Lucan and Ovid), are also elaborate. Dante treated them as proper history and used them, mostly Virgil, as a guide to the inner logic of his own work. Ovid’s role was more episodic and references to his idiosyncratic and so very pagan characters are encountered in the least expected of the books, in Paradiso.
One needs some help in trying to conjure back a past cultural context, and the chapter on Autobiography and Allegory helped me in this. We are reminded of the complex literary and theological context of the Middle Ages in which Allegorical writing had been so richly elaborated, as well as of the copious Confessional literary tradition that had preceded Dante.
The chapter on Theology presents how Dante had to keep a balancing act when tackling the conflicting concepts on human will and divine grace. He found the solution in Divine love as the key to equilibrium. Dante also raised the other conundrum – what happens to the bodies of dead people until the Final Judgment when bodies are supposed to be united with their souls? Dante’s inventive solution was the “shades” nature of the personalities he encounters in his spiritual pilgrimage. Only he, who remains human throughout, and the Virgin, has a body.
Contextual (14-15):
I always welcome contextual discussions and there are two brilliant chapters on this. Dante and Florence clarifies how the violent rivalry between the two famous clans, the Ghibellines and the Guelfs was already an old story in Dante’s time. The social antagonism he had to endure was that between the Black and White Guelfs, and most enervating of all for him, the papacy of Boniface VIII. In the chapter on Empire we learn that even if Dante belonged to the White Guelfs his thinking really had been Guibellian, for he argued (and not just in Commedia) for the equal power of the Emperor to that of the Pope. Dante firmly believed that the worldly domain of the first and the spiritual of the latter were complementary but separate. He was adamantly opposed to the Pope’s intermingling in earthly affairs.
The political issues certainly were key. After all we can conceive that Dante would not have left us this tripartite jewel had he not felt so very disgruntled with the political and power structure that drove him out from his beloved, and despised, Florence.
Legacy (16-17):
The final two chapters trace the posterior life of Commedia. We learn how very successful it was from the very beginning and how it was treated almost immediately as Scripture, and how very soon not only readers but writers were drawn to it. Chaucer, Milton, Byron, Pound, Eliot, were a few of the many.
The Commedia also drew many illustrators and artists but this is not treated in this compendium of essays.
This is then a strong recommendation if you want to reach Heaven.
November 20, 2015
This is the second book I used along reading Commedia and contains essays from different authors about different parts of the Commedia itself. While "The Complete Danteworlds" by Guy P. Raffa was more about following cantos and what they present and mean, this one goes even more further with study approach and it's ideal for anyone who wants to know more or to study Dante's work.
Will use it more in my future readings of Commedia.
Will use it more in my future readings of Commedia.
October 10, 2022
As ever, the Cambridge Companion series can be counted on to reliably deliver the goods in this 1993 edition on the topic of Dante Alighieri. Anyone who makes it though this book feels a level of accomplishment equivalent to having completed a graduate level course on the famous exile from Florence.
Dante is daunting. Dante lived at the dawn of the 14th century and the whole world he knew seems drastically foreign to our own. No English translation can ever convey the subtleties of the actual words he set down, but I won't be making the effort to learn Italian and read it in the original. His Ptolemaic cosmology is diametrically at odds with our own scientific understanding of the planets and the galaxies and our modern and secular understanding of cosmological history and evolution. In short, I find it a real challenge to dissociate myself sufficiently from my own world and experiences and do the seriously heavy lifting required to try to inhabit Dante's world, which so often seems to have little practical connection to our own.
Of course all history impinges on our present, and there is always something to be learned from studying the past. I now have a better feel for Dante's moment in time, although I acknowledge that my grip on it remains tenuous.
This book may not cover ever aspect of Dante's life and works ― commentators have been laboring to do just that for centuries, and this book is only 270 pages long ― but it certainly covers a good deal of ground. If you're interested in Dante, I expect this book is worth reading, and is probably better than many others you might stumble upon. Having myself now read two translations of the Divine Comedy and the Vita Nuova and now this Cambridge Companion, I am satisfied that I won't aim to be numbered among the dantisti of the world. That's okay. Too many other things I still want to do.
Dante is daunting. Dante lived at the dawn of the 14th century and the whole world he knew seems drastically foreign to our own. No English translation can ever convey the subtleties of the actual words he set down, but I won't be making the effort to learn Italian and read it in the original. His Ptolemaic cosmology is diametrically at odds with our own scientific understanding of the planets and the galaxies and our modern and secular understanding of cosmological history and evolution. In short, I find it a real challenge to dissociate myself sufficiently from my own world and experiences and do the seriously heavy lifting required to try to inhabit Dante's world, which so often seems to have little practical connection to our own.
Of course all history impinges on our present, and there is always something to be learned from studying the past. I now have a better feel for Dante's moment in time, although I acknowledge that my grip on it remains tenuous.
This book may not cover ever aspect of Dante's life and works ― commentators have been laboring to do just that for centuries, and this book is only 270 pages long ― but it certainly covers a good deal of ground. If you're interested in Dante, I expect this book is worth reading, and is probably better than many others you might stumble upon. Having myself now read two translations of the Divine Comedy and the Vita Nuova and now this Cambridge Companion, I am satisfied that I won't aim to be numbered among the dantisti of the world. That's okay. Too many other things I still want to do.
April 10, 2018
"I am envious for my dear France, that she has never produced a rival to Dante; that this Colossus has not had his equal among us. No, there is no reputation which can be compared to his."-- Napoleon
November 28, 2020
For students (if anyone), not readers
The first sentence I saw on opening this was ‘..it is tempting to list all the moments when the poem engages us in its process of making meaning’. Oh, is it? ‘Academic’ isn’t a dirty word to me if it means ‘in-depth and intelligent’; but the trouble with academics is that, however they got where they are, it wasn’t by being good writers. They are used to a captive audience, and to putting their thoughts into whatever words come easiest to hand – which usually means a thicket of jargon and clichés. The writers here are, I’m afraid, typical of the species.
The material they half-conceal by their clunky language may (for all I know) be useful to students; for the general reader, and certainly anyone who yawns or rolls their eyes at sentences like the above, this is not for them.
The first sentence I saw on opening this was ‘..it is tempting to list all the moments when the poem engages us in its process of making meaning’. Oh, is it? ‘Academic’ isn’t a dirty word to me if it means ‘in-depth and intelligent’; but the trouble with academics is that, however they got where they are, it wasn’t by being good writers. They are used to a captive audience, and to putting their thoughts into whatever words come easiest to hand – which usually means a thicket of jargon and clichés. The writers here are, I’m afraid, typical of the species.
The material they half-conceal by their clunky language may (for all I know) be useful to students; for the general reader, and certainly anyone who yawns or rolls their eyes at sentences like the above, this is not for them.
May 18, 2017
Amazing! Explores Dante in a clear manner anyone could understand.
October 31, 2021
Very scholarly articles on various aspects of Dante's writings.
January 3, 2022
除了所有文章都很informative以外，2-4但丁的其他作品 14但丁和佛罗伦萨政治 非常有启发，Ferrante的技术分析即使对不读原文的读者也很有趣，另外Freccero对寓言性的解读令人振奋，我觉得有望彻底解决“我不是天主教徒”问题。
September 23, 2015
Mi è capitato finalmente di leggerlo con la scusa di prepararmi ad una prova d'inglese...Devo dire che come introduzione al Sommo è tra le più esaustive; ha sicuramente il pregio di essere scritto dai migliori dantisti anglosassoni e questo ci da la garanzia che a venirne fuori non sarà il solito "santino" (la Barolini, che insegna a Nuova York e che firma il primo saggio in un libro recente ha addirittura "de-teologizzato" Dante...!); a patto di accettare che ogni autore abbia la sua idea di Dante e che ogni saggio si concentri solo su un singolo aspetto dell'opera dantesca, è una lettura che può, e per me lo è stato, risultare gradevole...
March 2, 2014
This is a very good companion guide to Dante. While there are some chapters that can get quite dry, if you are a dantist you will enjoy this book. There was quite a bit here that not only was new information that enhanced my understanding of the comedia, but there is also quite a bit that I need to go back and study in more detail.
July 5, 2013
Helpful insights for reading Dante. Most, but not all essays are excellent.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews