Dante’s Testaments: Essays in Scriptural Imagination

by Peter S. Hawkins

This book explores the wide range of Dante's reading and the extent to which he transformed what he read, whether in the biblical canon, in the ancient Latin poets, in such Christian authorities as Augustine or Benedict, or in the "book of the world"—the globe traversed by pilgrims and navigators. The author argues that the exceptional independence and strength of Dante's forceful stance vis-à-vis other authors, amply on display in both the Commedia and so-called minor works, is informed by a deep knowledge of the Christian Scriptures. The Bible in question is not only the canonical text and its authoritative commentaries but also the Bible as experienced in sermon and liturgy, hymn and song, fresco and illumination, or even in the aphorisms of everyday speech. The Commedia took shape against the panorama of this divine narrative. In chapters devoted to Virgil and Ovid, the author explores strategies of allusion and citation, showing how Dante reinterprets these authors in the light of biblical revelation, correcting their vision and reorienting their understanding of history or human love. Dante finds his authority for making these interpretive moves in a "scriptural self" that is constructed over the course of the Commedia . That biblical selfhood enables him to choose among various classical and Christian traditions, to manipulate arguments and time lines, and to forge imaginary links between the ancient world and his own "modern uso ." He rewrites Scripture by reactivating it, by writing it again. To the inspired parchments of the Old and New Testaments he boldly adds his own "testamental" postscript.

401 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1999

About the author

Professor Hawkins’ work has long centered on Dante, most recently in Dante’s Testaments: Essays on Scriptural Imagination (winner of a 2001 AAR Book Prize), The Poets’ Dante: Twentieth-Century Reflections (2001), co-edited with Rachel Jacoff, and Dante: A Brief History (2006). The poet features as well in his expansion of his 2007 Beecher Lectures on Preaching in Undiscovered Country: Imagining the World to Come (2009). His research in the history of biblical reception has led to three co-edited volumes to which he also contributed essays, Scrolls of Love: Ruth and the Song of Songs (2006), Medieval Readings of Romans (2007), and From the Margin I: Women of the Hebrew Bible and their Afterlives (2009). Together with Paula Carlson he has edited the Augsburg Fortress four-volume series, Listening for God: Contemporary Literature and the Life of Faith. He has also written on twentieth-century fiction (The Language of Grace), utopia (Getting Nowhere), and the language of ineffability (Naming the Unnamable from Dante to Beckett). Professor Hawkins’ essays have dealt with such topics as memory and memorials, televangelism, scriptural interpretation, and preaching. He writes regularly for The Christian Century’s ”Living by the Word” column and has work forthcoming in Religion and Literature, Modern Language Notes and The Yale Review. From 2000 to 2008 he directed the Luce Program in Scripture and Literary Arts at Boston University. While at BU he won the Metcalf Prize for Excellence in Teaching. He has served on the editorial boards of PMLA and Christianity and Literature and on the selection committee both of the Luce Fellows in Theology and of the Dante Society of America.

Reviews

[Ben De Bono · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic Dante resource and one I'll be returning to regularly. While a scholarly work, the writing is accessible enough that even a casual reader of Dante could gain much benefit from the material

[Peter Crofts · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's not for the one time reader of the Commedia. But, if Dante has through the years become one of your literary companions then it is almost necessary that you give this rich, thoughtful tome a look.

I wonder if there is any work of European literature that suffers more from familiarity. This familiarity misleads many readers, I believe, and they do not grasp what an audacious, arrogant, outrageous work of art the Divine Comedy really is. Some have even called in a fifth gospel. A fifth gospel, written by a layman in 13th century Florence. A gospel that is revealed to him by him his muse, who intercedes from heaven, such that he can be lead to the light by divine's grace. Got that? You have to sit down and try and get your head around what he was trying to do, and that takes some effort.

Hawkins looks at the major biblical and Roman texts upon which Dante built his tale of the divine to underline just how literary it really is. It was written at a time when many Europeans would try and make sense of their lives through biblical stories. The Bible contained all of human existence as articulated by the divine, and so literally anything and everything about the world we find ourselves in is embedded in the text. That in itself should underline just how different faith was in the Middle Age. From a modern, secular vantage point it strikes one as beyond ridiculous. But, nevertheless as a work of art, for me the Divine Comedy is one of the summits of European literature.

[Lia N.]

It might get going.