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In Interpreting Dante: Essays on the Traditions of Dante Commentary, Paola Nasti and Claudia Rossignoli gather essays by prominent scholars of the Dante commentary tradition to discuss the significance of this tradition for the study of the Comedy, its broad impact on the history of ideas, and its contribution to the development of literary criticism.
Interest in the Dante commentary tradition has grown considerably in recent years, but projects on this subject tend to focus on philological reconstructions. The contributors shift attention to the interpretation of texts, authors, and reading communities by examining how Dante commentators developed interpretative paradigms that contributed to the advancement of literary criticism and the creation of the Western literary canon. Dante commentaries illustrate the evolution of notions of “literariness” and literature, genre and style, intertextuality and influence, literary histories, traditions and canons, authorship and readerships, paratexts and textual materiality. The volume includes methodological essays exploring theoretical aspects of the tradition, such as the creation of a taxonomy for categorizing typologies of commentaries; the relationship between commentators and their contemporary readers; the interplay between written and visual commentaries; and the impact of patronage on the forms of exegesis. Other essays, including two in Italian, examine case studies of individual commentaries, giving an account of the modus operandi of Dante’s exegetes by relating their approaches to the cultural, ideological, and political agendas of the community of readers and scholars to which the commentators belonged.
“Paola Nasti and Claudia Rossignoli’s erudite volume . . . has the potential to initiate not only further research on the commentaries but also to inspire Dane scholarship more broadly. Composed with great care, executed with methodological rigor, and mindful of philological concerns, as well as cultural and historical contexts, the essays follow a maxim that has been adapted for the Devers series from Aldus Manutius, but is all too often forgotten in academic life today: festina lente.” —Medievalia et Humanistica
“As Dante scholarship and medieval textual studies evolve, this volume will surely be a guide for the next decade and more . . . this book should be found in every college library and will prove indispensable to a wide circle of scholars.” —Sixteenth Century Journal
“. . . this is a welcome initiative, as wide-ranging as it is brimming with expertise and as amply provided bibliographically as it is beautifully illustrated.” —Modern Language Review
“With the high level of expertise of its contributors and the high level of scholarship in their essays, it will be no surprise when the volume becomes essential reading for the study of Dante commentary . . . . This volume offers an enticing foray into the complex study of Dante commentary with its well-curated and well-chosen collection of essays.” —Comitatus
“The meticulously researched and footnoted essays offer an entry point into the study not of Dante’s Commedia, but of the most important commentaries that have accompanied the poem.” —Renaissance Quarterly
"This volume draws on a diversity of critical perspectives to reevaluate the Dante commentary tradition not as a monolithic entity but as one embodying, in the rich plurality of its exegetical practices, the perennial challenges and rewards of 'interpreting Dante.' . . . the book leaves us with a sense of the commentary tradition as an animate entity, which continues to evolve and grow into the body of Dante scholarship as we know it today, If 'a text is also the history of its reception,' then Interpreting Dante confirms that the Comedy continues to enjoy a prolific afterlife." —Speculum
"Interpreting Dante presents a genuinely top-notch collection of essays written by some of the most innovative and influential scholars in the field, on both sides of the Atlantic. A joy to read, from beginning to end, this volume will make a lasting impact on the study of Dante's reception." —Michael Papio, University of Massachusetts Amherst
"Interpreting Dante is an extremely valuable and timely contribution to scholarship on the Dante commentary tradition. Such a collection, devoted both to methodological problems and to single cases, is a novelty. Additionally, as the first comprehensive volume on the topic in English, it will serve as an invaluable resource for students and scholars." —Anna Pegoretti, University of Warwick
"Just as the University of Notre Dame has become the central point in American Dante studies, its press is now recognized as the most vital current source of publications dealing with the Florentine poet. These fifteen essays, composed by Italian, American, and British scholars, gather to form an essential companion to such collections of the early commentaries as that found in the Dartmouth Dante Project." —Robert Hollander, Princeton University (emeritus)
Claudia Rossignoli is lecturer in Italian at the University of St. Andrews.
Paola Nasti is associate professor in Italian Studies at the University of Reading.
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
Introduction
1. Reading, Writing, and Speech in the Fourteenth- and Fifteenth- Century Commentaries on Dante’s Comedy by Steven Botterill
2. Allegory as Avoidance in Dante’s Early Commentators:“bella menzogna” to “roza corteccia” by Robert Wilson
3. Uses of Learning in the Dante Commentary of Iacomo della Lana by Spencer Pearce
4. How to Read the Early Commentaries by Saverio Bellomo
5. A Friar Critic: Guido da Pisa and the Carmelite Heritage by Paola Nasti
6. Guido da Pisa’s “Chantilly” Dante: A Complex Exegetical System by Lucia Battaglia Ricci
7. Presenze del Liber de vita et moribus philosophorum nell’Ottimo Commento alla Commedia by Massimiliano Corrado
8. Pietro Alighieri and the Lexicon of the Comedy by Massimiliano Chiamenti
9. Modes of Reading in Boccaccio’s Esposizioni sopra la Comedia by Simon Gilson
10. Tipologie compositive e hapax nel Commento alla “Commedia” di Francesco da Buti (con una nota sulla cultura grammaticale e lessicografica dell’autore) by Claudia Tardelli
11.A “Commentary for the Court”: Guiniforte Barzizza by Corrado Calenda
12. A Text in Movement: Trifon Gabriele’s Annotationi nel Dante, 1527–1565 by Lino Pertile
13. Castelvetro on Dante: Tradition, Innovation, and Mockery in the Sposizione by Claudia Rossignoli
14. A Pictorial Interpretation of Dante’s Commedia: Federigo Zuccari’s Dante historiato by Andrea Mazzucchi
Contents
Notes on Nineteenth-Century Dante Commentaries and Critical Editions by John Lindon
List of Contributors
Index of Names and Subjects
Index of Passages from Dante’s