This bibliography is intended to include the Dante translations published in this country in 1979 and all Dante studies and reviews published in 1979 that are in any sense American. The latter criterion is construed to include foreign reviews of American publications pertaining to Dante. The listing of reviews in general is selective, particularly in the case of studies bearing only peripherally on Dante.

As a rule, items cited from Dissertation Abstracts International are registered without further abstracting, since the titles tend to be self-explanatory. Items not recorded in the bibliographies for previous years are entered as addenda to the present list.

NOTE. Generally, the citation of an individual study from a collected volume representing several authors is given in brief, while the main entry of the volume is listed with full bibliographical data in its alphabetical order. Issues of this journal under the former title of Annual Report of the Dante Society continue to be cited in the short form of Report, with volume number.

"Dante's Purgatory, Canto II." Translated by Mark Musa. In New Letters, XLVI, No. 2 (Winter 1979-80), 87-92. [1979]

Translated in iambic pentameter, observing the original tercet division and prefaced by a summary of the canto.

Dante's "Rime." Translated by Patrick S. Diehl. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 267 p. 22.5 cm. (The Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation.) [1979]

Includes all of Dante's scattered rime except those that were welded into the Vita Nuova, with Italian text and English translation in the original rhyme-scheme on facing pages and in the order they occupy in the Foster Boyde edition, Dante's Lyric Poetry, with translation and commentary (Oxford University Press, 1967), which is the same as that established by Michele Barbi. In his introduction Professor Diehl defines and characterizes the collection of lyrics, offers general information about medieval versification and the metric forms used by Dante, discusses the translating of Dante and his own approach to the task, and comments upon the text of the poems and the notes. Contents: Introduction; The Rime; Notes; Selected Bibliography; and Index to First Lines in Italian. For a review, see below, under Reviews.

Monarchy and Three Political Letters. With an Introduction by Donald Nicholl and a Note on the Chronology of Dante's Political Works by Colin Hardie. Westport, Connecticut: Hyperion Press. [1979]

Reprint of the 1954 edition (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson; New York: The Noonday Press). (See 73rd Report, 54-55; also, for another reprint edition in 1972, see Dante Studies, XCI, 164.)

Arthos, John. Dante, Michelangelo and Milton. Wesport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. [1979]

Reprint of the 1963 edition (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul); another reprint appeared in 1968 (New York: Hillary House). Contains a section on Dante in the light of Longinus' view of the sublime. (See 82nd Report, 47-48, and Dante Studies, LXXXVII, 178.)

Avery, William T. "Purgatorio IX, 1-3: Aurora's balco d'orïente." In Dante Studies, XCVII, 151-155. [1979]

Suggests that the image, "balco d'orïente" (not expressly found in Aeneid IV, 584-585, usually cited by commentators, nor even in the prior Homeric rendering), may have been inspired to a nodding Dante by the "e speculis" (high walls of a city, or look-out, watch-tower) in the following lines 586-591 of Virgil's text, with the result of a blending of the two passages by Dante here in Purgatorio IX.

Baranski, Zygmunt G. A Note on Montale's Presumed Dantism in 'Meriggiare pallido e assorto.'" in Italica, LVI, 394-402. [1979]

Rejects the interpretation by G. Almansi and B. Mercy of Eugenio Montale's poem, "Meriggiare," in its relationship with Dante as a misunderstanding of both poets and, instead, connects the poem with Dante by its use of rhyme and phonic techniques, particularly for harsh and negative effects, very likely inspired by the Inferno and the rime petrose. It is also found significant that the possible Dantean borrowings all come from one episode, that of the suicides in Inferno XIII, with its negativism and evasion of life's problems. For Montale, Dante serves as a poetic catalyst in a much more complex manner than implied by the Almansi-Merry interpretation.

Barney, Stephen A. Allegories of History, Allegories of Love. Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books. 323 p. 23 cm. [1979]

Contains a discussion of Dante in the "Conclusion," pp. 310-315, as well as references to Dante, passim. Indexed.

Barolini, Teodolinda. "Bertran de Born and Sordello: The Poetry of Politics in Dante's Comedy." In PMLA, XCIV, 395-405. [1979]

Noting the rather inflated importance of Dante's Sordello in Purgatorio VI, as compared with his mediocre historical achievement, the author examines this figure together with that of Bertran de Born (in Inferno XXVIII) as the two lyrical poets in the Commedia who were known especially for the political thrust of their poetry. She finds that Dante uses these political poets as emblematic of the good and bad uses to which the works of poets can be put to serve the state, and thus, so employed by Dante, Sordello and Bertran transcend their historical identities.

Barolini, Teodolinda. "Dante's Poets: A Study in Poetic Revisionism." In Dissertation Abstracts International, XXXIX, 4930A [1979]

Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1978. 456 p.

Bartolozzi, Vanni. "Pensiero e struttura nelle rime di Dante. " In Dissertation Abstracts International, XXXIX, 4968A-4969A. [1979]

Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1978. 417 p.

Beall, Chandler B. "Dante and His Reader. " In Forum Italicum, XIII, 299-343. [1979]

Finds that Dante's "addresses to the reader" go well beyond the usual rhetorical category in form and are therefore much more numerous than hitherto surmised, and elaborates upon the distinction and mutual relationship between Dante-protagonist and Dante-author and between the latter and the reader in the course of the Commedia. The analysis, illustrated through a close examination of numerous forms of direct and indirect "addresses to the reader" in the poem, distinguishes five "loose categories which seem to be useful or natural groupings": (I) A Virgilian Topos of "emotion renewed"; (2) The Poet at Work, marking the author's progress in composing his narration; (3) Admonitions to the Reader aimed at his instruction, betterment, and salvation; (4) Dante's Self-confidence whereby the poet marks for the reader the various changes in his poetic technique; and (5) The Ineffable punctuating the difficulty of expressing in human speech the experiences of the otherworld.

Berk, Philip R. "Shadows on the Mount of Purgatory." In Dante Studies, XCVII, 47-63. [1979]

Examines the pilgrim's cast shadows as a motif in the Purgatorio, finding that there are five such instances which correspond in number to Christs wounds. Dante's cast shadow is a reminder that a living man is compounded by both flesh and spirit, his shadow being seen also to stand for both the sanction and the limit of the Church's authority. More important still, it offers an analogue to the Incarnation as the central mystery of the Christian faith, which is reinforced by the persistent tendency of each shadow episode to be associated with the wounds received by Christ on the Cross, thus establishing an equivalence of shadow and wound, further supporting the imitatio Dei principle embodied in the purgatorial ascent. In fact, the five instances of cast shadows appear with diminishing progression in keeping with the purgatorial process of spiritual regeneration as preparation for the ascent to Paradise.

Bidney, Martin. "Dante Retailored for the Nineteenth Century: His Place in Ruskin's Thought." In Studies in Medievalism, I, No. I (Spring), 33-44. [1979]

Notes various ways in which Dante was read by English Victorians and how this helped shape Ruskin's critical ideas in such works as Modern Painters and Stones of Venice. The poet of the Divine Comedy, seen as the exemplar of "penetrative imagination," became the spiritual center of Ruskin's mythopoeic and philosophic energies, enhancing his deepened aesthetic thinking of Dante's masterly use of the grotesque in art and providing an antidote to the pathetic fallacy, with the result that Ruskin's faculties, on the Dantean example, came into balance in his threefold poetic ideal--"imaginative, moral, and intellectual." Dante is also crucial in Ruskin's handling of the poetic interpretation of Nature. And finally, Ruskin envisaged the medieval Dante as the prophet of the new social gospel against what he perceived as the evils of capitalism for solving the nineteenth-century economic dilemmas.

Bolognese, Giuseppe. "Dante and Guittone Revisited." In Romanic Review, LXX, 172-184. [1979]

Briefly reviews past critical opinion on Guittone d'Arezzo and examines Dante's view of his Aretine predecessor as expressed indirectly in the episodes of Bonagiunta and Guinizelli (Purgatorio XXIV and XXVI), in Inferno XXXII, and in De vulgari eloquentia I, xiii, 1. These various references are construed by the author as rejections of the Guittonian style and tradition but draped in an air of objectivity by attributing the attacks to others in order to enhance Dante's own image. This, despite the evidence that Dante could and did learn from Guittone in the areas of rhetorical and metrical devices, use of etymological figures, and political poetry.

Bommarito, Domenico. "Boezio e Dante nella tradizione protrettica." In Dissertation Abstracts International, XL, 3336A. [1979]

Doctoral dissertation, Northwestern University, 1979. 265 p. (On elements of the tradition stemming from Aristotle's lost Portrepticus [as reconstructed by Ingemar Düring] reflected in Boethius and Dante, specifically in their ideas on music-poetry, their use of allegory, and their conception of God.)

Cassell, Anthony, K., "The Tomb, the Tower and the Pit: Dante's Satan." In Italica, LVI, 331-351. [1979]

Marshalls new insights along with previous exegetical findings in support of his interpretation of Dante's image of Dis and the Pit of Hell, marking Satan's own Jerusalem and tomb as a parody of the image of Christ's Sepulchre as it is figured in multifarious ways--in biblical accounts, pilgrim descriptions, patristic exegesis, iconographical illustration, in liturgical dramas patterned on the decensus ad inferos and visitatio sepulcri. All elements cogently co-ordinate with and reinforce each other to enhance the parallels and antitheses. The author suggestively concludes: "Satan thus not only parodies Christ iconographically, historically, and theologically but, entombed within his tower-gates and immersed in his pozzo, he is an inversion of the Redeemer and the Holy Spirit in the major sacraments of Christianity, the Eucharist and Baptism."

Cherchi, Paolo. Andrea Cappellano, i trovatori e altri temi romanzi, Roma: Bulzoni Editore. xi, 224 p. 21 cm. (Biblioteca di cultura, 128.) [1979]

Contains a chapter, "Tre note dantesche" (pp. 194-209)--I. Il disdegno di Guido: una proposta; II. Due echi delle Quaestiones naturales nel Paradiso; and III. Pentangulo--Nodo di Salomone--Pentaculo; reprinted respectively, from L'Alighieri, XI (1970), 73-78; idem, XV (1974), 54-55; and Lingua nostra, XXXVIII (1977) 65-67. The first note attributes "cui" in Inferno X, 63, to Beatrice (Dante's destination) as subject of "ebbe," with "Guido as object, yielding the sense: to one/her who held your Guido in disdain," and finds the harshness of Dante's words here reflecting, contextually the harsh exchange with Farinata. The second suggests two passages in Seneca's Quaestiones naturales--Praef., 16, and I, 9-10--as more likely sources for Paradiso I, 127-129, and XV, 13-18. The third cites the English "pentangel" along with Solomon's knot in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (vv. 619-639) in attestation of "pentangulo" in Dante's Convivio IV, viii, 14, and of the "nodo Salomone" in the tenzone with Forese but finds only one attestation of the combination "pentagonus Salomonis" in further evidence of a hypothesized medieval tradition--in the De Legibus of William of Auvergne. While common in later centuries since the expression may escape earlier attestation because of the clandestine nature of magic terms, in this case that of the pentagonate five-pointed star which can be traced/retraced endlessly by starting at any point on the continuous line forming it.

Cioffari, Vincenzo. "Problems Concerning the Earliest Dante Commentaries." In Forum Italicum, XIII, 496-505. [1979]

Reviews several general and some specific problems of chronology and provenance or derivation pertaining to such commentaries as that of Jacopo di Dante, Graziolo de' Bambaglioli, Guido da Pisa, the Anonimo, Jacopo della Lana, the Ottimo, and especially (I) No. 5-4-34 in the Capitular y Colombina of Seville, a manuscript of indeterminate authorship (though attributed to a Fr. Guidonem dal Carmino da Firence), dated "Ann. 1393 et 1394," which is made up largely of passages taken from other commentators like Graziolo de' Bambaglioli and the Ottimo for example; and (2) the Pluteo 40.2 of the Laurenziana in Florence, completed by Andrea Giusti da Volterra in 1370 and containing many passages from Guido da Pisa. Professor Cioffari is working on an edition of the Inferno of the Seville Ms. 5-4-34 as a reference point for further study. From all this, it is obvious that much work of determination, clarification, and more accurate editing remains to be done on the earliest commentaries.

Cook, William R., and Ronald B. Herzman. "Inferno XXXIII: The Past and the Present in Dante's Imagery of Betrayal." In Italica, LVI, 377-383. [1979]

Show how in treating the various acts of betrayal by Ruggieri and Ugolino, along with the latter's cannibalism in eating his own sons in Inferno XXXIII, Dante allusively drew upon many sources, biblical Jeremiah 19:8-9), classical (Ovid, Seneca, Horace), and contemporary-historical (e.g., reports of cannibalism in the famine of 1315-1317), for powerfully synthesizing in this episode the depiction of absolute evil, which in turn poignantly anticipates the archetypal figure of evil at the lowest point of Hell, Satan, in his cannibal attitude of gnawing upon three notorious examples of betrayal, Brutus, Cassius, and Judas.

Dawson, Carl. Victorian Noon: English Literature in 1850. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press. xv, 268 p. illus. 24 cm. [1979]

Contains a chapter on "In Memoriam: The Uses of Dante and Wordsworth" (pp. 36-51), in which links are drawn between Tennyson and Dante through his dear friend Arthur Hallam, a Dante enthusiast, to honor whose death Tennyson wrote In Memoriam. In this poem are noted further links with Dante as well as Wordsworth through such elements associated with all three poets as (I) the journey metaphor, a reflection in their works of "an epos of the soul," and (2) a "unified poetry," integrating the self and the times.

Della Terza, Dante. Forma e memoria: saggi e ricerche sulla tradizione letteraria da Dante a Vico. Roma: Bulzoni. 331 p. 21 cm. (L'analisi letteraria. Proposte e letture critiche, 20.) [1979]

Contains four essays of Dantean interest: "Il canto di Brunetto Latini," pp. 13-39; "I canti del disordinato amore. Osservazioni sulla struttura e lo stile del Purgatorio," pp. 40-70; "Istanze tradizionali e prospettive di aggiornamento nella critica dantesca," pp. 71-92; and Tasso e Dante," pp.148-176. The first essay (see below, under Addenda) is reprinted from Orbis mediaevalis: mélanges de langue et de littérature médiévales offerts à Reto Raduolf Bezzola à l'occasion de son quatre-vingtième anniversaire, edited by Georges Güntert, Marc-Rene Jung, and Kurt Ringger (Berne: Francke Verlag, 1978), pp. 69-88; the second, from Belfagor, XXI (1966), 156-179 (see Dante Studies, LXXXV, 100-101; the third, from Lettere italiane, XXVII (1975), 245-262 (see Dante Studies, XCV, 182); and the fourth, from Belfagor, XXV (1970), 395-418, but originally published in English as "Tasso's Reading of Dante," in Dante Studies, LXXXVII (1969) 103-125 (see Dante Studies, LXXXVIII, 182, and XC, 193). The original places of publication are duly indicated in the author's "Avvertenza."

Ferrante, Joan M. "Florence and Rome, The Two Cities of Man in The Divine Comedy." In The Early Renaissance [edited by Aldo S. Bernardo]; Acta [Proceedings of SUNY Regional Conferences in Medieval Studies], Vol. V, 1978 (The Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton), pp. 1-19. [1979]

Shows that two cities serve as models of good and evil for human life on earth informing the imagery with respect to Paradise and Hell in Dante's Comedy. Rome, as symbol of ideal empire, and Florence, as symbol of its Corrupt opposite, respectively are the poet's recurrent and contrasting images for the two eternal realms, in keeping with his assessment of the historical scene.

Freccero, John. "Dante's Medusa: Allegory and Autobiography." In By Things Seen: Reference and Recognition in Medieval Thought, edited by David L. Jeffrey (Ottowa: University of Ottowa Press), pp. 33-46. [1979]

This essay represents an earlier [!] version of his "Medusa: The Letter and the Spirit," published in Yearbook of Italian Studies, II (1972), 1-18 (see Dante Studies, XCIII, 249-250).

Giustiniani, Vito R. "Noterelle grammatiche e volgari." In Italica, LVI 369-376. [1979]

Examines several of Dante's notions about language, some of which are remarkably modern (e.g., his understanding of linguistic change over time and space), except that, in keeping with the lack of historical relativism typical of his age, Dante was led to project the bi-lingualism (vernacular and Latin) of his own day backwards to the beginnings of literary culture. This theory envisioned an artificial idiom (i.e., invented by art), Latin, alongside a natural pre-existent vernacular, pre-Romance, and implied a severing of the evolutionary bond between Latin and the derivative Romance languages.

Gombrowicz, Witold. "About Dante." (Translated [from the Polish] by David Brodsky) In Literary Review, XXII, 285-300. [1979]

An apparently hostile, but very likely only parodic, essay (from a larger diary-like work) by the late Polish writer (1904-1969), attacking Dante for his having poorly [sic] written the Divina Commedia, with suggestions for "improving" the Inferno, for example. (According to the translator's preface, the poet G. Ungaretti, mistaking its tone, called the piece "pure idiocy.") Evidently, there is much parody here of the literary scene and other phenomena of contemporary life. Gombrowicz seeks to clear away the accumulated ritualization that stands between him and Dante as a living person, whom he finds only in the all-obtrusive presence of pain.

Guzzardo, John. "The Noble Castle and the Eighth Gate." In MLN, XCIV, 137-145 [1979]

Without challenging the standard interpretation of the Noble Castle of Limbo (Inf. IV), the author suggests that the number seven built into its structure points to the very condition of the virtuous pagans denied salvation, that is, a lacking or insufficiency. For with baptism was associated the number eight and the figure of a gate (porta) to salvation. The number built into the Noble Castle's seven walls with seven gates falls short of eight (baptism) and its seven gates are insufficient to the real gate to the faith. Even the surrounding fiumicello whose waters might also have symbolized baptism reflects a lack--it is, in the poet's words, like terra dura.

Herzman, Ronald B. (Joint author). "Inferno XXXIII: The Past and the Present in Dante's Imagery of Betrayal." See Cook, William R....

Hollander, Robert. "The Rod of Tiresias: Dante's Metamorphosis of Ovid (Inferno XX, 44)." In The Early Renaissance [edited by Aldo S. Bernardo]; Acta [Proceedings of SUNY Regional Conferences in Medieval Studies], Vol. V, 1978 (The Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton), pp. 21-33. [1979]

Excerpts from a longer study in progress a discussion of Dante's deliberate use of the term verga for Tiresias' magic wand in Inferno XX, 44, relating it to Mercury's caduceus and Circe's wand, as well as to uses of virga and variant terms (e.g., baculum) in other classical sources, especially in Ovid's Metamorphoses and Virgil's Aeneid. Tiresias' verga here contrasts with the poet's use of the heavenly messenger's verghetta in Inferno IX, 89, and the "pastoral" verga associated with the poets Virgil and Statius in Purgatorio XXVII, 80. Dante's peculiar use of the term in a brilliant conflation of elements and allusions in Inferno XX is seen to represent a deliberate and skillful misreading of the classical texts in order to soften Ovid's and Virgil's explicit belief in augury and to incorporate these classical sources skillfully in the Christian context of the Comedy.

Iannucci, Amilcare A. "Beatrice in Limbo: A Metaphoric Harrowing of Hell." In Dante Studies, XCVII, 23-45. [1979]

Contends that the significance of Beatrice goes beyond her transformation in the Vita Nuova from the womanly image of courtly tradition to an analogue of Christ in her appearances in the Divine Comedy, particularly her descent into Hell to commission Virgil as guide for the Wayfarer which Christologically reflects the descensus ad inferos of Scriptural reference (Gospel of Nicodemus) and of common medieval imagery for the Redemption. However, in an original departure from the traditional version of the descent, the poet downplays the parallel with the harrowing of hell with its Christian meaning of relief and release and fulfillment, to emphasize the Limban image of the nobile castello with its suggestion of confinement and melancholy as the lot of the virtuous pagans. With this episode in Limbo Dante nevertheless syncretically maintains the inner meaning of the harrowing motif and similarly celebrates the victory of good over the forces of evil. While there are other echoes of the descent in the poem, Beatrice's descent into hell is seen to complete the analogy with Christ in His first coming, established in the Vita Nuova, while her appearance to the Wayfarer in Purgatorio XXX-XXXI corresponds to His second coming. "Beatrice's descent into Limbo reenacts the redemption--Dante's and thus mankind's."

Kay, Richard. "Dante's Razor and Gratian's D.XV." In Dante Studies, XCVII, 65-95 [1979]

Offers a solution to Dante's riddle of the cinquecento diece e cinque in Purgatorio XXXIII by construing the numbers in their conventional Roman form and as a standard reference in Dante's time to a distinctio in the first part of Gratian's canonistic collection, Decretum, viz., Distinctio quindecim, or D.XV. This then would be the "razor" or instrument for drawing distinctions, as for example, in the Monarchia where Dante derives the emperors authority directly from God, not indirectly through the pope, by excluding cutting off, from the arena the intellectually blind Decreta lists in favor of the true auctoritates, Holy Scripture, the councils, and the fathers of the Church. Gratian's D.XV gave Dante the basis for arguing against the extreme claims for papal authority made by the Decretalists and the popes themselves. Professor Kay goes on to show how Dante's "razor" (the hierarchy of divinely inspired scriptures referred to by Gratians D.XV) can slay the thievish and dissolute whore and the giant who abuses her in Purgatorio, XXXIII, 37-51. Through the Glossa ordinaria the whore is identified as the harlot Heresy and through Scriptural references the giant as an image of the Antichrist yet also an analogue of God in his capacity as flagellator who chastens his people, but acting as the "vicar of Christ" and "vicar of God." He is therefore to be identified with the pope but exceeding his jurisdiction to the point of hobnobbing with Heresy, in this case, a papacy that operated, according to Dante, on the claim of a heretical plenitudo potestatis. By using his razor to exclude the authority of the decretals, Dante saw that Gratian's D.XV could slay such a giant in love with such a whore.

Lowell, Robert. "Epics (The Conclusion of 'New England and Further')." In Robert Lowell: A Tribute (Profili e studi di letteratura inglese e americana, I), edited by Rolando Anzilotti (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi Editori), pp. 11-19. [1979]

Contains some interesting remarks by the recent contemporary poet on Dante's Commedia in the context of a brief discussion of several leading epics of Western literature.

Mastrobuono, Antonio C. Essays on Dante's Philosophy of History. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore. 195 p.25 cm. (Biblioteca dell' "Archivum Romanicum. Serie I. Storia-Letteratura-Paleografia, Vol. 136.) [1979]

Traces "some essential aspects of Dante's development of ideas on history from the minor works, Convivio and Monarchy, to the major work of the Comedy." In the latter, considered according to the allegory of theologians, the author focuses on the Prologue Scene and the Ante-Purgatory as providing essential keys to understanding Dante's "Theology of History" and interprets these two segments of the poem in the light of the drama of redemption as a unifying principle. The basis of the study is analogy as both the principle of medieval philosophy and the canon of medieval ar followed by a Christian poet like Dante. Contents: I. From a Digression to a Treatise; II. Analogical Contemporaneity in the Prologue Scene; III. From Vespers to Dawn; also a Preface and an Index.

Mazzotta, Giuseppe. Dante, Poet of the Desert: History and Allegory in the Divine Comedy. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. XV, 343 p.22.5 cm. [1979]

Probing Dante's complex sense of universal history and the way it in heres at the heart of the Divine Comedy, the author focuses on three interrelated matters: the structure and language of history, the relationship between history and literary language, and the question of allegory and the ambiguities or better the historicity, of interpretation. He finds that the story of Exodus informs the poems structure, that Dante's sense of history inspired in him a poetics of exile, and that the poet was thus led to apply the metaphor of the desert in his concept of history and in the composition of his poem. Contents: 1. Opus Restaurationis; 2. Rhetoric and History; 3. Communitas and Its Typological Structure; 4. Vergil and Augustine; 5. Literary History; 6. Allegory: Poetics of the Desert: 7. The Language of Faith: Messengers and Idols. The work comes equipped with a Preface, Acknowledgements, Notes on Dante's Texts, Abbreviations, and Introduction: also, an Appendix and Index. Acknowledgement is duly given of previously printed versions of chapters 2 and 5 respectively, as "Poetics of History: Inferno XXVI," published in Diacritics, V, no. 2 (Summer 1975) 37-44 (see Dante Studies, XCVI, 248), and "Dante's Literary Typology," published in Modern Language Notes, LXXXVII (1972), 1-19 (see Dante Studies, XCI, 173-174).

Montgomery, Robert L. The Reader's Eye: Studies in Didactic Literary Theory from Dante to Tasso. Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of California Press. vii, 235 p. 21 cm. [1979]

Contains a long chapter on "Dante's Esthetic of Grace and the Reader's Imagination" (pp. 50-92) and further reference to Dante passim. In the context of the book's general thesis dealing with "a kind of didactic theory which seeks to explain or defend the value of fiction primarily in terms of the ends it gains in the mind of the reader and ultimately in his moral behavior, the author examines the work of Dante, Fracastoro, Daniele Barbaro, Sidney, and Tasso, emphasizing that historically the ends of didactic criticism "are seldom made explicit or demonstrated with the thoroughness shown by Dante and his successors." The author focuses on texts involving a developed psychology of audience response and highlights the influence of fiction and fictive images on the passions, imagination, intellect and will. In the chapter on Dante, passages in the Vita Nuova and Purgatorio are examined as best testifying to the poet's experience of the affective and reformative powers of art. Dante's poetic, being dependent on doctrines of grace and inspiration, is seen to vary therefore from the more secular thinking of later critics.

O'Brien, William J. "'The Bread of Angels' in Paradiso II: A Liturgical Note." In Dante Studies, XCVII, 97-106. [1979]

Contends that the reference to the "pan de li angeli" in the opening of what C. S. Singleton has called the poem's most remarkable address to the reader was prompted by the Easter communion. The liturgical origin of the expression is confirmed by the pericope in Purgatorio XXXI, 76-81 and 118-129, where the penitent pilgrim stands before Beatrice undergoing a traumatic but life-transforming experience through the forgiving love imaged in her eyes. Few are those of the intellectual elite or the simple faithful who come through the Easter liturgy of communion prepared "to eat of the bread of the angels." This liturgical reading of the address to the reader suggested as complementing the Singleton interpretation, preserves the unity of poet and pilgrim, the integrity of sapientia and charity, and the intimate relation of art and life.

Paasonen, Aino Anna-Maria. "Dante's 'Firm Foot' and Guittone d'Arezzo." In Romance Philology, XXXIII (November), 312-317. [1979]

Building on John Freccero's study, "Dante's Firm Foot and the Journey without a Guide" (Harvard Theological Review, LII [1959], 245-281; see 78th Report, 29-30), the author offers a letter by Guittone as a likely source for the foot imagery in Inferno I, 28-30, and for the spiritual orientation of the pilgrim's journey initiated in the opening scene of the poem. The same Guittonian source seems to obtain in Inferno XXXIV, 82-84 and 100-102, and in Purgatorio XXX, 130-132.

Paolucci, Anne, and Henry Paolucci. "Dante and the 'Quest for Eloquence' in India's Vernacular Languages." In Review of National Literatures, X, 70-144. [1979]

Present an account of India's version of the questione della lingua as considered historically and theoretically by various key figures and their reasoning with respect to choice of a literary or national language vis-a-vis Sanskrit and find several parallels with the similar situation in Italy as treated by Dante in the De vulgari eloquentia. The study is cast in four subdivisions: 1. The Sanskrit Revival: From Comparative Linguistics to Classical Nostalgia; 2. Bengali's Development on the Latin-Italian Model; 3. Ghandi and the Linguistic Surveys of Dante, Grierson, and S. K. Chatterji; and 4. Conclusion: Literary India Today.

Paolucci, Henry (Joint author). "Dante and the 'Quest for Eloquence' in India's Vernacular Languages." See Paolucci, Anne....

Paustian, P. Robert. "Dante's Conception of the Genetic Relationship of European Languages." In Neophilologus, LXIII, 173-178. [1979]

Contends that, while not all Dante's claims of originality in the De vulgari eloquentia (esp. chaps. VI-X) are valid, his account of the genetic relationship of many European languages and his ideas about the inevitability of linguistic change through temporal and geographic separation are new and quite modern indeed, in fact elaborated and improved upon only much later.

Pellegrini, Anthony L. "American Dante Bibliography for 1978." In Dante Studies, XCVII, 167-192. [1979]

With brief analyses.

Perella, Nicolas J. Midday in Italian Literature: Variations on an Archetypal Theme. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, X, 336 p. 22 cm. [1979]

The opening chapter, "From Dante to Pindemonte," contains a brief discussion of Dante's use of the midday topos in its medieval Christological significance, before it became desacralized in its later literary treatment. There is further Dantean reference, passim, in the course of the book. Indexed.

Picchio Simonelli, Maria. "L'Inquisizione e Dante: alcune osservazioni." In Dante Studies, XCVII, 129-149. [1979]

Recalls that the worst period of the Inquisition (established in 1184 under Pope Lucius III) overlaps Dante's lifetime, yet literary scholars have largely passed over it in silence, ignoring its possible negative effects on writers they study. The author reviews the terror of the Inquisitorial processes, the political implications (e.g., any Ghibelline could be indicted for heresy), and the risks faced by even faithful Christian poets like Dante who addressed matters of religion or the Church or used allegory. In the hypersensitive contemporary ambience Dante himself had to exercise extreme care to escape the indictment of heresy. Although poetry was held in low esteem, particularly poetry in the vernacular, Dante himself, for example, dared not claim literally to represent the afterlife, with the intention to employ the allegory of theologians, and so we find him explaining in Epistola XIII that his poem is "poetic and fictive." We then find Piero di Dante in the prologue of his commentary to the Commedia defending his father in similar vein, in order to spare him the wrath of the Inquisition post mortem. Cecco d'Ascoli was less fortunate when in open polemic against Dante he launched at the end of Book IV of L'Acerba into a passage declaring "qui non si canta al modo del poeta / che finge, immaginando, cose vane." The author concludes that Cecco was perhaps technically right about Dante's using the allegory of poets. The evidence, in short, seems to Support the view that Dante used the allegory of poets in the Commedia.

Picone, Michelangelo. "Vita Nuova" e tradizione romanza. Padova: Liviana Editrice. vii, 203 p. 24 cm. ("Ydioma Tripharium," Collana di studi e saggi di filologia romanza diretta da Alberto Limentani, No. 5.) [1979]

Examines the medieval search for the ultimate Meaning (God) of love as the central theme of Christian culture, love as the necessary way by which the mind can reach the realm of eternal truth and satisfy its thirst for the infinite The author treats of Dante's relationship to the various manifestations of this whole universe of love in the Romance tradition from the Troubadours to the Roman de la Rose, Guinizelli, and Cavalcanti and shows how Dante synthesizes all the prior elements in the Vita Nuova qualifying himself as a poeta and achieving the "privilege" of undertaking the ultimate itinerarium of the Divina Commedia. Contents: I. Lingua e poesia; II. La tradizione romanza; III. Dalla Pastorella alle donne dello schermo; IV. Per l'interpretazione del "gabbo"; v. Peregrinus amoris: la metafora finale; Bibliografia dei testi siglati; Indici analitici. (Parts of Chapter II represent adaptations from three previously published articles, as is duly indicated on page 27 n.)

Pollock, John J. "Dante and Frost's 'Stopping by Woods.' "In Notes on Contemporary Literature, IX, No. 2, p. 5. [1979]

Suggests there is a Dantean echo integral to Robert Frost's poem, "Stopping by Woods . . . ," in the parallel with the dark wood and the frozen lake of the Inferno, with a further moral implication common to both works.

Prampolini, Gaetano. "Robert Lowell's Dante." In Robert Lowell: A Profile (Profili e studi di letterature inglese e americana, I), edited by Rolando Anzilotti (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi Editori), pp. 90-134. [1979]

Examines Lowell's poetry and Dantean translations to determine the nature of Dante's presence in his work and to assess the role Dante played in Lowell's poetic and intellectual development. From this analysis it emerges that (I) where Dante is concerned Lowell, like T. S. Eliot, had clear in his mind the distinction between the spiritual content or religious feeling and the artistic form or requirements of poetry; and that (2) beyond the determinable elements of direct influence, of echoes, borrowings, and imitations, there can be a more important debt, as Eliot warned. For Lowell Dante was the exemplary figure of the poet, for whom both life and poetics contributed to a moral and cognitive ascent; like Dante, Lowell sought on Dante's model to make of his own work a unitary, structured organism.

Quinones, Ricardo J. Dante Alighieri. Boston: Twayne Publishers, A Division of G. K. Hall and Co. 212 p. illus., front. 21 cm. (Twayne's World Authors Series, "A Survey of the World's Literature," TWAS 563.) [1979]

Presents a comprehensive introduction to the life and works of Dante, focusing on the Divina Commedia in the context of the poet's "changeful public career and as the product of his evolving thought and poetic practice." Contents: I. Early Life and the Vita Nuova; 2. La Donna Gentile: Dante's Philosophical Growth and the Canzoni; 3. Peregrino, quasi mendicando: Exile, the Convivio, and De Vulgari Eloquentia; 4. The Five-Year Drama of Henry VII: Dante's De Monarchia and the Political Epistles; 5. Commedia Inferno; 6. Commedia: Purgatorio; 7. Commedia: Paradiso; 8. Conclusion. The work comes with a Preface, Acknowledgements, chronology Notes and References, Selected Bibliography, and Index.

Quinones, Ricardo J. "The Two Dantes. " In Dante Studies, XCVII, 157-165. [1979]

Review-article on Kenelm Foster, The Two Dantes and Other Studies (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977). (See Dante Studies, XCVI, 221-222, and XCVII, 179.)

Russo, Vittorio. "Pg. XXIII: Forese, o la maschera del discorso." In MLN, XCIV, 113-136. [1979]

Cites moves in recent criticism to approach the Commedia in novelistic terms, stressing the narrative character of the poem and proving the inadequacy of the label "comedy." This opens possibilities for analyzing Dante's work as a theological-political novel (pace Croce). The Forese episode specifically (in Purg. XXIII) is examined for its multiple meanings through an analysis of narrative, lexical, and stylistic elements together with echoes of the former relationship between Dante and Forese, with the effect of preparing in the immediate context for the Bonagiunta episode to follow. The analysis suggests structural and thematic parallels with the Brunetto Latini episode (Inf. XV) and stylistic parallels with the comic-realistic mode of the harsh rimes of Inferno XXXII as well as the tenzone with Forese. The resultant linguistic and stylistic texture of the canto is thus seen as enhancing the substantive significance of the episode with respect to the narrative function of Forese as a "novelistic" character, and at the same time, though recall of the tenzone, reflecting Dante's repudiation and transcendence of the excessive moment of the tenzone and marking his ethical development as protagonist in the Commedia.

Samek-Ludovici, Sergio. Dante's Divine Comedy: 15th-Century Manuscript. Commentarios on the Miniatures . . . Narration by Nino Ravenna. Translated by Peter J. Tallon. [New York:] Crescent Books, Distributed by Crown Publications, Inc. 123 p. many illus. in color 28 cm. (At the head of the title: "Illuminated Manuscripts.") [1979]

"Publication of miniatures contained in the most beautiful manuscript of the Divine Comedy, kept at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana of Venice" The manuscript is Cod. It. IX, 276 (=6902), from which miniatures are here reproduced with commentaries and connective narrative. The book bears the legend: "First English edition published by Productions Liber S.A. and Editions Minerva S.A., Fribourg-Genève."

Seung, T. K. "The Epic Character of the Divina Commedia and the function of Dante's Three Guides." In Italica, LVI, 352-368. [1979]

Against the common tendency to consider Dante's poem as man-centered (out of the man-centered vision of the Renaissance), with Dante-wayfarer as the (non-epic) hero of his own epic, and to consider the poem as a human comedy and its central theme as Dante's epic journey to spiritual salvation, the author contends that the poem is strictly God-centered, with the Holy Trinity as its epic hero, Dante's journey being merely a means of allegorically portraying the majestic actions of that divine hero. To interpret the Letter to Can Grande as supporting, a man-centered reading of the Commedia is, according to Professor Seung, to impute to Dante the very serious Pelagian heresy, which claims for man complete freedom to do good and evil and determine his own eventual reward and punishment after death. He stresses that Dante-wayfarer represents, not the figure of a self-reliant Renaissance individual, but rather quite a helpless figure dependent upon grace through the three guides provided him along the poetic journey. It is instructive to compare Dante-wayfarer with Odysseus and Aeneas in their respective heroic tales, in which they are allowed freedom of action with only rare interference by their divine guardians, Athena and Venus. In the case of the helpless Dante-wayfarer, there is a mixture of the Odysseus-Athena and the Aeneas-Venus relations, but his three guides are present to him throughout the journey in a "dual relation of immediate presence and separate identity," thus reflecting "the nature of grace, which is administered through the three guides." This does not allow Dante to attain classic epic stature, nor to have mastery of person and autonomy of action, but only to play the humble role of a powerless and helpless agent, a role, however, associated with the primary virtue, humility, of the good Christian.

Shapiro, Marianne. "Figurality in the Vita Nuova: Dante's New Rhetoric." In Dante Studies, XCVII, 107-127. [1979]

Taking a semiotic approach to Dante's libello, the author seeks to clarify its rhetoric by analyzing the precise transformation of the poet's style as he successfully moves from imaginative apparitions to a mirabile visione, thanks to his internalization of Love and overcoming the disappearance of Beatrice's physical presence as referent. It is Dante's shift from the common rhetorical figure of metonymy to that of metaphor that plays a intimate part in the whole process through which he achieves the figurality associated with his allegory of theologians, widely recognized as inhering in the Divina Commedia and even perceived in the Vita Nuova as well. This analysis details the theoretical and material stages of the rhetorical innovation Dante achieved in the latter, which consummates the divine analogue of Love and the analogue of Beatrice as Christ, the key being the figural meaning made possible by the poet-lover's new rhetoric after his self-liberation from the dominance of concrete referentiality. Better focus on the trope development marked by the Vita Nuova can lead to better understanding of Dante's unique new poetics.

Singleton, Charles S. Saggio sulla "Vita Nuova." [Bologna:] Il Mulino. 65 p. 21.5 cm. ("Saggi," 79.) [1979]

A further printing of the original Italian edition (1968) to accompany the publication of his La poesia della Divina Commedia (1978) as its "ideal preface." (See Dante Studies, XCVII, 175-176.)

Sowell, Madison U. "Carlo D'Aquino: First Compiler of the Commedia's Similes." In Italica, LVI, 384-393. [1979]

Describes Carlo D'Aquino's little-known work, Le similitudini della Commedia di Dante Alighieri trasportate verso per verso in Lingua Latina (1707), remarking its firstness and its evidence of a renewed cult of Dante already in the eighteenth century. Notable are the reasons D'Aquino gives in his introduction for the beauty and importance of the similes in Dante's poem: their singular variety, suggesting the "book of the universe," their painterly force of representation, and their sheer number (c. 500), unique among great poems. Creature of the Baroque, moreover, the compiler interestingly includes only the minor term, the comparandum, of each simile, patently for its ornamental value.

Took, John. "Towards an Interpretation of the Fiore."In Speculum, LIV. 500-527. [1979]

Against the censorious interpretation of the Roman de la Rose launched by Christine de Pisan and others at the turn of the fourteenth century, the author cites the corrective of recent American critics, who "have construed the poem not as a piece of bourgeois irreverence, but as the critique of a specific conception of love . . . [i.e., Ovidian, as proclaimed by Amors in the first part of the poem] conducted (a) in the light of an orthodox Augustinian-Boethian conscience, and (b), decisive for the general intonation of the work, in an ironic and parodistic mood." The Roman is therefore seen as an analysis of the ambiguity implicit in the term "amor" and the experience represented by it, and thus as the allegory, in Dante's words, of the "picketer carnal,/ che la ragion sommettono al talento," which on principle presupposes the medieval conception of human rationality and the subordination of the sensitive appetite to it. The key figure of Fauxsemblant, identified with the Antichrist's disciples, supports the antithesis, at the core of both the Roman and the Fiore, between "caritas" and "cupiditas." Professor Took seeks to demonstrate the relevance of the new interpretation of the Roman for the Fiore, which he goes on to read in close relation to the Roman. The latter, interestingly, was cited as early as the turn of the fourteenth century as critical to the genesis of the Divina Commedia. In the anticipated echoes in the Inferno and the parodic-ironic conception of love expounded by Ragione in the Fiore, involving the systematic subordination of the discriminatory faculty to the sensitive, is seen a negative "premise both for the Vita Nuova, with its radical redefinition of love as a new affective and cognitive experience, and for the more distant Inferno, with its more complex analysis of spiritual confusion."

Vanasco, Rocco. "L'architettura dell sestina dantesca." In Studi e problemi di critica testuale, No. 18 (April), 109-119. [1979]

Presents a descriptive analysis of the metric structure of Dante's sestina, Al poco giorno, noting how it differs from the archetype by Arnaut Daniel and represents the perfection of the genre.

Werge, Thomas. "The Race to Death and the Race for Salvation in Dante's Commedia." In Dante Studies, XCVII, 1-21. [1979]

Demonstrates the many ways in which Dante's Commedia reflects the movement of life as a correre or race, which is a common biblical image that recurs in medieval hermeneutics, particularly in the works of St. Augustine. Without divine grace, life's running is but in malo as typified by the Inferno, where the act of running is but a parody of the holy race of Pauline vision; with God's word and Christs's example, it is in bono, leading to the salvific end as dramatized through images of running and haste in the Purgatorio and Paradiso. The distinction is of course related to the larger image of life's journey by homo viator informing Dante's poem.

Whitehead, Oliver Henry. "Teleology and the Function of Discourse in the Epics of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Others." In Dissertation Abstracts International, XXXIX, 4229A. [1979]

Doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto, 1978.

Dante's "Rime." Translated by Patrick Sidney Diehl. Princeton. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979. (See above, under Translations.) Reviewed by:

Marilyn Schneider, in Library Journal, CIV (Sept. 1) 1703.

Cairns, Christopher. Italian Literature: The Dominant Themes. London-Vancouver: David and Charles; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1977 (See Dante Studies, XCVI, 216.) Reviewed by:

Richard H. Lansing, in Italica, LVI, 301-303.

Cardini, Roberto. La critica del Landino. Firenze: Sansoni Editore, 1973, 393 p. On the fiftheenth-century Humanist who was also a commentator on Dante's Poem. Reviewed by:

Danilo Aguzzi-Barbagli, in Italica, LVI, 60-64.

Contini, Gianfranco. Un'idea di Dante. Torino: Einaudi, 1976. 283 p. Collection of the author's well-known Dantean essays of the past forty years. (See below, under Addenda.) Reviewed by:

Rinaldina Russell, in Forum Italicum, XIII, 116-121.

Cope, Jackson I. The Theater and the Dream: From Metaphor to Form in Renaissance Drama. Baltimore and London: Theater of the Dream: Dante's Commedia, Jonson's Satirist, and Shakespeare's Sage." (See Dante Studies, XCII, 183, XCIII, 245-246, XCIV, 183, and XCV, 177.) Reviewed by:

William Dean, in Renaissance and Reformation, N.S., III, 95-98.

Dante Commentaries: Eight Studies of the Divine Comedy. Edited by David Nolan. Dublin: Irish Academic Press: Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977. (See Dante Studies, XCVI, 219.) Reviewed by:

Lawrence V. Ryan, in Italica, LVI, 405-407.

Di Girolamo, Constanzo. Teoria e prassi della versificazione italiana. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1976. Based largely on illustrations from Dante's poetry. Reviewed by:

Anna Laura Lepschy, in MLN, XCIV, 166-171.

Fallani, Giovanni. Dante autobiografico. Napoli: Società Editrice Napoletana, 1975. 374 p. (Studi e testi di letteratura italiana, III.) Reviewed by:

Rinaldina Russell, in Forum Italicum, XIII, 125-128.

Fergusson, Francis. Trope and Allegory: Themes Common to Dante and Shakespeare. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1977. (See Dante Studies, XCVI, 221 and XCVII 179 and 191.) Reviewed by:

Michael Murrin, in English Language Notes, XVI, 324-325.

Ferrante, Joan M. Woman as Image in Medieval Literature, from Twelfth Century to Dante. New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1975. (See Dante Studies, XCIV, 164, XCVI, 239, and XCVII, 191.) Reviewed by:

William Calin, in Comparative Literature, XXXI, 319-320.

Foster, Kenelm. The Two Dantes and Other Studies. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1977. Same as the American edition-Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977. (See Dante Studies, XCVI 221-222, and XCVII, 157-165, 179, and 185.) Reviewed by:

Colin Hardie, in Medium Aevum, XLVIII, 302-306.

Frankel, Margherita. Le Code dantesque dans l'oeuvre de Rimbaud. Paris: Editions A.-G. Nizet, 1975. (See Dante Studies, XCVI, 245.) Reviewed by:

Claudette Asselin, in Italica, LVI, 410-413.

Kirkpatrick, Robin. Dante's "Paradiso" and the Limitations of Modern Criticism: A Study of Style and Poetic Theory. Cambridge, England, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978. (See below, under Addenda.) Reviewed by:

[Anon.], in Choice XVI (April), 229.

Lansing, Richard H. From Image to Idea. A Study of the Simile in Dante's "Commedia." Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1977. (See Dante Studies, XCVI, 227.) Reviewed by:

Madison U. Sowell, in 5peculum, LIV, 164-166.

Masciandaro, Franco. La problematica del tempo nella "Commedia." Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1976. (See Dante Studies, XCV, 168-169.) Reviewed by:

Susan Noakes, in Italica, LVI, 407-409.

Perella, Nicolas J. Midday in Italian Literature: Variations on an Archetypal Theme. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979. (See above, under Studies.) Reviewed by:

Glauco Cambon, in Forum Italicum, XIII, 524-527.

Ramat, Raffaello. Il mito di Firenze e altri saggi danteschi. Firenze-Messina: G. D'Anna, 1976. 189 p. Contains seven essays--three on the Cacciaguida episode (Par. XVI) and four, respectively, on Inferno XX and XXXIII, Purgatorio XI, and Paradiso XXI. Reviewed by:

Lawrence Baldassaro, in Forum Italicum, XIII, 524-527.

Scorrano, Luigi. Modi e esempi di dantismo novecentesco. Lecce: Adriatica Editrice Salentina, 1976. 295 p. Reviewed by:

Arshi Pipa, in Italica, LVI, 413-418.

Scott, John A. Dante magnanimo: studi sulla Commedia. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1977. 354 p. Reviewed by:

Nicholas J. Perella, in Forum Italicum, XIII, 527-535.

Seung, T. K. Cultural Thematics: The Formation of the Faustian Ethos. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1976. (See Dante Studies. XCV, 173- 174, and XCVII, 181.) Reviewed by:

Gustavo Costa, in Romance Philology, XXXII (February), 381-383;

Frank J. Warnke, in Renaissance Quarterly, XXXII, 412-416.

Singleton, Charles S. La poesia della "Divina Commedia." Bologna: Società Editrice Il Mulino, 1978. (See Dante Studies, XCVII, 175-176.) Reviewed by:

Vittore Branca, in Corriere della sera (Milano), 8 luglio, p. 3;

Franco Brioschi, in L'unita (Roma), 30 aprile;

Francesco Bruni, in Il mattino (Napoli), 18 aprile;

Flavio Cattenazzi, in Corriere del Ticino. Cultura (Lugano), XI, No. II, 219;

Domenico De Robertis, in Il tempo, XXXV, No. 49 (20 febbraio);

Stefano Gensini, in Paesc sera (Roma), 14 aprile;

Giorgio Petrocchi, in Avvenire, (Milano), 13 maggio.

Steiner, George. On Difficulty and Other Essays. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. (See below, under Addenda.) Reviewed by:

David H. Stewart, in Western Humanities Review, XXXIII (Autumn), 356-359.

Versions of Medieval Comedy. Edited and with an introduction by Paul G. Ruggiers. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977. Contains Howard H. Schless, "Dante: Comedy and Conversion," pp. 135-149. (See Dante Studies, XCVI, 234.) Reviewed by:

Joan M. Ferrante, in Western Humanities Review, XXXIII (Winter), 87-89.

Weatherby, Harold L. The Keen Delight: The Christian Poet in the Modern World. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1975. Contains a chapter on Dante, "The Scale of the Comedy," pp. 6-26, and further references to Dante, passim. (See Dante Studies, XCV, 179 and 187-188.) Reviewed by:

John D. Margolis, in Modern Philology, LXXVI, 438-441.

"Purgatorio--from Canto XI." Translated by Todd Boli. In Ploughshares, II, No. 4 (1975), 244-245.

A rendering in blank verse of Purgatorio XI, 58-117.

Alvarez, A. The Savage God: A Study of Suicide. New York: Random House, 1972. XV, 299 p. 21.5 cm.

Contains, in a section on "Suicide and Literature," a brief chapter on "Dante and the Middle Ages" (pp. 143-148), which suggests that the poet's evident special, even sympathetic, interest in suicide manifested in Inferno XIII may be attributable to a period of despair he sustained in his own crisis of middle life. As with certain other famous artists, Dante was spurred on to produce his greatest work, rather than yielding to suicide as a way out (not that his Christian faith would have permitted it). This book originally appeared in England (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970).

Baldassaro, Lawrence. "Structure and Movement in Purgatorio X." In Lingua e stile, X (1975), 261-274.

Contends that the bas-reliefs on the first terrace described in Purgatorio X, far from being a mere appendage exemplifying Dante's verbal artistry, contribute organically to the aesthetic unity of the canto and are integrated with the general didactic function of art in the poem as a whole. They visually figure the purpose of the pilgrim's journey on the dritta via in a set of three parallel and contrastive images of the conflicting natures of pride and humility and they maintain and reinforce the sense of movement to the right by their arrangement.

Beall, Chandler B. "Dante's Mission." In Comparative Literature Studies, XV (1978), 2-16.

Points out that, after his protestations of modesty at the start of his journey, "Ma io, perché venirvi? o chi 'l concede?" (Inf. II, 31), Dante as pilgrim receives an answer to the second question but not to the first, which has importantly to do with his personal qualifications for and the precise nature of the mission. Citing chapter XXVIII of the Vita Nuova, Professor Beall suggests that in the Commedia too it is part of the poet's strategy here to avoid seeming to praise himself. Rather, the mission gradually becomes clear to the pilgrim and to the reader as the action of the poem progresses, with hints and suggestions supplied along the way. In particular, Dante's professional credentials as a poet are discreetly established by his reception among the poets of antiquity in Inferno IV. Among other episodes that significantly help define Dante's mission as pilgrim--to re-enact Aeneas's descent into the underworld and St. Paul's ascent into heaven, to observe closely and store in the memory all that he saw, and finally to recall and record in poetry the whole experience for the edification of others--are the episode of Sordello (Purg. VI), which includes the poet's apostrophe of scathing invective regarding strife-torn Italy, and the episodes of Cacciaguida (Par. XVII) and of St. Peter (Par. XXVII), in which Dante is urged to tell all, sparing no one. Finally, it is clear the poet-protagonist of the journey sought with this poem to justify himself as a concerned citizen and Christian and to win recognition as a poeta.

Contini, Gianfranco. Un' idea di Dante: saggi danteschi. Torino: Einaudi. 1976. vii, 283 p. 18 cm. (Piccola biblioteca Einaudi: Filologia-Linguistica-Critica letteraria, 275.)

Contains a review (pp. 217-224) of C. S. Singleton, Dante Studies I. Commedia: Elements of Structure (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1954; see 73rd Report, 60-61), reprinted from Romance Philology, IX (1956), hailing this innovative work in the field of Dante criticism. A long essay on methodology, "Filologia ed esegesi dantesca" (pp. 113-142) of 1965 appeared in English translation with notes in Dante Studies, LXXXVII (1969), 1-32 (see Dante Studies, LXXXVIII, 180-181). (For a review of this collection of essays, see above, main section, under Reviews.)

Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish. Coomaraswamy . . . edited by Roger Lipsey. Bollingen Series, LXXXIX. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977. 3 v. illus. 24 cm.

Volume II, Selected Papers: Metaphysics, contains an essay, "Two Passages in Dante's Paradiso" (pp. 241-255), in which the author cites a number of concepts and symbols common to the medieval Christian-Arabic-Hebrew West and to Vedic India in the East, illustrating the unity of human culture and spiritual idiom and the universality of essential philosophy and metaphysics, and discusses, without claiming any direct influence from Vedic sources, two passages in Dante's Paradiso as instances of the common human tradition of ideas and symbols. Choosing these examples for the difficulty they pose to commentators, the author relates the "bella figlia" (Dawn). daughter of the Sun in Paradiso XXVII, 36-138, to the meaning of Humanity, the Church, the Bride of Christ, through Vedic parallels, and considers the "nidi" of Paradiso XVIII, 110-111, symbolically as the habitations of the Angels and other living beings among the branches of the Tree of Life. The essay was originally published in Speculum, XI (1936), 327-338.

Della Terza, Dante. "Il canto di Brunetto Latini." In Orbis Mediaevalis: mélanges de langue et de littérature médiévales offerts à Reto Raduolf Bezzola à l 'occasion de son quatre-vingtième anniversaire, edited by Georges Güntert, Marc-René Jung, and Kurt Ringger (Berne: Francke Verlag, 1978), pp. 69-88.

Offers a reading of Inferno, XV, stressing the poet's artistic strategy of scenographically building up to the pilgrim's dramatic encounter with Brunetto, the allusive language reflective of Brunetto's own cultural idiom in the Trésor and Tesoretto, the overt and underlying theme of exile, and, whatever the merits of Pézard's interpretation of the sin punished here, the effective association of Brunetto with the sodomites, thus reducing the once venerable figure of Dante's former master to his present state of degradation. The essay has been reprinted in the author's collection, Forma e memoria: saggi e ricerche sulla tradizione letteraria da Dante a Vico (Roma: Bulzoni, 1979), pp. 13-39 (see above, main section, under Studies).

Fehrenbacher, Henry. "Dante and the Liturgy." In Aegis (Moorhead State College), I (1973), 33-43.

Contends that the integral part played by religious services in contemporary life was a source of much material for Dante's Divine Comedy, which reflects elements of the liturgy and the Latin psalter structurally incorporated in the poem. Indeed, Dante's poem, like the liturgy, "makes visible and tangible the ways and truths of God." An awareness of the various church rites, including certain practices now outmoded and unfamiliar to the modern reader, gives us a better understanding of the Comedy.

Fido, Franco. "Dante, personaggio mancato del Decameron." In Boccaccio: secoli di vita, Atti del Congresso Internazionale: Boccaccio 1975 Università di California, Los Angeles, 17-19 ottobre, 1975, a cura di Marga Cottino-Jones e Edward F. Tuttle . . . (Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1977), pp. 177-189.

Addressing the question of Dante's "presenza-assenza" in the Decameron, the author examines the various echoes of the Commedia in that work and concludes that Dante himself as a character could not be accommodated in a work of such different spirit (despite Boccaccio's admiration for him), and indeed various aspects of Dante are already represented by other noble Florentine characters, particularly Tedaldo (III, 7) who is a kind of ideal composite, though there is more in him and in them that was not in Dante. Despite the ambivalences, according to Professor Fido, in the irreverent author of the Decameron may be recognized a keener and happier reader of the Commedia than the commentator on the latter in the Esposizioni.

Fido, Franco. Le metamorfosi del centauro: studi e letture da Boccaccio a Pirandello. Roma: Bulzoni Editore, 1977. 286 p. 21 cm. (L'analisi letteraria Proposte e letture critiche, 18.)

Contains an essay "Dante personaggio mancato del Decameron. pp. 77-90, reprinted from Boccaccio: secoli di vita . . . (see previous item).

Girard, Rene. "To Double Business Bound": Essays on Literature, Mimesis, and Anthropology. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1978. xvi, 229 p. 23.5 cm.

Contains an essay on "The Mimetic Desire of Paolo and Francesca (pp. 1-8), originally published in French with the title, "De La Divine Comédie à la sociologie du roman," in Revue de l 'Institut de Sociologie (Brussels), No. 2 (1963), 263-269 (see Dante Studies, LXXXVII, 182-183, and subsequently reprinted in English as "From The Divine Comedy to the Sociology of the Novel," in Sociology of Literature and Drama, edited by Elizabeth Burns and Tom Burns (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1973), pp. 101-108.

Guerin, Wilfred L. "Circles, Spheres, and Progress: Dante and Teilhard." in Re: Arts and Letters, III, No. I (1969), 33-37.

Finds a similarity of vision in the "medieval" Dante's Commedia and the futurist Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man. Far from static in pattern as so generally supposed, Dante's poetic pilgrimage to the vision of God is seen rather to resemble Teilhard's projection of human progress to the Omega Point.

Holloway, Julia Bolton. "Dante's Commedia: Egyptian Spoils, Roman Jubilee, Florence's Patron." In Studies in Medieval Culture, XII (1978), 97-104.

Reviews the peregrinations of the Ark and its treasures, including the Egyptian gold taken by the Israelites and refashioned in various ways-treasures that were believed in the Middle Ages to be ultimately enshrined in the Sancta Sanctorum of the papal basilica, St. John Lateran. The items remaining after the basilica's destruction, viz., Aaron's rod, the manna, and Tables of the Law were not lost until the Sack of Rome (1527). The author cites several ways in which Dante incorporated these various elements, along with the Arch of Titus (called arcus cum arca by the medieval Romans), their history, and significance into the Commedia. The poem, set in the Jubilee year, 1300, transforms Rome into a new Jerusalem, making use of the ark and the arch. Florence, in turn, is seen to mirror Rome; Virgil is the ancient prophet who guides the pilgrim and, in the guise of John the Baptist (patron saint of Florence), baptizes him according to the New Law on Purgatory's shore. The Lateran, then, referred to as a "tempio" by the poet, is a key figure in the Commedia. As Florence's prophet, Dante in the Wilderness of his exile acts in the guise of a false Aaron, then a Moses, then a St. John the Baptist, and eventually a Christ figure on his poetic pilgrimage. In Egyptian gold (which like poetry too, can be fashioned for good or ill), Dante found an apt image for pilgrimage metamorphosis and conversion and, mapping its historical and geographical peregrinations. he links Jerusalem, Rome, and Florence.

Iannucci, Amilcare A. "Brunetto Latini: 'come l'uom s'etterna.'" In NEMLA Italian Studies, I (1977), 17-28.

Pointing out the Confusion often engendered by the massive critical literature on the interpretation of Dante's Commedia, the author contends that it is best to return to focus on the text, since the poet is his own best commentator. This is more obviously so in the hybrid Vita Nuova and Convivio, in which the prose serves to gloss the poems and the poet stresses the primacy of the literal meaning. While the Commedia lacks a prose component, it too carries powerful elements of self-exegesis through the technique of "testimony" or "parallel passage" common in biblical exegesis, which goes beyond the typical literary process of context building and retrospective vision. Dante's procedure is a highly developed technique of conscious criticism elaborated from the exegetical tradition in the form of "parallel episodes." The instances are many, for example, Dante-Ulysses, Virgil-Statius, Francesca-Cunizza, Ciacco-Forese, Pier della Vigna-Romeo, Guido-Buonconte. But the author focuses upon the more problematical Brunetto episode, which, like the Farinata episode that shifts attention from his epicureanism to his political concerns, shifts attention from Brunetto's sodomy to his misguided emphasis upon literary fame as a means to immortality. This is further reinforced in the parallel episode among the artists of Purgatorio XI, where Oderisi sets in perspective and destroys Brunetto's notions on fame.

Kay, Richard. "The Pope's Wife: Allegory as Allegation in Inferno 19. 106-111. In Studies in Medieval Culture, XII (1978), 105-111.

Relates the passage in question, with its apocalyptic imagery drawn from Scripture to the transformation scene of the car bearing Beatrice in the mystical procession at the top of Purgatory, and contends that Dante allegory conceals two allegations through which the poet makes clear the Roman Church was corrupt since the time of Pope Sylvester I when she became rich and claimed special privilege for its clergy, a claim that was possible only so long as the pope himself was virtuous. Supporting the allegory of the pope's wife and the "seven heads" (V. 109) is a reference to seven witnesses cited in Gratian's collection of ecclesiastical law, in turn supported by Guido da Pisa's later interpretation of the passage about the whoring image of the Church. The "ten horns" (V 110) are seen as biblical reference, viz., to the tenth chapter of a book of Kings, justifying the placement hierarchically of one church over the others.

Kirkpatrick, Robin. Dante's "Paradiso" and the Limitations of Modern Criticism: A Study of Style and Poetic Theory. Cambridge-London-New York-Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1978. xi, 227p. 22.5 cm.

Reacting against such modern critics as Croce and Eliot and their followers for what he sees as a deficient and unsatisfactory analysis and appreciation of Dante's very special poetic achievement in the Paradiso, the author is concerned here not only with the altered style, indeed the "change . . . in the very fabric" of Dante's poetic utterance in the transition from the first two canticles to the last, but also necessarily with the theoretical ground of literary criticism. Addressed specifically are the psychology, form, a truthfulness of poetry in order to investigate and define the principles the poet's art in the cantica. Contents: Introduction; I. The 'modest voice' and the Paradiso; 2. Dante's conception of poetic discipline; 3. The stable phrase; 4. Independence and the reader of the Paradiso; 5. Word and image in the Paradiso; 6. The organization of the canto in the Paradiso; Conclusion. The work comes equipped with Preface, Acknowledgements, Abbreviations, Note on the Translations, Notes, Select Bibliography, Cantos of the Commedia Cited in the Text, Index of Names, and Index of Topics. (For reviews, see above, main section, under Reviews and see below.

Kranz, Gisbert. "Dante in the Work of C. S. Lewis." In CSL, The Bulletin of the New York C. S. Lewis Society, IV, No. 10 (August 1973), 1-8.

Examines the treatment of Dante's Commedia in C. S. Lewis' many critical studies and the influence of Dante on his literary imagination, particularly in such allegorical works as The Pilgrim's Regress, The Great divorce, and Perelandra, which contain many parallels with Dante's poem. (The article, which originally appeared in the Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch, XLVII [1972] as translated by Hope Kirkpatrick.)

Mazzaro, Jerome. The Poetic Themes of Robert Lowell. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1965. viii, 145 p. 23 cm.

Cites Dantean echoes in Lowell's poetry, passim. Indexed.

Montale, Eugenio. "Dante, Yesterday and Today." In Canto, II, No. 3 (Fall 1978), 75-94.

Offers a comprehensive, thoughtful over-view of Dante and his works from the standpoint of a modern poet and, on the question of what Dante means for a poet of today, concludes that "the Commedia will remain the last miracle of world poetry," that, tempting as the notion continues to be, he can never be imitated successfully, especially now that the cultural and spiritual conditions have so changed in the world. Montale points out that, interestingly, the more distant Dante's world becomes the greater our desire to know and understand him. (This address, translated here by Jonathan Galassi, was "delivered 24 April 1965 at the International Congress of Dante Studies held in Florence in honor of the 700th anniversary of Dante's birth.")

Picone, Michelangelo. "Dante e il mito di Narciso: dal Roman de la Rose alla Commedia." In Romanische Forschungen, LXXXIX (1977), 382-397.

Associating the adaptation of the Narcissus myth in medieval Christian culture with the central concept of the Fall, to which the literary adaptations are related in terms of an existential queste for the Edenic reunion of the human creature with his divine origin as exemplified by Christ, the author examines the different manifestations of the myth in the two authors of the Roman de la Rose and in Dante. In Professor Picone's view, Narcissus reflects the mortal danger that man risks on his earthly pilgrimage to regain his former perfection in God. In the episode of the Lover at the Fountain (of Love) set in the Edenic garden, Guillaume de Lorris makes ambivalent use of the Narcissus myth, reflecting the courtly concept of love with the figure of the idealized Lady as elevated and unattainable; while Jean de Meung, in a similar episode at the Fountain (of Life), conceives of love in naturalistic terms and therefore attainable and realizable at the sensual level in an earthly paradise regained, reflecting the new ideology. For Guillaume's aristocratic conception of a mysterious, "distant" love in the tradition of fin'amors, Jean substituted a bourgeois conception of love as a strictly biological phenomenon. For the latter, therefore, to reflect oneself in the mirror of the Other meant simply to conquer it, to possess it. In the case of Dante, apart from two direct allusions to the Narcissus myth in Inferno XXX, 128-129, and Paradiso III, 17-18. the thematic crux of self-recognition on the part of the lover and of valorization of the Other reappears at the top of Purgatory (Purg. XXVII-XXXIII), where Dante resolves the dilemma of Guillaume and Jean by retaining the creaturely Lady of courtly love tradition and going, beyond, as in her perfection she is made analogically to prepare the lover ritualistically for the ultimate journey to God.

Pipa, Arshi. "Perchè e per chi fu scritta la Commedia." In Le ragioni critiche, VI, Fasc. 22 (1976), 241-255.

Examines Dante's language in relation to his intended purpose in the Commedia and in the light of works he wrote before and after his exile, which the author takes to mark a turning-point not only in the poet's life but also in his attitude towards his readers. While the Vita Nuova is see to hew to the aristocratic style for addressing fellow poets, the Commedia, a primary purpose of which seems to have been to redeem the poet from his dishonor of exile, is cast in a language to reach and move the widest possible audience, from the loftiest to the lowliest. Hence Dante's choice of the vernacular as idiom of communication. (For a review of this piece, see below, under Reviews.

Reynolds, Mary T. "Joyce's Editions of Dante." In James Joyce Quarterly, XV, No. 4 (Summer 1978), 380-384.

Describes in some detail the cheap edition of the Divina Commedia by Eugenio Camerini (1904 printing) and the used copy of a deluxe "Prima edizione prerafaellistica" (1911) with the illustrations of Dante Gabriele Rossetti, which Joyce bought in Trieste for his working library while writing Ulysses and other novels.

Scaglione, Aldo. "Dante and the Rhetorical Theory of Sentence Structure." In Medieval Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Medieval Rhetoric, edited by James J. Murphy (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 252-269.

Remarks in the De vulgari eloquentia Dante's pioneering treatment of the vernacular according to the traditional theories reserved for Latin and examines especially the section (II, vi) devoted to the gradus constructionis, commenting on the four gradus distinguished by Dante -- insipidus, sapidus, venustus, and excelsus -- and on the vulgare illustre associated with the last, and analyzing Dante's conception of constructio, used by him in the sense of compositio, or sentence structure, and the many examples he gives of each rhetorical or syntactical type. Professor Scaglione notes how Dante's views s conformed with and departed from the traditional and how in his treatises he boldly fused the three disciplines of grammatica, rhetorica, and poetria. He concludes that in his own Latin style Dante appears to be a conspicuous heir to the classical tradition and that "Dante's style, both Latin and vernacular, both in prose and verse" deserves much further study.

Steiner, George. On Difficulty and Other Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1978. xi, 209 p. 22 cm.

Contains his review-article, "Dante Now: The Gossip of Eternity," reprinted from Encounter XLVI (January 1976), 36-38, 40, 42-45 (see Dante Studies, XCVI, 251), based on his reading, of C. S. Singleton's translation, with commentary, of the Divine Comedy , 1970-75 (see Dante Studies, LXXXIX, 107-108, XCII, 182, and XCIV, 155-156). For a review, see above, main section, under Reviews.

Vernon, William Warren. Readings on the Purgatorio of Dante, Chiefly Based on The Commentary of Benvenuto da Imola . . . With an Introduction by Dean Church. New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1972. 2 v. illus.

Reprint of the 3rd edition, revised of 1907 (London: Methuen). The well-known work includes the Italian text (Moore's), translation, and commentary on the cantica. For a recent reprint of his similar work on the Paradiso (Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1972), see Dante Studies, XCI, 179.

Wheelock, James T. S. "Alliterative Function in the Divina Commedia." In Lingua e stile, XIII (1978), 373-404.

In absence of previous adequate treatment, the author submits a methodical description of alliterative groupings in the Commedia, according to the criterion of functionality as well as rhetorical effect. The many examples cited from the poem are classified, according, to function, under the following, major types (with some sub-divisions within each): (a) mnemonic, (b) enargaeic, (c) vocative, and (d) endstop. It is suggested that the first two functions play a didactic role, the third a dramatic role, and the fourth a prosodic role. The author concludes with a tentative definition of alliteration as a rhetorical schema: "a cohesive grouping of identical or similar sounds within a poetic text coordinated to produce an identifiable effect that has a perceptible function with the whole of that text."

Wimsatt, James I. "Beatrice as a Figure for Mary." In Traditio, XXXIII (1977), 402-414.

Contends, in light of many analogues of Mary as well as Christ in medieval literature, that Scripture and the exegetical tradition poignantly echoed in Dante's verse support an interpretation of Beatrice's appearance in Purgatorio XXX as representing the figure of Mary in her meaning of the Incarnation, while the Griffin symbolizes Christ in the mystical procession. In a word, at this first appearance, Beatrice would be a surrogate of Mary with Christ. Further confirmation of this interpretation is found in Paradiso XXIII and XXXIII.

The Divine Comedy. Translated by John Ciardi. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1977. (See Dante Studies, XCVI, 213-214.) Reviewed by:

Brian Swann, in Library Journal, CIII (Feb. 1, 1978), 368.

The Divine Comedy, Translated, with a commentary by Charles S. Singleton . . . Bollingen Series, LXXX. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1970-1975 3 V. in 6. (See Dante Studies, LXXXIX, 107-108, XCII, 182, and XCIV, 155-156; extensively reviewed.) Reviewed by:

J. D. O'Hara, in Virginia Quarterly Review, LIV (Summer 1978). 538-545.

Guido da Pisa. Expositiones et Glose super Comediam Dantis, or Commentary on Dante's Inferno. Edited with notes and an introduction by Vincent Cioffari . . . Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974 (see Dante Studies, XCIII, 223-224, XCIV, 145-154; extensively reviewed.) Reviewed by:

Alan F. Nagel, in Philological Quarterly, LVI (1977), 275-276.

Italian Literature, Roots, and Branches: Essays in Honor of Thomas Goddard Bergin. Edited by Giose Rimanelli and Kenneth John Atchity. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1976. Contains five essays of Dantean interest. (See Dante Studies, XCV, 167, and XCVII, 179-180.) Reviewed by:

Christopher Cairns, in Italian Studies, XXXIII (1978), 111-112.

Kirkpatrick, Robin. Dante's "Paradiso" and the Limitations of Modern Criticism: A Study of Style and Poetic Theory. Cambridge, England, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978. (See above, Addenda, under Studies.) Reviewed by:

[Anon.], in Times Literary Supplement, 13 Oct. 1978, p. 1181.

Pipa, Arshi. "Perchè e per chi fu scritta la Commedia." In Le ragioni critiche, VI, fasc. 22 (1976), 241-255. (See above, Addenda, under Studies.) Reviewed by:

Rosanna Zanettin, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, LXXXII (1978), 234-235.

Russell, Rinaldina. Tre versanti della poesia stilnovistica: Guinizelli, Cavalcanti, Dante. Bari: Adriatica Editrice, 1973. (See Dante Studies, XCII, 195-196.) Reviewed by:

Guido Baldassari, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, LXXXII (1978), 518-519.

Sarolli, Gian Roberto. Analitica della "Divina Commedia." I. Struttura numerologica e poesia. Bari: Adriatica Editrice, 1974. (See Dante Studies, XCVII, 189-190.) Reviewed by:

Gabriele Muresu, in Rassegna della letteratura italiana, LXXXI (1977), 436-438.

Singleton, Charles S. La poesia della "Divina Commedia." Bologna: Società Editrice Il Mulino, 1978. {See Dante Studies, XCVII, 175-176, and see above, main section, under Reviews,) Reviewed by:

Francesco Semi, in I problemi della pedagogia, (Roma), dicembre 1978, p. 858.

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