American Dante Bibliography for 2002
STEVEN BOTTERILL
[Originally published in Dante Studies, vol. 121 (2003)]
This bibliography is intended to included all publications on Dante (books, articles, translations, reviews) appearing in North America in 2002, as well as reviews from foreign sources of books published in the United States and Canada. The listing of reviews is necessarily selective, especially in the case of studies bearing only peripherally upon Dante. Items not recorded in the bibliographies for previous years are entered as addenda to the current list; items from 2002 not identified in time for inclusion in the list will be added in future issues of the journal. I extend my thanks to my research assistant, Ryan Maddox, for his invaluable help.
BOOKS
Alighieri, Pietro. Comentum super poema Comedie Dantis: A Critical Edition of the Third and Final Draft of Pietro Alighieri’s “Commentary on Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’“. Edited by Massimiliano Chiamenti. Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002.
Chiamenti’s monumental effort at last makes it possible for twenty-first-century readers to use, and profit from, a reliable text of the third version of Dante’s son’s commentary on his father’s poem. Exemplary in its scrupulous and exhaustive attention to the text and its impeccable observation of the norms of philology, this is an indispensable resource for readers interested in the fourteenth-century tradition of commentary on the Commedia.
Fortin, Ernest L. Dissent and Philosophy in the Middle Ages. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2002.
Fortin takes a decidedly historiographical and politicized approach to Dante’s work, one which attempts to extract a specifically historical meaning from the texts while conceding that this is an inherently difficult enterprise because of Dante’s refusal to limit his own approach in this way. He extends his argument by considering Arabic and Hebrew texts of Dante’s era; because of the essentially humanistic outlook of Dante’s work, it is very dissimilar from these, but still linked to them by ties of a historical nature.
Fraser, Jennifer Margaret. Rites of Passage in the Narratives of Dante and Joyce. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2002.
Fraser constructs her comparison of Dante and Joyce by introducing the image of a medieval diptych, with its two separate, but related, panels. Authors are obviously separated by features such as chronology, but their works can be brought into fruitful relationship through close examination. By subjecting Dante’s text to such examination, Fraser seeks to prove that Joyce’s narratives take on a new, changed meaning. Fraser goes on to inquire if it is Dante who influences Joyce, or if it is the reader who is changed after the experience of reading each author’s work. She concludes that, at the very least, familiarity with Joyce’s work may change the reader’s outlook on the Commedia.
Hein, Rolland. Christian Mythmakers: C.S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, J.R. Tolkien, George MacDonald, G.K. Chesterton, Charles Williams, Dante Alighieri, John Bunyan, Walter Wangerin, Robert Siegel, and Hannah Hurnard. Chicago, Illinois: Cornerstone Press Chicago, 2002.
Dante makes a perhaps rather unexpected appearance in this collection of mostly twentieth-century authors of “Christian myth,” but Hein makes a plausible case for his relevance in this context, especially since many of the writers appearing here (Lewis, Williams, Tolkien, for starters) acknowledged his importance to their own work. By and large he avoids the obvious dangers of anachronism as he conducts an analysis that will perhaps appeal above all to declaredly Christian students of literature, but whose usefulness and implications – like Dante’s own work – in the end reach far beyond any narrowly confessional definition.
Parks, Tim. Hell and Back: Reflections on Writers and Writing from Dante to Rushdie. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2002.
In the part of this collection of reprinted writings that deals with Dante, Parks, a distinguished British novelist and commentator on Italian society, literature, and culture, analyzes the allegorical significance present in Inferno, and poses the question – familiar to perhaps more readers of the Comedy than Dante scholars would care to admit – of how anything in Purgatory and Paradise can possibly compete with what Dante presents to his readers while conveying them through Hell. Particularly interesting is Parks’ description of the poem as a means both of making Dante famous, and of allowing him to renew the relationship with Beatrice that was interrupted by her untimely death.
Schildgen, Brenda Deen. Dante and the Orient. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2002.
Schildgen presents the argument that Dante created the Comedy as a work about Europe, not simply because of inherent “Eurocentrism,” but because of the political and ecclesiastical turmoil in Italy. The “matter of the East” is transformed into a localized Crusade to save Florence, Italy, Europe, and the Christian church. She discusses the state of geographical knowledge in the thirteenth century; how Crusade literature may be compared to Dante’s “crusader epic;” how Dante uses the Crusader narrative in order to save Europe; Dante’s introduction of the Indus and how it is able to represent the areas outside the his “Orosian geopolitical world;” and finally, how Dante makes all physical and geographical realities a metaphorical instance through his representation of a miraculous vision, because its ontological status surpasses that of all the travels recounted by medieval authors.
ARTICLES
Albrecht, James. “‘Il cenno ch’a ciò si conface’ (Purg. 21.15).” Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America: posted February 25, 2002, at www.dantesociety.org > Publications > Electronic Journal (EBDSA).
Rejecting the explanations offered by earlier commentators, Albrecht proposes that the “cenno” in this line is the sign of the cross, but that the real significance of the episode lies in what does not precede that sign, namely the verbal response “and eternal life” invited by Statius’ salutation (as the familiar formulation in the Liturgy of the Hours would suggest). Virgil is debarred by his damnation from invoking in speech an eternal life of salvation in which he does not share, but he is still capable of making an appropriate, indeed exemplary, physical gesture of response.
Alfie, Fabian. “Rustico’s Reputation: Ramifications for Dante’s Tenzone with Forese Donati.” Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America: posted March 29, 2002, at
www.dantesociety.org > Publications > Electronic Journal (EBDSA).
Argues that the fluctuating status of Rustico’s reputation after it reached a peak in the 1280s and 1290s makes it relatively less likely that a much later author (such as Stefano Finiguerri, “il Za”) wrote the tenzone ascribed to Dante and Forese Donati than that Dante and Forese themselves did.
Allaire, Gloria. “Filigrane divine: Watermarks as Images in Dante’s Paradiso.” Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America: posted September 19, 2002, at www.dantesociety.org > Publications > Electronic Journal (EBDSA).
Noting the use on several occasions in the Comedy of imagery derived from manuscript production, Allaire examines the extent to which visual images in Paradiso may be owed to, or at least connected with, watermark designs available in Dante’s time.
Carranza, Paul. “Philosophical Songs: The ‘Song of Iopas’ in the Aeneid and the Francesca Episode in Inferno 5.” Dante Studies, 120 (2002): 35-51.
Seeks to relate the “song of Iopas” (Aeneid 1. 740-46), “the point at which philosophical poetry makes its most emphatic entrance into Vergil’s epic,” to the Comedy, especially Inferno 5.
Cuzzilla, Tony. “The Perception of Time in the Commedia: Purg. 4.10-12.” Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America: posted May 22, 2002, at www.dantesociety.org > Publications > Electronic Journal (EBDSA).
Points out that “medieval psychology assigned the perception of time not to the intellect but to a precise faculty of the sensitive soul,” and uses this fact, unremarked by previous commentators on his chosen passage, as the starting-point for a more accurate interpretation. This interpretation also justifies the reading “questa” for “quella” in line, found in Urb. Lat. 366 in the Vatican Library but not adopted even by Federico Sanguineti in his edition based on that manuscript.
Fosca, Nicola. “Beatitudini e processo di purgazione.” Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America: posted February 5, 2002, at www.dantesociety.org > Publications > Electronic Journal (EBDSA).
Noting an apparent lack of connection, remarked by various commentators, between the fourth Beatitude (“blessed are they that weep”), sung as Dante leaves the fourth cornice of Mount Purgatory (Purg. 19.49-51), and the vice of accidia that is purged there, Fosca uses Aquinas and Augustine to argue that the beatitude is associated with the gift of knowledge, and that ignorance is seen as a form of accidia. Fosca concludes that “l’incompatibilità fra dono della scienza e vizio dell’accidia pare costituire la base dottrinale del segmento narrativo in cui il canto della terza beatitudine si accompagna all’eliminazione della quarta ‘P’.”
Hollander, Robert. “The Letters on Dante’s Brow (Purg. 9.1-12 and 21.22-24).” Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America: posted January 31, 2002, at www.dantesociety.org > Publications > Electronic Journal (EBDSA).
Uses the second of his titular passages to re-open the question of whether only Dante-character has the seven P’s inscribed on his forehead in Purgatory, or whether this is a sign of the purgatorial condition shared by all the realm’s inhabitants; after reviewing numerous glosses by earlier commentators, concludes that “at no point in the poem is there any evidence that we are meant to believe that anyone but Dante wears these signs carved upon the forehead by the warder of Purgatory.”
Iannucci, Amilcare A. “The Americanization of Francesca: Dante on Broadway in the Nineteenth Century.” Dante Studies, 120 (2002), 53-82.
Richly detailed study of stage and early cinematic productions based on Inferno 5 between 1853 and 1908.
Kay, Richard. “Vitruvius and Dante’s Giants.” Dante Studies, 120 (2002), 17-34.
It has not hitherto been thought worthwhile to invoke the “canon of human proportions” derived from Vitruvius’ De architectura in connection with the giants in Inferno 31, because no complete copy of the work (as opposed to the summary in Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum maius) was known to have been available in Dante’s Italy. Now, however, several such copies have been identified, and their attested presence in Dante’s cultural situation licenses the reading of the giants episode that Kay goes on to conduct.
Manescalchi, Romano. “‘La tua citta’ (Inf. VI, 49).” Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America: posted August 2, 2002, at www.dantesociety.org > Publications > Electronic Journal (EBDSA).
Argues that Ciacco’s significant use of the second-person singular possessive pronoun (rather than the first-person plural, given that both he and Dante-personaggio are Florentines) reflects “un tirarsi indietro polemico” on the character’s part, connecting him with subsequent condemnations of Florence by Farinata, Brunetto Latini, and the Florentines of Inferno 16. Manescalchi concludes, speaking of Ciacco, that “[l]o spessore del personaggio forse è superiore a quanto creduto sinora.”
Marchesi, Simone. “Dante, Virgilio (e Agostino) di fronte ai sette candelabri (Purgatorio 29.43-57).” Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America: posted December 9, 2002, at www.dantesociety.org > Publications > Electronic Journal (EBDSA).
Cites Augustine’s discussion of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (De doctrina christiana 2. 7-9) as a previously unnoticed source that further illuminates the symbolic meaning of the seven candelabra in the procession depicted in Purg. 29.
Martinez, Ronald L. “Dante’s Forese, the Book of Job, and the Office of the Dead: A Note on Purgatorio 23.” Dante Studies, 120 (2002), 1-16.
Argues that “in the context of other passages of the Purgatorio regarding the importance of caring for the dead and mourning for loved ones, the pilgrim’s memory of grieving for Forese testifies to the poet-pilgrim’s own participation in offices of piety for the dead as they were practiced in late medieval Florence.”
Roglieri, Maria Ann. “Twentieth Century Musical Interpretations of the Anti-Music of Dante’s Inferno.” Italica 79 (2002), 149-168.
Schildgen, Brenda Deen. “Dante in India: Sri Aurobindo and Savitri.” Dante Studies, 120 (2002), 83-98.
Studies the connections between the work of Bengali poet Aurobindo (1872-1950) and that of Dante, and claims that “the case of Sri Aurobindo and Dante calls into question the great critical myth of materialist Europe versus religious india, for the major metaphysical poet of India in the twentieth century discovered in the European Dante the epitome of spiritual insight he sought for his own poetry.”
Seriacopi, Massimo. “Riflessioni politiche dantesche secondo due commenti inediti, del Trecento e del primo Quattrocento, al canto VI del Purgatorio.” Dante Studies, 120 (2002), 99-119.
Edits and introduces marginal and interlinear glosses from two Commedia manuscripts now in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, one dated 1418 (Pluteo 40. 24) and one datable to the last quarter of the fourteenth century (Pluteo 90 superiore 130).
Verdicchio, Massimo. “Dante at the End of the Millennium.” Italian Quarterly, 39 (2002): 61-84.
Warner, Lawrence. “The Sign of the Son: Crusading Imagery in the Cacciaguida Episode.” Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America: posted September 16, 2002, at www.dantesociety.org > Publications > Electronic Journal (EBDSA).
Disputing recent assertions that the Cacciaguida episode offers an “alternative” to crusading rhetoric, attempts to connect instances of such rhetoric with textual details of Paradiso in order to provide a more substantial context within which to read the episode.
Translations
Alighieri, Dante. The Inferno; A New Verse Translation. Translated by Michael Palma. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002.
Alighieri, Dante. The Inferno. Translated, edited, and with an introduction by Anthony Esolen; illustrations by Gustave Doré. New York: Modern Library, 2002.
Alighieri, Dante. The Inferno; A New Translation. Translated by Ciaran Carson. New York: Granta, 2002.
Alighieri, Dante. “Dante Alighieri (1265-1321): Three canzoni from the Convivio.” Translated by Douglas Lackey. The Philosophical Forum 33 (2002), 234-53.
REVIEWS
Applebaum, Stanley. Dante Alighieri: The “Divine Comedy”: Selected Cantos / La “Divina Commedia”: canti scelti (New York: Dover Publications, 2000).
Reviewed by: Fabian R. Alfie, in Italica, 79 (2002), 411-13.
Baranski, Zygmunt G. Dante e i segni. Saggi per una storia intellettuale di Dante Alighieri (Napoli: Liguori, 2001).
Reviewed by: Mary Watt, in Italica, 79 (2002), 259-60.
Simon Gilson, in Modern Language Review, 97 (2002), 450-51.
Bemrose, Stephen. A New Life of Dante (Exeter, UK: University of Exeter Press, 2000).
Reviewed by: Guy P. Raffa, in Speculum, 77 (2002), 471-73.
Capello. Giovanni. La dimensione macrotestuale. Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca (Ravenna: Longo, 1998).
Reviewed by Paul Colilli, in Italica, 79 (2002), 262-63.
Cornish, Alison. Reading Dante’s Stars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000).
Reviewed by: Richard Kay, in Speculum, 77 (2002), 500-01.
The Dante Encyclopedia. Edited by Richard Lansing (New York: Garland, 2000).
Reviewed by: Simone Marchesi, in Italian Quarterly, 39 (2002), 92-96.
De Poli, Luigi. La structure mnémonique de la “Divine Comédie” (Bern: Editions Peter Lang, 1999).
Reviewed by: John Kerr, in Speculum, 77 (2002), 163-64.
Pertile, Lino. La puttana e il gigante, Dal “Cantico dei Cantici” al Paradiso terrestre di Dante (Ravenna: Longo, 1998).
Reviewed by: Christian Moevs, in Speculum, 77 (2002), 970-72.
Raffa, Guy. Divine Dialectic: Dante’s Incarnational Poetry (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000).
Reviewed by: Peter Hawkins, in Speculum, 77 (2002), 972-74.
Robey, David. Sound and Structure in the Divine Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
Reviewed by: Steven Botterill, in Italica, 79 (2002), 118-20.