Search

This article attempts to show how Dante Alighieri, in defining the image of humankind as inspired by values of innocence and harmony in an earthly paradise, draws a condition of defective beatitude just before a burst of even superior joy. So in the aim of outlining a beatitudo huius vitae still valid for a Christian Eden, the poet appeals to the text of Ovid's Fasti through which in many occurrences he is building a harmonic image of human living that, in the shadow of forebears' sin, only a future intervention of Grace will dispose for Dante's words. Through exact allusive quotations, Dante opposes to the absolute time of Eden the idea of an imperfect time, tied to the pattern of an allhuman knowledge, which Dante himself connected to the teaching and character of Brunetto Latini. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional image of Dante's Comedy is one of an organic whole conceived by the poet from its outset. Yet recent studies have revealed that the writing and spread of the canti of his poem were particularly subject to and influenced by the conventions of textual transmission in the early fourteenth century. Once considered more legendary than authentic literary history, Giovanni Boccaccio's reports on the composition and early circulation of Dante's Comedìa are reassessed in light of these recent studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]