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The article explores the relations occurring between the global interpretation of Dante’s “Vita nuova” and the commentary to single passages of the text. The analysis contained in Luigi Valli’s book “The secret language of Dante and the Faithful of Love” (1930), where the author invites the reader to look at Medieval Italian poetry as an esoteric text, is compared with contemporary editions commented by M. Colombo (1993) and D. Pirovano (2015). The analysis of chosen passages from the text underlines Valli’s effort to find for each element in the text an explanation not only not contradicting, but also enriching the meaning of all the other details and of the global interpretation of the text. This kind of process often leaves open questions, stimulating the reader to go deeper in the text in order to find an answer. Commentary in contemporary editions differs from Valli's hermeneutic work since authors frequently do not help the reader to enter the whole text, even if they offer him plenty of materials. The main hurdle for an in-depth reading can be found in their continuous offering the reader de facto two parallel ways: biographical and symbolical. The final part of the article analyses examines the authors’ assertions about the essence of the “Vita nuova”. It shows how the gap between biographical and symbolical elements that were found in the commentary rises from the original confusion that lies at the bottom of the common interpretation of the “Vita nuova” as an itinerary from eros to agape. This statement does not find any textual confirmation in the book, where Dante on the contrary persists in using one term to indicate love – amore. Valli’s hypothesis, affirming that the only language able to speak about amore is a symbolical one, wins back a whole and united way to enter the book.

The study analyses Vrchlický’s short story Růže (Povídky ironické a sentimentalní, 1886) which is an original interpretation of a passage from Dante Alighieri’s Vita Nuova. It shows Vrchlický’s elaborate work with intertextual references to Dante’s literary work, which simultaneously construct a unique portrait of Dante’s life and work. The creation of this image was intentional as is showed in connection with Vrchlický’s poetry, where he often deals with Dante Alighieri as a subject.

Looking for the origins of the world machine as an idea, we can find them back to the 1st century BC, passing through several moments of universal history: in Science, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Descartes, Newton, among others; in Literature, Lucretius, Dante, Camões, and Drummond, who published the poem “The Machine of the World” for the first time in the 1951 book Claro Enigma. While Dante and Camões build the machine of the world as a sign of discovery and fascination, and while, for the Italian, the machine appears from the self-purification, and, for the Portuguese, as a reward for his achievements, Drummond is faced with the fantastic explanation of the whole, which deviates him from the wonder and character of conquest of a supreme good.

The verses of the Divine Comedy are imbued with theological sense, so much so that we can undoubtedly speak of Dante’s poetic theology, different – in form and in some contents – from the Scholastica, that is from the academic theology in the late Middle Ages. But if we want to consider the great poet as a theologian in any case, then we must do so in the same way as the fathers of the Church considered the authors of biblical texts to be true theologians. Indeed, Dante’s masterpiece is a rewriting of the Scriptures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ulysses, a multifaceted, cunning and industrious hero, confronted mythological figures as an epic hero (Odyssey), narrated his own death in the condition of a damned soul (Divine comedy) and was transformed into a literary expedient in the writings of Primo Levi, who used this character for represent dramatic experiences involving concentration camps. It is intended to investigate the place of Ulysses and, simultaneously, the role performed by literate culture in Levi's writings. Resuming, analyzing and propagating narratives committed to events that are often the object of historical negationism, as is the case with Shoah, can help us to realize the potential of literature (of testimony or not) and the need to use it in favor not only of the production of knowledge, but also of the production of effects, that it invites the reader to reflect on the prerogatives of his present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article proposes an edition essay on the unpublished Latin commentary of the first twenty-six cantos of Dante's Inferno present in ms.76 housed in the University Library of Cagliari. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in the academic and literary circles of tsarist Russia Dante's Divina Commedia was considered as a religious poem. The theological background underlying the work incurred ecclesiastical censorship, which made it challenging to publish its translations during Nicolay i's and Alexander ii's reigns. The mystic motifs and religious imagery found therein became later particularly popular with Silver Age authors. The reception of the Divina Commedia as a Christian text remained unchallenged in the early post-revolutionary Russian intellectual milieu; notably, the publishing house "Vsemirnaja Literatura" ("World Literature") was not able to justify the preparation of a new translation on ideological grounds. Until the early 1930s, in Soviet literature Dante Alighieri was a controversial figure within the subfield of literary translation; yet in 1946, Michail Lozinskij's translation of the Divina Commedia was awarded the Stalin Prize 1st class, which for the very first time was granted to a work of translation. The aim of this article is threefold: first it attempts to demonstrate the ways by which, beginning in the 1930s, Dante gradually came to occupy an important place in some printed media in the Soviet Union; second it investigates the circumstances under which a translation of the Divina Commedia was published, and lastly it emphasises that the religious content of Dante's poem -- once appealing to pre-revolutionary writers -- was eventually disregarded. The present research, which relies on documents from public and private archives, also traces the history of the preparation of the commentaries that in the 1930s and 1950s accompanied the Russian translations of the Divina Commedia; I shall argue that the editors Dmitrij Min and Michail Lozinskij adopted an approach that was to a certain extent similar to ecclesiastical censorship in tsarist Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper focuses on one of the most unique experiments in the history of television: A TV Dante, a fourteen-episode mini-series which aired between 1990 and 1991, partly directed by Tom Phillips and Peter Greenaway, and partly by Raúl Ruiz. We will analyze A TV Dante as an early attempt to explore the aesthetic potential of television seriality through the adoption of an avant-garde approach towards a fundamental work of the Western canon. We will begin by analyzing Phillips' illustrated Inferno as a work aimed at constructing a multi-layered and totalizing representation of the Inferno's own reception, of the history of mediality and of Phillips' own identity as an artist. We will then show how the poetics of Phillips' and Greenaway's A TV Dante are shaped by what we may call the aesthetics of the moving collage. We will finally focus on Rúiz's A TV Dante, which dismantles all coherent narrative structures, transforming Dante's Inferno into a series of powerful images, symbols and visions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

«Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life», Oscar Wilde said. Dante Gabriel Rossetti's translation of Dante Alighieri's poetry may be read as a seminal life experience, which sets the pattern and method of a process of imitative self-creation. One might say that Rossetti lived his Dante. This study would suggest that Rossetti inverted the traditional ut pictura poesis into a dynamics of writing, in poetry and painting alike, aiming at faithfulness not to the subject matter but to the "new life" of the emerging virtual self. Elizabeth Siddal was Rossetti's real-life Beatrice, and love transcended and transformed their lives into art. This study is an attempt to examine another form of two-way transmediality: between life and art, βιός and τέχνη, as the epitome of inspiration lived as pneumatic circulation or spiritual exaltation (Aristote, Agamben). In an attempt to suggest a different approach to Rossetti's life and work as life-creation, this paper pays all due respect to previous Rossetti scholarship, although it cannot afford the space to synthetize them all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy does not only illustrate the afterlife as a world theatre. In the course of its reception, this long narrative poem has also become an extraordinary media event. The 'verbal images' and the particularly imaginative visions designed by the Italian poet have resulted in a kind of iconic commentary on the Divine Comedy from the 14th century to the present. On the one hand, these examples of a highly intermedial reception of Dante's poem refer to the original text, but on the other hand they transpose rather freely the poem into the visual medium, which leads further and further away from the 'sensus spiritualis' of the Divine Comedy. The paper traces this long tradition on the basis of representative examples, such as John Flaxman's as well as Pitt Koch's illustrations or Salvador Dalí's watercolours commenting on the Divine Comedy, Inferno XVII. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detective Dante (2005-2007) is a comic book miniseries written by Lorenzo Bartoli and Roberto Recchioni. The eponymous hero, Henry Dante, is a violent policeman who, haunted by the ghost of his wife, moves from New York to the fictional 'Paradise City'. The series, composed by 24 issues divided in three cycles (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso), is noticeably influenced by the Divine Comedy both in its general outline and in some single episodes; nevertheless, it ultimately tells an original story. Through a close reading of the first issue as well as more general considerations about the series in its entirety, this paper investigates the intertextual relations between Detective Dante and the Divine Comedy. In the context of Dantean comics, this series exhibits a number of unusual traits: its references are thematical and structural, rather than graphic; it contaminates elements from the Commedia with a modern and noir setting, generating unique combinations; perhaps most importantly, it refutes the subservience to the literary source typical of many comics adaptations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expressions like 'intermedial Dante', 'Dante and intermediality' or 'Dante's reception across media' open up a field so immensely vast that one cannot even begin to describe it within the limits of a journal article. The notes that follow attempt to provide a point of departure for those who are just approaching the study of Dante's intermedial reception and an overview of the contributions gathered here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses Józef Ignacy Kraszewski's contribution to the development of Polish Dante studies - thanks to his lectures on Dante held in Krakow and Lviv in 1867 and later published under the title Studies on The Divine Comedy, 1869. The article presents other opinions of Dante scholars of the time and more or less critical reviews of the results of Kraszewski's research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Enthymema is the property of Enthymema, International Journal of Literary Criticism, Literary Theory & Philosophy of Literature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Written in response to the French and English critics of the 17th and 18th centuries, Ludovico Muratori published the Della Perfetta Poesia Italiana in 1706. In this work, the academic sought to defend Italian poetry, reviewing the main poets that wrote in his language. Based on Muratori’s writings, this paper intends to discuss the reception of Dante Alighieri in Italy in the beginning of the 18th century. We will first discuss some of the features and topics of the poetic art in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. We will then proceed to report some of the Muratori’s comments about the notion of ingenium, a key concept in poetic theory. Finally, we will discuss Muratori’s critique of Dante Alighieri’s poetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay uses Bruno Latour's model of diplomacy from An Inquiry into the Modes of Existence (AIME), alongside the networks/worknets of actor-network theory, to discuss how the medieval Italian writers Brunetto Latini and Dante Alighieri explore experiences of political exile in their vernacular writings. It examines how the two authors reflect on the pluralities of language and community that connect them to readerships both at home and in exile, focusing especially on Brunetto's Rettorica and Dante's Convivio. The essay investigates Brunetto's rhetorical doctrine and Dante's models of vernacular knowledge sharing by drawing on AIME's notion of the diplomat, whose measured speech helps "renegotiate the new frontiers of self and other." It is especially concerned with the modes of engagement Latour labels as the beings of politics [POL], law [LAW], and fiction [FIC]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This No. 1 issue of vol. 12 (2022) of SCIRES-IT (SCIentific RESearch and Information Technology), like the previous No. 2 issue of vol. 11 (2021), collects interesting articles on Cultural and Environmental Heritage and the application of various innovative techniques and technologies. It also hosts some selected works on color techniques and two other contributions on innovative projects on Dante and the Divine Comedy carried out on the occasion of Dante's 700th anniversary. At the same time of the publication of both issues, in line with SCIRES-IT's Manifesto and Editorial Project, "Eco-sustainable Open Access Publications", an environmental restoration project was initiated, and largely implemented, by planting local ecotypes of native species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the challenges and opportunities provided by transdisciplinarity from the point of view of medieval literature. This approach is situated within the universal framework of General Education or Liberal Arts, which in turn derives its essential inspiration from medieval and ancient learning. On the one hand, the various recent efforts to work transdisciplinarily are outlined and discussed; on the other, a selection of medieval narratives and one modern German novel plus one eighteenth-century ode are examined to illustrate how a transdisciplinary approach could work productively in order to innovate the principles of the modern university or all academic learning, putting the necessary tools of twenty-first century epistemology into the hands of the new generation. The specific angle pursued here consists of drawing from the world of medieval philosophy and literature as a new launching pad for future endeavors.

The essay is intended to draw attention to some Dante’s references in Regole grammaticali della volgar lingua by Giovan Francesco Fortunio: in these first surveys on Proemio the paper mentions the possibility that Dante’s Convivio could represent a theoretical reference work for the definition of the assumptions of Fortunio’s grammar.

Abbracciando la questione dell’utilità dell’italianistica nello studio comparato delle lettere, l’osservazione riguarda il problema dell’irradiarsi della cultura italiana nella civiltà europea attraverso temi e immagini comuni, la sua funzione ispiratrice per il corpus transnazionale di generi e di modelli artistici, e infine, l’intervento si riferisce anche al significato della letteratura e dell’arte italiana per la memoria culturale contemporanea, in particolare quella polacca, anch’essa ispirata da Dante.

This article demonstrates that it is possible to find common procedures in both Augusto de Campos and Machado de Assis through the choices made in their translations of cantos from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, which shows that translation-art, a term coined by Augusto de Campos, was also practiced by Machado de Assis in the nineteenth century. The article also aims at broadening our understanding of Machado de Assis as a translator by presenting the translation procedures he had adopted by the end of his translation career in a text that is perhaps his translation masterpiece.

Can world peace come about through a world federation of governments? Is growing agreement and appreciation for, throughout the world, the doctrine of equal human rights inevitable? Such questions are raised by Mortimer Adler in How to Think about War and Peace. Adler argues in this book that both are possible, and in doing so he argues that the insights of liberal contract thinkers, particularly Immanuel Kant, are essentially true. Kant argues that each person has the capacity to discover within himself the foundation for human rights because they are self-evident. It follows that over time inequalities and prejudices will disappear, and people will gain the freedom to advance the cause of peace. About this account of the possibility of world peace I ask the question: is it indeed reasonable? For if it is reasonable, it is not reasonable for the reasons that would have been advanced by Aristotle or Plato or their medieval followers. In older political philosophy it is agreement about the unchanging truth of things that can bring peace. To seek the unchanging truth of things, philosophical speculation about God and things divine, is the highest human activity. It is that end to which life in this world is directed, and upon which human flourishing depends. Freedom depends upon our openness to unchanging eternal truth, even more than self-evident rights; the exercise of speculative reasoning allows for political discourse and an open society.

Beginning with a verse in Bob Dylan’s “Tangled up in Blue” that details two characters reading a book of poems by an unnamed Italian poet from the thirteenth century, the direct and ‘diffused’ influence of Dante upon the great American songwriter and Nobel Laurate is investigated. Further, a possibly intentional narrative similarity is proposed between the story told in “Tangled up in Blue” and the one Francesca tells in Inferno 5. After exploring the available evidence regarding the explicit influence of Dante’s work upon the songwriter, and other hypotheses related to the verse from this song in particular, sources for Dante’s diffused influence upon Dylan are discussed. With often enigmatic lyrics and elusive statements, this latter point regarding Dante’s abundant presence in literary works we know Dylan read confirms the role Dante plays—in one way or another—within Dylan’s lyrical oeuvre, even if the identity of that thirteenth century Italian poet in the song will likely remain a mystery.

La relació entre Dante i Radiohead ha estat intensa i sorprenentment duradora al llarg dels anys: des del marc conceptual de OK Computer (1997) fins a l'experimentalisme de Amnesiac (2001), tenint en compte els motius de Dolce Stil Novo en In Rainbows (2007). La recerca tractarà de desentranyar la imaginació del cantautor dins de la terra literària del poeta florentí, explorant els llindars i paratextos utilitzats per a transmetre una modernització de la Comèdia. Una original interpretació d'algunes de les obres més aclamades de Radiohead, entre elles 2+2=5 (El Calentorro - L'Ignacio) i Cançó de la Piràmide, revelarà la profunditat - també filològica i intertextual - d'aquesta operació cultural que va des del compromís social del Poeta Suprem fins a un viatge sobrehumà al Cel "en un petit pot de rems" a través d'una guia especial que condueix a l'Amor mateix.

Representing a Renewal: Modernity in French Translations of Dante’s Vita nova The young Dante Alighieri’s “little book” Vita nuova (or Vita nova or New Life), has achieved an unprecedented editorial success since the 19th century. In fact, five translations into French were published in less than 70 years, showing the value that this “minor” work of the medieval Florentine poet acquired in this period. As a matter of fact, Dante’s medieval lifetime assumed alternately romantic, melancholic, decadent and symbolist nuances and embodied the emerging ideal of life as a work of art. This “life” depicted in Dante’s book was defined by an adjective, sometimes given in its Latin form nova, sometimes Italianized as nuova, which easily started the contemporary and vivid debate on modernity, where youth and novelty became salient features.

Por meio da análise de dois casos da Divina Comédia de Dante Alighieri ( 1998): o de Pier Della Vigna (canto XIII do Inferno) e o de Catão de Útica (de- signado a ser guardião do Purgatório, canto I), o presente estudo visa verificar de que maneira e a partir de quais preceitos filosófico - teológicos, esses do is per- sonagens suicidas são representados por uma das obras - primas da literatura universal. No primeiro caso, segundo o dantólogo Vittorio Sermonti (2018), o poeta é coerente com os ensinamentos de São Tomás de Aquino, expoente má- ximo do período da filosof ia Escolástica, em que os que se auto - aniquilam traem a Deus, pois Este, no momento da criação, concederia ao homem a graça de lhe confiar, em primeiríssima instância, a própria vida. Daí por que os suicidas se- jam condenados à cisão corpo - alma, no círculo dos violentos da tortuosa selva infernal. No segundo, Erich Auerbach (1989), observa que Catão – embora sui- cida e pagão – tenha sido absolvido por Dante, sendo designado ao Purgatório, porque reuniria todas as características capazes de fazer dele uma extr aordiná- ria “figura” de Cristo, já que sua morte voluntária seria heroica, ao escolher o martírio para resgatar Roma da escravidão de César.

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Copyright of Italian Studies in Southern Africa / Studi d'Italianistica nell'Africa Australe is the property of Association of Professional Italianists / Associazione Professori d'Italiano and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)