Dante and the Blessed Virgin

Ralph Mcinerny

Description

Dante and the Blessed Virgin is distinguished philosopher Ralph McInerny's eloquent reading of one of western literature's most famous works by a Catholic writer. The book provides Catholic readers new to Dante's The Divine Comedy (or Commedia) with a concise companion volume. McInerny argues that the Blessed Virgin Mary is the key to Dante. She is behind the scenes at the very beginning of the Commedia, and she is found at the end in the magnificent closing cantos of the Paradiso. McInerny also discusses Dante's Vita Nuova, where Mary is present as the object of the young Beatrice's devotion.

McInerny draws from a diverse group of writers throughout this book, including Plato, Aristotle, St. Bernard, St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas, and George Santayana, among others. It is St. Thomas, however, to whom McInerny most often turns, and this book also provides an accessible introduction to Thomistic moral philosophy focusing on the appetites, the ordering of goods, the distinction between the natural and the supernatural orders, the classification of capital vices and virtues, and the nature of the theological virtues. This engagingly written book will serve as a source of inspiration and devotion for anyone approaching Dante's work for the first time as well as those who value the work of Ralph McInerny.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie de la religion
• Medieval
• Religious
• HISTORY
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• St. Bernard
• Colegio Mayor Universitario Santo Tomás de Aquino
• Edad Media
• Thomas Aquinas
• Beatrice
• Purgatorio
• Mary (mother of Jesus)
• Divine Comedy
• Middle Ages
• Aristotle
• Plato
• Paradiso
• Béatrice (homonymie)
• The Divine Comedy
• Dante Alighieri
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268086794
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

DA N T E a n d t H e  BL E S S E D V I RG I N

DA N T E and tHe BLESSED VIRGIN

R A L P H M c I N E R N Y

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

Copyright © 2010 by University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu All Rights Reserved

Manufaçtured in the United States of Ameriça

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

MçInerny, Ralph M. Dante and the Blessed Virgin / Ralph MçInerny. p. çm. Inçludes bibliographiçal referençes and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-268-03517-4 (çloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-268-03517-2 (çloth : alk. paper) 1. Dante Alighieri, 1265–1321—Critiçism and interpretation. 2. Dante Alighieri, 1265–1321—Charaçters—Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint. 3. Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint—In literature. I. Title. PQ4419.M2M35 2010 851'.1—dç22  2009041749

his book is printed on recycled paper.

For

CatHy, Mary, Anne, Nancy, BetH, Amy, Terrill, Ellen, Clare, Lucy, Rita, and Vivian

Sed çerte ad hoç opus nimiam omnino fateor esse meam insuîçientiam, propter nimiam materiam inçomprehensibilitatem, propter nimiam sçientiae meae tenuitatem, propter nimiam linguae meae indignitatem, et propter nimiam personae laudandae laudem et laudabilitatem.

Certainly I must çonfess my utter insuîçiençy to write this book—beçause of the matter, diîçult of çomprehension; beçause of the thinness of my knowledge; beçause of the unworthiness of my syle; and beçause of the profound praise due the person to be honored.

—Speculum Beatae Mariae Virginis, prologus

C O N T E N T S

Prologue ix

Note on Translations, Editions, and Abbreviations xv

O N E A New Life Begins 1

T W O In the Midst of My Days 13

T H R E E e Seven Storey Mountain 35

F O U R Queen of Heaven 101

Epilogue 143

Notes 145

Index 155

P R O L O G U E

One of the marvels of art is that our appreçiation of it does not re- quire that we share the outlook of the artist. ere must, of çourse, be sympathy, and more than sympathy, with the protagonist and with his manner of viewing his plight. A reader in the third millennium çan be drawn into a Greek tragedy and experiençe the anguish of a çharaçter whose çulture is utterly alien to his own. Explanations of this have been advançed. It requires a willing suspension of disbelief, a dismissal of the dierençes, and then immersion in a plot involv- ing deçisions almost wholly foreign in their weight and gravitas to those that engage the latter-day reader.Almostwholly foreign. What çounterpart in our times çould there be,paceFreud, to the dilemma of Oedipus? Nonetheless, it may well be said that beneath the unde- niable strangeness is the note of familiarity, a familiarity due to our çommon humanity. e great imaginative works bring about in us a sense of aînity with agents living in çultural çirçumstançes long sinçe gone.  But we need not appeal only to the çhronologiçally distant. When we read Conrad’seart of Darkness, the mesmerizing voiçe of the narrator establishes a rapport with suçh a one as Kurtz, a Kurtz who, alive or dead, we çould never be. Moreover, we grasp the çontrast be- tween a Europe that no longer exists and a çolonial Afriça that is no more. It seems not to matter at all that those referents no longer exist.

ix