Vertical Readings in Dante's Comedy

George Corbett, Heather Webb

Description

Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy is a reappraisal of the poem by an international team of thirty-four scholars. Each vertical reading analyses three same-numbered cantos from the three canticles: Inferno i, Purgatorio i and Paradiso i; Inferno ii, Purgatorio ii and Paradiso ii; etc. Although scholars have suggested before that there are correspondences between same-numbered cantos that beg to be explored, this is the first time that the approach has been pursued in a systematic fashion across the poem.

This collection in three volumes offers an unprecedented repertoire of vertical readings for the whole poem. As the first volume exemplifies, vertical reading not only articulates unexamined connections between the three canticles but also unlocks engaging new ways to enter into core concerns of the poem. The three volumes thereby provide an indispensable resource for scholars, students and enthusiasts of Dante.

The volume has its origin in a series of thirty-three public lectures held in Trinity College, the University of Cambridge (2012-2016) which can be accessed at the Cambridge Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy website.

Sujets

• Commedia
• Italian poetry
• Italian literature
• Purgatorio
• Comparative
• Paradiso
• Inferno
• Dante Alighieri

Informations

• Publié par: Open Book Publishers
• Date de parution: 04 décembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783743612
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 7 Mo

Extrait

VERTICAL READINGS IN DANTE’S COMEDY


Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy
Volume 3
edited by George Corbett and Heather Webb






http://www.openbookpublishers.com
© 2017 George Corbett and Heather Webb. Copyright of individual chapters is maintained by the chapter’s author.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:
George Corbett and Heather Webb (eds.), Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’: Volume 3 . Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0119
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ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-358-2
ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-359-9
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ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-78374-361-2
ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-78374-362-9
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0119
Cover image: Fra Angelico (circa 1395–1455), The Last Judgement circa 1450, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. Photo by Anagoria https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1450_Fra_Angelico_Last_Judgement_anagoria.JPG , public domain.
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Contents
Acknowledgements
vii
Editions Followed and Abbreviations
ix
Notes on the Contributors
xi
Introduction
George Corbett and Heather Webb
1
23.
Our Bodies, Our Selves: Crucified, Famished, and Nourished
Peter S. Hawkins
11
24.
True Desire, True Being, and Truly Being a Poet
Janet Soskice
31
25.
Changes
George Ferzoco
51
26.
The Poetics of Trespassing
Elena Lombardi
71
27.
Containers and Things Contained
Ronald L. Martinez
89
28.
Cosmographic Cartography of the ‘Perfect’ Twenty-Eights
Theodore J. Cachey Jr.
111
29.
Truth, Untruth and the Moment of Indwelling
John Took
139
30.
Brooks, Melting Snow, River of Light
Piero Boitani
155
31.
Beauty and the Beast
Catherine Pickstock
173
32.
Particular Surprises: Faces, Cries and Transfiguration
David F. Ford
197
33 and 34. Ice, Fire and Holy Water
Rowan Williams
217
Bibliography
229
Index of Names
243


Acknowledgements
We owe a particular debt to the wonderful community of students, academics and members of the public in Cambridge who have supported the lecture series, ‘Cambridge Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy ’ (2012–2016). We are also grateful to those who, following the series online, have contributed to this scholarly endeavour and experiment. The project has benefited from broad collaboration from the outset. Each public lecture was preceded by a video-conferenced workshop between the Universities of Cambridge, Leeds and Notre Dame on one of the three cantos in the vertical reading.
There are many people who have helped us during the different stages of the project. We are deeply grateful to you all and we regret that, in these brief acknowledgements, we can only thank some of you by name. Apart from the contributors to this volume, we would like to thank Pierpaolo Antonello, Elizabeth Corbett, Mary Corbett, Robert Gordon, Ronald Haynes, Claire Honess, Robin Kirkpatrick, Anne Leone , Vittorio Montemaggi, Helena Phillips-Robins, Federica Pich, Chiara Sbordoni, Nan Taplin, and Matthew Treherne. Finally, we would like to extend our particular thanks to Simon Gilson for his support, advice and encouragement on this project from its inception.
The master and fellows of Trinity College generously hosted the series and offered accommodation to the speakers. The series would not have been possible without the generosity of our sponsors: Trinity College; Selwyn College; the Italian Department, University of Cambridge; the Cambridge Italian Research Network (CIRN); and Keith Sykes.
Open Book Publishers has enabled us to build upon the growing public audience of the video-lectures by making all the volumes free to read online. We would like to thank especially Alessandra Tosi, Bianca Gualandi, and Lucy Barnes for their work in enabling an excellent peer review process, their meticulous comments on the manuscript, and for their help in preparing the bibliography and index, as well as Corin Throsby for the cover design.


Editions Followed and Abbreviations
A. Dante
Unless otherwise stated, the editions of Dante’s works may be found in: Le Opere di Dante , ed. by F. Brambilla Ageno, G. Contini, D. De Robertis, G. Gorni, F. Mazzoni, R. Migliorini Fissi, P. V. Mengaldo, G. Petrocchi, E. Pistelli, P. Shaw, and rev. by D. De Robertis and G. Breschi (Florence: Polistampa, 2012).
A.1 Vernacular works
Inf.
Inferno
Purg.
Purgatorio
Par.
Paradiso
Conv.
Convivio
VN.
Vita nova
A.2 Latin works
DVE.
De vulgari eloquentia
Mon.
Monarchia
Questio
Questio de aqua et terra
Epist.
Epistole
Ecl .
Egloge
B. English translations
Unless otherwise stated, the translations of Dante are adapted from these readily available and literally translated English editions:
B.1 Vernacular works
The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri , ed. and trans. by Robert M. Durling; introduction and notes by Ronald L. Martinez and Robert M. Durling, 3 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996–2011).
The Banquet , trans. with introduction and notes by Christopher Ryan (Saratoga, CA: Anma Libri, 1989).
La Vita Nuova , trans. by Mark Musa (Bloomington, IN and London: Indiana University Press, 1962).
Dante’s Lyric Poetry , trans. by Kenelm Foster and Patrick Boyde, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967).
B.2 Latin works
De vulgari eloquentia , ed. and trans. by Steven Botterill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
Monarchy , ed. and trans. by Prue Shaw. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
The Letters of Dante , trans. by Paget J. Toynbee, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966); for the political epistles, however, Dante Alighieri: Four Political Letters , trans. by Claire Honess (London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2007).
Dante and Giovanni del Virgilio , trans. by Philip H. Wicksteed and Edmund G. Gardner (New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1970).
In most instances, the translation [in square brackets] follows the original passage. Where the sense of the original passage is clear from the main text, the original passage (in parentheses) follows the paraphrase. Discussion is always with regard to the passage in the original.


Notes on the Contributors
Piero Boitani teaches Comparative Literature at ‘La Sapienza’ and the Gregorian University, Rome, and at the University of Italian Switzerland, Lugano. His books include The Shadow of Ulysses: Figures of a Myth (1994), The Bible and its Rewritings (1999), Winged Words: Flights in Poetry and History (2007), and The Gospel According to Shakespeare (2013). He won the Feltrinelli Prize for Literary Criticism in 2002, the De Sanctis Prize in 2010, and the Balzan Prize for Comparative Literature in 2016.
Theodore J. Cachey Jr. is Professor of Italian at the University of Notre Dame. He specializes in Italian Medieval and Renaissance literature, especially Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. He has authored and edited several books, as well as numerous essays and book chapters. He is founder and co-editor (with Zygmunt G. Barański and Christian Moevs) of the William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante and Medieval Italian Literature.
George Corbett is Lecturer in Theology, Imagination and the Arts in the School of Divinity, University of St Andrews. Prior to this, he was Junior Research Fellow of Trinity College and Affiliated Lecturer of the Department of Italian, University of Cambridge. He is the author of Dante and Epicurus: A Dualistic Vision of Secular and Spiritual Fulfilment (2013), and was the co-organiser, with