Dante's Multitudes

Teodolinda Barolini

Description

A critical addition to Dante studies that illuminates the poet’s disruptive impact within Italian culture and foregrounds Barolini’s marked contribution to the field.

In Dante’s Multitudes, the newest addition to the renowned William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante and Medieval Italian Literature, Teodolinda Barolini gathers sixteen of her essays exploring the revolutionary character of Dante’s work. Embracing the Vita Nuova, De vulgari eloquentia, Convivio, Epistles, Monarchia, and Rime, and of course the Divine Comedy, these essays together feature the many facets of the poet’s enduring legacy.

Dante’s Multitudes showcases the poet’s embrace of multiplicity, difference, and disruption in five parts, each with its own general focus. It begins with an introductory essay on method and the use of history in order to set the stage for the expert analyses that follow. Barolini treats various topics in Dante studies, including sexualized and racialized others in the Comedy, Dante’s unorthodox conception of limbo, his celebration of metaphysical difference within the paradoxical unity of the Paradiso, and his use of Aristotle to think disruptively about wealth and society, on the one hand, and about love and compulsion, on the other. The volume closes with a final meditation on method and “critical philology,” highlighting the ways in which philology has been used uncritically to bolster fallacious hermeneutical narratives about one of the West’s most celebrated and influential poets. Barolini once again opens avenues for further research in this compelling collection of essays. This volume will be of interest to scholars in Dante studies, Italian studies, and medieval and Renaissance literature more broadly.

The most faraway and exotic peoples referred to in the Commedia, and always coordinated as though to acknowledge their similar otherness, are the Indians and the Ethiopians, as black Africans were called. The coordination of Indians and Ethiopians may have been suggested to Dante by Aristotle’s On Sophistical Refutations, chapter 5, which I propose as the source of Dante’s practice in “Dante Squares the Circle: Textual and Philosophical Affinities of Monarchia and Paradiso,” in this volume. Later on in the very canto that challenges divine justice with respect to the man born on the banks of the Indus we learn that there will be Ethiopians nearer to God at the Judgment Day than many Christians:

Ma vedi: molti gridan “Cristo, Cristo!”,

che saranno in giudicio assai men prope

a lui, che tal che non conosce Cristo;

e tai Cristian dannerà l’Etïòpe,

quando si partiranno i due collegi,

l’uno in etterno ricco e l’altro inòpe.

(Par. 19.106–11)

[But there are many who now cry “Christ! Christ!”

who at the Final Judgment shall be far

less close to Him than one who knows not Christ;

the Ethiopian will shame such Christians

when the two companies are separated,

the one forever rich, the other poor.]

We can contrast Dante’s provocative remark on the possibility of saved Ethiopians, all the more provocative for coming in a heaven in which he has gone out of his way to draw attention to an exotic saved figure from the deep eastern past, Ripheus the Trojan, to Strickland’s contention that “Ethiopians and demons are . . . dramatically allied in pictorial works of art.” To make this point she offers an image of Blemmyai, one of the monstrous races, and Ethiopians en route to Antichrist, and an image of an Ethiopian, Saracen, and Jew adoring Antichrist (fig. 2.14).

To create a richer context for the understanding of “Ethiopian” in Dante’s Italy (an Italy that did not know Greek and that had not yet rediscovered Herodotus and Heliodorus’s Aethiopica), we can consider three Italian references slightly later than the Commedia. In the Latin life of San Pier Pettinaio da Siena (d. 1289), written by the Franciscan Pietro da Montarone in 1330, Ethiopians are explicitly linked to demons: “When he came near the church he saw two demons, in the horrifying shape of Ethiopians.” In Fazio degli Uberti’s Dittamondo (mid-fourteenth century), Ethiopians are a “gente bestiale e senza legge” (a bestial people without laws), entirely given over to the “piacer di Venere” (pleasures of Venus); while in Boccaccio’s Corbaccio (perhaps as late as 1360s) female lust is so insatiable that it stoops even to the black Ethiopian: “La loro lussuria è focosa e insaziabile, e per questo non patisce né numero né elezione: il fante, il lavoratore, il mugnaio e ancora il nero etiopo, ciascuno è buono, sol che possa” (Women’s lust is fiery and insatiable and for this reason knows no discrimination or bounds: the servant, the workman, the miller, even the black Ethiopian, each is good provided he is up to it [par. 224]). All of these references are a far cry from “tai Cristian dannerà l’Etïòpe” of Par. 19.109. Whether one takes the passage in Paradiso 19 restrictively, to mean that the virtuous but damned heathens will castigate the damned Christians who neglected to hear the gospel and to be saved, or—as I prefer—expansively, to mean that through their meritorious works pagans (like Ripheus!) may yet be saved, in either case Dante’s passage is one that dignifies the Ethiopian.

The various forms of sympathy toward the other that we have considered could be arranged on a spectrum: from the profound psychological identification that causes Dante to faint after meeting Francesca, to his assertive dignifying of the Ethiopian and his ability actively to imagine the salvation of sodomites and pagans, to his demonstrable lack of interest in stereotyping ethnic groups different from his own, such as the Jews. Behind these various forms of sympathy toward the other is an imagination captivated by difference, not only by the “gloria di colui che tutto move” (The glory of the One who moves all things [Par. 1.1]) but also by the process whereby that glory is differentiated “in una parte più e meno altrove” (in one part more and in another less [Par. 1.3]). When Dante reaches the end of his vision and is granted the sight of the universe bound together in one volume, what entrances him is not plain oneness but all that multiplicity somehow contained and unified. His heart is set on seeing and knowing that multiplicity, an otherness that is still stubbornly present in the poem’s penultimate word: God is the love that moves the sun and the other stars—“l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle” (Par. 33.145; emphasis mine). Much has been written about the transcendent stelle with which the Commedia ends; let us give due weight as well to the adjective that modifies those stars, the poem’s penultimate word, altre. Dante may believe in a transcendent One, but his One is indelibly characterized by the multiplicity, difference, and sheer otherness embodied in the “altre stelle”—an otherness by which he is still unrepentantly captivated in his poem’s last breath.

Note on Editions and Translations

Preface

Part I. Social and Cultural Difference

1. “Only Historicize”: History, Material Culture (Food, Clothes, Books), and the Future of Dante Studies

2. Dante’s Sympathy for the Other, or the Non-Stereotyping Imagination: Sexual and Racialized Others in the Commedia

3. Contemporaries Who Found Heterodoxy in Dante: Cecco d’Ascoli, Boccaccio, and Benvenuto da Imola on Fortuna and Inferno 7.89

4. Dante’s Limbo and Equity of Access: Non-Christians, Children, and Criteria of Inclusion and Exclusion, from Inferno 4 to Paradiso 32

Part II. Metaphysical Difference

5. Toward a Dantean Theology of Eros: From Dante’s Lyrics to the Paradiso

6. Amicus eius: Dante and the Semantics of Friendship

7. Paradiso and the Mimesis of Ideas: Realism versus Reality

8. Dante Squares the Circle: Textual and Philosophical Affinities of Monarchia and Paradiso (Solutio Distinctiva in Mon. 3.4.17 and Par. 4.94–114)

9. Difference as Punishment or Difference as Pleasure: From the Tower of Babel in De vulgari eloquentia to the Death of Babel in Paradiso 26

Part III. Aristotelian Disruptions 1: Wealth and Society

10. Aristotle’s Mezzo, Courtly Misura, and Dante’s Canzone Le dolci rime: Humanism, Ethics, and Social Anxiety

11. Dante and Wealth, Between Aristotle and Cortesia: From the Moral Canzoni Le dolci rime and Poscia ch’Amor through Convivio to Inferno 6 and 7

Part IV. Aristotelian Disruptions 2: Love and Compulsion

12. Archeology of the Donna Gentile: The Importance of Disconversion in Conversion Narratives

13. Dante and Cecco d’Ascoli on Love and Compulsion: The Epistle to Cino, Io sono stato, the Third Heaven

14. Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete, A Dramatization of “utrum de passione in passionem possit anima transformari”: Conflict, Compulsion, Consent, Conversion

Part V. Critical Philology and Italian Cultural History

15. The Case of the Lost Original Ending of Dante’s Vita Nuova: More Notes Toward a Critical Philology

16. Critical Philology and Dante’s Rime

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• the Arts
• Medieval
• HISTORY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Edad Media
• Literature
• Renaissance literature
• Middle Ages
• Italian
• Christianity
• European
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268202927
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Dante’s Multitudes
THE WILLIAM AND KATHERINE DEVERS SERIES IN DANTE AND MEDIEVAL ITALIAN LITERATURE
Zygmunt G. Baran´ski, Theodore J. Cachey, Jr., and Christian Moevs, editors
RECENT TITLES
VOLUME 21
Dante’s Multitudes: History, Philosophy, Method
•Teodolinda Barolini
VOLUME 20
Dante’s “Other Works”: Assessments and Interpretations
• Edited by Zygmunt G. Barański and Theodore J. Cachey, Jr.
VOLUME 19
Liturgical Song and Practice in Dante’s Commedia
• Helena Phillips-Robins
VOLUME 18
Dante and Violence: Domestic, Civic, and Cosmic
• Brenda Deen Schildgen
VOLUME 17
A Boccaccian Renaissance: Essays on the Early Modern Impact of Giovanni Boccaccio and His Works
• edited by Martin Eisner and David Lummus
VOLUME 16
The Portrait of Beatrice: Dante, D.G. Rossetti, and the Imaginary Lady
• Fabio A. Camilletti
VOLUME 15
Boccaccio’s Corpus: Allegory, Ethics, and Vernacularity
• James C. Kriesel
VOLUME 14
Meditations on the Life of Christ: The Short Italian Text
• Sarah McNamer
VOLUME 13
Interpreting Dante: Essays on the Traditions of Dante Commentary
• edited by Paola Nasti and Claudia Rossignoli
VOLUME 12
Freedom Readers: The African American Reception of Dante Alighieri and the Divine Comedy
• Dennis Looney
VOLUME 11
Dante’s Commedia: Theology as Poetry
• edited by Vittorio Montemaggi and Matthew Treherne
VOLUME 10
Petrarch and Dante: Anti-Dantism, Metaphysics, Tradition
• edited by Zygmunt G. Baran´ ski and Theodore J. Cachey, Jr.
VOLUME 9
The Ancient Flame: Dante and the Poets
• Winthrop Wetherbee
VOLUME 8
Accounting for Dante: Urban Readers and Writers in Late Medieval Italy
• Justin Steinberg
VOLUME 7
Experiencing the Afterlife: Soul and Body in Dante and Medieval Culture
• Manuele Gragnolati
VOLUME 6
Understanding Dante
• John A. Scott
VOLUME 5
Dante and the Grammar of the Nursing Body
• Gary P. Cestaro
VOLUME 4
The Fiore and the Detto d’Amore: A Late 13th-Century Italian Translation of the Roman de la Rose, Attributable to Dante
• Translated, with introduction and notes, by Santa Casciani and Christopher Kleinhenz
VOLUME 3
The Design in the Wax: The Structure of the Divine Comedy and Its Meaning
• Marc Cogan
DANTE’S MULTITUDES

History, Philosophy, Method
TEODOLINDA BAROLINI
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
Copyright © 2022 by the University of Notre Dame
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ABOUT THE WILLIAM AND KATHERINE DEVERS SERIES IN DANTE AND MEDIEVAL ITALIAN LITERATURE
The William and Katherine Devers Program in Dante Studies at the University of Notre Dame supports rare book acquisitions in the university’s John A. Zahm Dante collections, funds an annual visiting professorship in Dante studies, and supports electronic and print publication of scholarly research in the field. In collaboration with the Medieval Institute at the university, the Devers program initiated a series dedicated to the publication of the most significant current scholarship in the field of Dante studies. In 2011 the scope of the series was expanded to encompass thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italian literature.
In keeping with the spirit that inspired the creation of the Devers program, the series takes Dante and medieval Italian literature as focal points that draw together the many disciplines and lines of inquiry that constitute a cultural tradition without fixed boundaries. Accordingly, the series hopes to illuminate this cultural tradition within contemporary critical debates in the humanities by reflecting both the highest quality of scholarly achievement and the greatest diversity of critical perspectives.
The series publishes works from a wide variety of disciplinary viewpoints and in diverse scholarly genres, including critical studies, commentaries, editions, reception studies, translations, and conference proceedings of exceptional importance. The series enjoys the support of an international advisory board composed of distinguished scholars and is published regularly by the University of Notre Dame Press. The Dolphin and Anchor device that appears on publications of the Devers series was used by the great humanist, grammarian, editor, and typographer Aldus Manutius (1449–1515), in whose 1502 edition of Dante (second issue) and all subsequent editions it appeared. The device illustrates the ancient proverb Festina lente, “Hurry up slowly.”
Zygmunt G. Baran´ ski, Theodore J. Cachey, Jr., and Christian Moevs, editors
ADVISORY BOARD
Albert Russell Ascoli, Berkeley
Teodolinda Barolini, Columbia
Piero Boitani, Rome
Patrick Boyde, Cambridge
Alison Cornish, New York University
Claire Honess, Leeds
Christopher Kleinhenz, Wisconsin
Giuseppe Ledda, Bologna
Simone Marchesi, Princeton
Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale
Lino Pertile, Harvard
John A. Scott, Western Australia
I dedicate this book about a scientific humanist
to a humanistic scientist:
Jim, best of husbands,
best of fathers.
CONTENTS
Note on Editions and Translations
List of Abbreviations
Preface PART I Social and Cultural Difference One “Only Historicize”: History, Material Culture (Food, Clothes, Books), and the Future of Dante Studies Two Dante’s Sympathy for the Other, or the Non-Stereotyping Imagination: Sexual and Racialized Others in the Commedia Three Contemporaries Who Found Heterodoxy in Dante: Cecco d’Ascoli, Boccaccio, and Benvenuto da Imola on Fortuna and Inferno 7.89 Four Dante’s Limbo and Equity of Access: Non-Christians, Children, and Criteria of Inclusion and Exclusion, from Inferno 4 to Paradiso 32 PART II Metaphysical Difference Five Toward a Dantean Theology of Eros: From Dante’s Lyrics to the Paradiso Six Amicus eius : Dante and the Semantics of Friendship Seven Paradiso and the Mimesis of Ideas: Realism versus Reality Eight Dante Squares the Circle: Textual and Philosophical Affinities of Monarchia and Paradiso ( Solutio Distinctiva in Mon . 3.4.17 and Par . 4.94–114) Nine Difference as Punishment or Difference as Pleasure: From the Tower of Babel in De vulgari eloquentia to the Death of Babel in Paradiso PART III Aristotelian Disruptions 1: Wealth and Society Ten Aristotle’s Mezzo , Courtly Misura , and Dante’s Canzone “Le dolci rime”: Humanism, Ethics, and Social Anxiety Eleven Dante and Wealth, Between Aristotle and Cortesia : From the Moral Canzoni “Le dolci rime” and “Poscia ch’Amor” through Convivio to Inferno 6 and 7 PART IV Aristotelian Disruptions 2: Love and Compulsion Twelve Archeology of the Donna Gentile : The Importance of Disconversion in Conversion Narratives Thirteen Dante and Cecco d’Ascoli on Love and Compulsion: The Epistle to Cino, “Io sono stato,” the Third Heaven Fourteen “Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete,” A Dramatization of “utrum de passione in passionem possit anima transformari”: Conflict, Compulsion, Consent, Conversion PART V Critical Philology and Italian Cultural History Fifteen The Case of the Lost Original Ending of Dante’s Vita Nuova : More Notes Toward a Critical Philology Sixteen Critical Philology and Dante’s Rime
Notes
Index
NOTE ON EDITIONS AND TRANSLATIONS
The texts of Dante’s works have been cited from the following editions.
Alighieri, Dante. La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata . Edited by Giorgio Petrocchi. 4 vols. Milan: Mondadori, 1966–1967.
———. Convivio . Edited by Gianfranco Fioravanti. Vol. 2 of Opere , edited by Marco Santagata. Milan: Mondadori, 2014.
———. De vulgari eloquentia . Edited by Mirko Tavoni. Vol. 1 of Opere , edited by Marco Santagata. Milan: Mondadori, 2011.
———. Epistole I–XII . Edited by Marco Baglio. Vol. 5 of Le opere . Rome: Salerno, 2016.
———. Monarchia . Edited by Paolo Chiesa and Andrea Tabarroni. Vol. 4 of Le opere . Rome: Salerno, 2013.
———. Rime . Edited by Domenico De Robertis. Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2005.
———. Vita Nuova . Edited by Domenico De Robertis. Milan: Ricciardi, 1980.
English translations of Dante’s works have been provided in this collection from the following sources. Translations have occasionally been modified for a more literal rendering. If not otherwise credited, translations are my own.
Alighieri, Dante. Il Convivio (The Banquet) . Translated by Richard Lansing. New York: Garland, 1990.
———. Dante’s Lyric Poetry . Edited by Kenelm Foster and Patrick Boyde. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

———. Dante’s Lyric Poetry: Poems of Youth and of the “Vita Nuova” (1283 – 1292) . Edited by Teodolinda Barolini, with new verse translations by Richard Lansing. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014.
———. De vulgari eloquentia . Edited and translated by Steven Botterill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
———. The Divine Comedy . Translated by Allen Mandelbaum. New York: Bantam Books, 1982–1986. Accessed from Digital Dante. https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/ .
———. The Letters of Dante . Edited and translated by Paget Toynbee. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966.
———. Monarchy . Edited and translated by Prue Shaw. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
———. Vita Nova . Translated by Andrew Frisardi. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2012.
ABBREVIATIONS
Conv. Convivio
Dec. Decameron
DVE De vulgari eloquentia
Ep. Epistola
Inf. Inferno
Mon. Monarchia
NE Nicomachean Ethics
Par. Paradiso
Purg. Purgatorio
Soph. elen. De sophisticis elenchis (On Sophistical Refutations)
ST Summa Theologiae
VN Vita Nuova
PREFACE
This volume brings together sixteen