Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy Volume 3 EDITED BY GEORGE CORBETT AND HEATHER WEBB 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 In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit https://www. openbookpublishers.com/product/623#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ All external links were active on 22/11/2017 unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. Digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://www. openbookpublishers.com/product/623#resources ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-358-2 ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-359-9 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-360-5 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. All paper used by Open Book Publishers is SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative), and PEFC (Programme for the endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes) Certified. Printed in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia by Lightning Source for Open Book Publishers (Cambridge, UK). Contents Acknowledgements vii Editions Followed and Abbreviations ix Notes on the Contributors xi Introduction 1 George Corbett and Heather Webb 23. Our Bodies, Our Selves: Crucified, Famished, and Nourished 11 Peter S. Hawkins 24. True Desire, True Being, and Truly Being a Poet 31 Janet Soskice 25. Changes 51 George Ferzoco 26. The Poetics of Trespassing 71 Elena Lombardi 27. Containers and Things Contained 89 Ronald L. Martinez 28. Cosmographic Cartography of the ‘Perfect’ Twenty-Eights 111 Theodore J. Cachey Jr. 29. Truth, Untruth and the Moment of Indwelling 139 John Took 30. Brooks, Melting Snow, River of Light 155 Piero Boitani 31. Beauty and the Beast 173 Catherine Pickstock 32. Particular Surprises: Faces, Cries and Transfiguration 197 David F. Ford 33 and 34. Ice, Fire and Holy Water 217 Rowan Williams 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 x Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’ 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 Heather Webb, of the ‘Cambridge Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy’ lecture series (2012–2016). George Ferzoco is based in the Department of Religion and Theology, University of Bristol (where he also occasionally teaches in the Department of Italian). Most of his research is in the field of medieval religious culture, especially in relation to education, the creation of saints’ cults, and sermon literature. He has co-edited volumes on Catherine of Siena and Hildegard of Bingen. xii Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’ David F. Ford OBE is Regius Professor of Divinity Emeritus in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Selwyn College. His writings include Meaning and Truth in 2 Corinthians (1987), Self and Salvation (1999), Christian Wisdom (2007), and The Drama of Living (2014). He has a particular interest in inter-faith relations and was Founding Director of the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme. His current research includes work on: the Gospel of John; theology, modernity and the arts; religion-related violence; and contemporary worldviews. Peter S. Hawkins is Professor of Religion and Literature at Yale Divinity School. In addition to his work on Dante — Dante’s Testaments (1999), The Poets’ Dante (2001), Dante: a Brief History (2006) — he has published on biblical reception and contemporary American fiction, most recently in The Bible and the American Short Story (2017), co-written with Lesleigh Cushing Stahlberg.