Vertical Readings in Dante's Comedy
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Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy Volume 1 EDITED BY GEORGE CORBETT AND HEATHER WEBB VERTICAL READINGS IN DANTE’S COMEDY Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy Volume 1 edited by George Corbett and Heather Webb http://www.openbookpublishers.com © 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 author (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’. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0066 Further details about CC BY licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/ All external links were active on 30/07/2015 unless otherwise stated. Digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at http:// www.openbookpublishers.com/isbn/9781783741724 ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-172-4 ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-173-1 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-174-8 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-78374-175-5 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-78374-176-2 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0066 Cover image: Domenico di Michelino, La Commedia illumina Firenze (1465). Wikimedia, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michelino_DanteAndHisPoem.jpg 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 and United States by Lightning Source for Open Book Publishers Contents Acknowledgements vii Editions Followed and Abbreviations ix Notes on the Contributors xi Introduction 1 George Corbett and Heather Webb 1.i. Pagan Dawn of a Christian Vision 13 George Corbett 1.ii. Orientation 25 Heather Webb 2. Reading Time, Text and the World 37 Matthew Treherne 3. The Bliss and Abyss of Freedom: Hope, Personhood and 57 Particularity Vittorio Montemaggi 4. Virtuous Pagans, Hopeless Desire and Unjust Justice 77 John Marenbon 5. Massacre, Miserere and Martyrdom 97 Robin Kirkpatrick 6. Divided City, Slavish Italy, Universal Empire 119 Claire E. Honess 7. The Wheeling Sevens 143 Simon A. Gilson 8. Civitas and Love: Looking Backward from Paradiso viii 161 Brenda Deen Schildgen 9. ‘Without Any Violence’ 181 Zygmunt G. Barański 10. Humility and the (P)arts of Art 203 K P Clarke 11. The Art of Teaching and the Nature of Love 223 Paola Nasti Bibliography 249 Index of Names 269 Acknowledgements We owe a particular debt to the community in Cambridge who have supported the public lecture series, Cambridge Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’. 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, and the first volume grows out of this three- way collaboration, with eight of the twelve contributors then based at one of the three institutions. 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, Theodore J. Cachey, Ambrogio Camozzi Pistoja, Elizabeth Corbett, Mary Corbett, Robert Gordon, Ronald Haynes, Anne Leone, Helena Phillips-Robins, Federica Pich, Katherine Powlesland and Nan Taplin. Finally, we would like to extend our especial 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); the Centre for Medieval Literature (University of Southern Denmark and University of York); the University of Notre Dame; and the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds. ii Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’ 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 and Ben Fried at OBP for their meticulous comments on the manuscript, and for their help in preparing the bibliography and index. We are grateful to the anonymous peer reviewer for expert comments on individual chapters. This volume commemorates the 750th anniversary of Dante’s birth. We would like to dedicate the volume to the memory of Robert M. Durling who died while we were preparing it for publication. With Ronald Martinez, Bob Durling pioneered the ‘vertical reading’ approach to the poem in the ‘Inter cantica’ sections of their edition of Purgatorio. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the series and had planned to give a lecture in its first year, but was prevented due to illness. A great scholar, he will be sorely missed. 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 Rime. Rime A.3. Latin works DVE. De vulgari eloquentia Mon. Monarchia Questio. Questio de aqua et terra Epist. Epistole Ecl. Egloge iv Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’ E. English Translations Unless otherwise stated, the translations of Dante are adapted from these readily available and literally translated English editions: E.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: Amma 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). E.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 Zygmunt G. Barański is Serena Professor of Italian Emeritus at the University of Cambridge and Notre Dame Chair in Dante & Italian Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He has published extensively on Dante, medieval Italian literature, Dante’s reception and twentieth-century Italian culture. He is senior editor of Le tre corone. K P Clarke was the Keith Sykes Research Fellow in Italian Studies at Pembroke College, Cambridge, before taking the post of Lecturer in Medieval Literature at the Department of English and Related Literature, University of York, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on Dante, and is associate member of the Centre for Medieval Literature. He is the author of Chaucer and Italian Textuality (2011), and a number of articles on the Italian Trecento in Dante Studies, Studi sul Boccaccio, Italian Studies, and MLN. George Corbett is Junior Research Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge 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 is co-organiser, with Heather Webb, of the Cambridge Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’ lecture series. He was recently appointed Lecturer in Theology, Imagination and the Arts at the University of St Andrews. Simon A. Gilson is Professor of Italian at Warwick University. He teaches and researches on Dante and Italian Renaissance culture, and is the author of Dante and Renaissance Florence (2005). He is General Editor of the monograph series ‘Italian Perspectives’ published by Legenda. vi Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’ Claire E. Honess is Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Leeds and co-director of the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies. She studied at the University of Reading, where she completed a PhD on the image of the city in Dante’s writing. Her primary and continuing interest is in the interface between social and religious concepts and images in Dante’s poetry. She is the author of, among other contributions, From Florence to the Heavenly City: The Poetry of Citizenship in Dante (2006) and a translation of Dante’s political letters (2007).