Reading Dante in Renaissance Italy
Cambridge University Press, 1/31/2018
EAN 9781107196551, ISBN10: 1107196558
Hardcover, 400 pages, 23.5 x 15.8 x 2.6 cm
Language: English
Simon Gilson's new volume provides the first in-depth account of the critical and editorial reception in Renaissance Italy, particularly Florence, Venice and Padua, of the work of Dante Alighieri (1265–1321). Gilson investigates a range of textual frameworks and related contexts that influenced the way in which Dante's work was produced and circulated, from editing and translation to commentaries, criticism and public lectures. In so doing he modifies the received notion that Dante and his work were eclipsed during the Renaissance. Central themes of investigation include the contestation of Dante's authority as a 'classic' writer and the various forms of attack and defence employed by his detractors and partisans. The book pays close attention not only to the Divine Comedy but also to the Convivio and other of Dante's writings, and explores the ways in which the reception of these works was affected by contemporary developments in philology, literary theory, philosophy, theology, science and printing.
Part I. Florentine Legacies and Venetian Initiatives, 1481–1540
1. Reading and refashioning the Comedy, 1484–1536
2. Dante's verse, the De vulgari eloquentia, and the Convivio
editions and critical estimates, 1490–1532
Part II. Dante and Florentine Academies, 1540–1595
3. Dante and Florentine academies
4. 'His greatest partisan'
Giovan Battista Gelli as public reader of Dante
Part III. Venetian 'Dantes', 1544–96
5. New print commentaries
the 'espositioni' of Alessandro Vellutello and Bernardino Daniello
6. Dante and the polygraphs.