Reading Dante's Stars

Reading Dante's Stars PDF Author: Alison Cornish
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300133493
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
Astronomy is one of the most prominent and perplexing features of Dante's Divine Comedy. In the final rhyme of the poem's three parts, and in scores of descriptions and analogies, the stars are an intermediate goal and a constant point of reference for the spiritual journey the poem narrates. This book makes a sustained analysis of Dante's use of astronomy, not only in terms of the precepts of medieval science but also in relation to specific moral, philosophical, and poetic problems laid out in each chapter.For Dante, Alison Cornish says, the stars offer optical representations of invisible realities, from divine providence to the workings of the human soul. Dante's often puzzling celestial figures call attention to the physical world as a scene of reading in which visible phenomena are subject to more than one explanation, Cornish contends. The poetry of Dante's astronomy, as well as its difficulty, rests on this imperative of interpretation. Reading the stars, like reading literature, is an ethical undertaking fraught with risk, not just an exercise in technical understanding. Cornish's book is the first guide to the astronomy of Dante's masterpiece to encompass both ways of reading his work.

Reading Dante's Stars

Reading Dante's Stars PDF Author: Alison Cornish
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300133493
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book Here

Book Description
Astronomy is one of the most prominent and perplexing features of Dante's Divine Comedy. In the final rhyme of the poem's three parts, and in scores of descriptions and analogies, the stars are an intermediate goal and a constant point of reference for the spiritual journey the poem narrates. This book makes a sustained analysis of Dante's use of astronomy, not only in terms of the precepts of medieval science but also in relation to specific moral, philosophical, and poetic problems laid out in each chapter.For Dante, Alison Cornish says, the stars offer optical representations of invisible realities, from divine providence to the workings of the human soul. Dante's often puzzling celestial figures call attention to the physical world as a scene of reading in which visible phenomena are subject to more than one explanation, Cornish contends. The poetry of Dante's astronomy, as well as its difficulty, rests on this imperative of interpretation. Reading the stars, like reading literature, is an ethical undertaking fraught with risk, not just an exercise in technical understanding. Cornish's book is the first guide to the astronomy of Dante's masterpiece to encompass both ways of reading his work.

Love That Moves the Sun and Other Stars

Love That Moves the Sun and Other Stars PDF Author: Dante Alighieri
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241250439
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description
'Happiness beyond all words! A life of peace and love, entire and whole!' A collection of cantos from Paradiso, the most original and experimental part of the Divina Commedia. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity

Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity PDF Author: Prue Shaw
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871407809
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
The best and most eloquent introduction to Dante for our time. Prue Shaw is one of the world's foremost authorities on Dante. Written with the general reader in mind, Reading Dante brings her knowledge to bear in an accessible yet expert introduction to his great poem. This is far more than an exegesis of Dante’s three-part Commedia. Shaw communicates the imaginative power, the linguistic skill and the emotional intensity of Dante’s poetry—the qualities that make the Commedia perhaps the greatest literary work of all time and not simply a medieval treatise on morality and religion. The book provides a graphic account of the complicated geography of Dante's version of the afterlife and a sure guide to thirteenth-century Florence and the people and places that influenced him. At the same time it offers a literary experience that lifts the reader into the universal realms of poetry and mythology, creating links not only to the classical world of Virgil and Ovid but also to modern art and poetry, the world of T. S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney and many others. Dante's questions are our questions: What is it to be a human being? How should we judge human behavior? What matters in life and in death? Reading Dante helps the reader to understand Dante’s answers to these timeless questions and to see how surprisingly close they sometimes are to modern answers. Reading Dante is an astonishingly lyrical work that will appeal to both those who’ve never read the Commedia and those who have. It underscores Dante's belief that poetry can change human lives.

Reading Dante

Reading Dante PDF Author: Giuseppe Mazzotta
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300191359
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
divdivA towering figure in world literature, Dante wrote his great epic poem Commedia in the early fourteenth century. The work gained universal acclaim and came to be known as La Divina Commedia, or The Divine Comedy. Giuseppe Mazzotta brings Dante and his masterpiece to life in this exploration of the man, his cultural milieu, and his endlessly fascinating works.div /DIVdivBased on Mazzotta’s highly popular Yale course, this book offers a critical reading of The Divine Comedy and selected other works by Dante. Through an analysis of Dante’s autobiographical Vita nuova, Mazzotta establishes the poetic and political circumstances of The Divine Comedy. He situates the three sections of the poem—Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise—within the intellectual and social context of the late Middle Ages, and he explores the political, philosophical, and theological topics with which Dante was particularly concerned./DIV/DIV/DIV

Dante's Wood

Dante's Wood PDF Author: Lynne Raimondo
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1616147199
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
A troubled psychiatrist turns investigator when a young patient confesses to murder. Psychiatrist Mark Angelotti knows that genes don't lie. Or do they? Back at work after a devastating illness, Mark believes he has put his past behind him when he is asked to examine Charlie Dickerson, a mentally handicapped teenager whose wealthy mother insists he is a victim of sexual abuse. Mark diagnoses a different reason for Charlie's ills, but his prescription turns deadly when a teacher is murdered and Charlie confesses to the police. Volunteering to testify on Charlie's behalf, Mark's worst fears are realized when paternity tests show the victim was pregnant with Charlie's child. Now it's up to Mark to prove Charlie's innocence in a case where nothing is as first meets the eye. Not even genes--Mark's or Charlie's--can be trusted to shine a light on the truth. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe PDF Author: Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1442408928
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.

A Reading of Dante's Inferno

A Reading of Dante's Inferno PDF Author: Wallace Fowlie
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226258882
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
This work is a guide to the reading of Dante's great poem, intended for the use of students and laymen, particularly those who are approaching the Inferno for the first time. While carefully pointing out the uniqueness, tone, and color of each of Dante's thirty-four cantos, Fowlie never loses sight of the continuity of the poet's discourse. Each canto is related thematically to others, and the rich web of symbols is displayed and disentangled as the poem's unity, patterns, and structures are revealed. What particularly distinguishes Wallace Fowlie's reading of the Inferno is his emphasis on both the timelessness and the timeliness of Dante's masterpiece. By underlining the archetypal elements in the poem and drawing parallels to contemporary literature, Fowlie has brought Dante and his characters much closer to modern readers.

A Beginner's Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

A Beginner's Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy PDF Author: Jason M. Baxter
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 1493413104
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Dante's Divine Comedy is widely considered to be one of the most significant works of literature ever written. It is renowned not only for its ability to make truths known but also for its power to make them loved. It captures centuries of thought on sin, love, community, moral living, God's work in history, and God's ineffable beauty. Like a Gothic cathedral, the beauty of this great poem can be appreciated at first glance, but only with a guide can its complexity and layers of meaning be fully comprehended. This accessible introduction to Dante, which also serves as a primer to the Divine Comedy, helps readers better appreciate and understand Dante's spiritual masterpiece. Jason Baxter, an expert on Dante, covers all the basic themes of the Divine Comedy, such as sin, redemption, virtue, and vice. The book contains a general introduction to Dante and a specific introduction to each canticle (Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso), making it especially well suited for classroom and homeschool use.

The Sun and the Other Stars of Dante Alighieri

The Sun and the Other Stars of Dante Alighieri PDF Author: Sperello Di Serego Alighieri
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789811246227
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri is the story of a journey across the Universe as it was known in the Middle Ages, a work of science fiction ante litteram. Dante had an encyclopedic mind, no doubt, and his poem is the most widely read book after the Bible. He was a master of the astronomical knowledge of his time, and used astronomy in his work to indicate places, to measure time, and to exemplify beauty. Indeed, in the Convivio, he wrote that science is 'the ultimate perfection of our soul' and 'astronomy -- more than any other science -- is noble and high for a noble and high subject.'We propose a reading of the Divine Comedy through astronomy with a journey starting from the Earth, proceeding to the Moon, the planets, and to the outermost edges of the Universe. The way in which Dante connects ancient astronomy with modern conceptions of the cosmos will astonish readers more than 700 years later.

Dante's New Life of the Book

Dante's New Life of the Book PDF Author: Martin Eisner
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198869630
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Dante's New Life of the Book examines Dante's Vita nuova through its transformations in manuscripts, printed books, translations, and adaptations. Eisner investigates how these different material manifestations participate in the work, drawing attention to its distinctive elements.