The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy

The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy PDF Author: Christian Moevs
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195372581
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
The recovery of Dante's metaphysics-which are very different from our own-is essential, argues Christian Moevs, if we are to resolve what has been called 'the central problem in the interpretation of the Comedy.' That problem is what to make of the Comedy's claim to the status of revelation, vision, or experiential record - as something more than imaginative literature. In this book Moevs offers the first sustained treatment of the metaphysical picture that grounds and motivates the Comedy, and the relation between those metaphysics and Dante's poetics. Moevs arrives at the radical conclusion that Dante believed that all of what we perceive as reality, the spatio-temporal world, is in fact a creation or projection of conscious being. Armed with this new understanding, Moevs is able to shed light on a series of perennial issues in the interpretation of the Comedy.

Dante and the Knot of Body and Soul

Dante and the Knot of Body and Soul PDF Author: Marianne Shapiro
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
ISBN: 9780333759677
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Seeks to evaluate in just measure the material, bodily, erotic, and aesthetic aspects of the intellectual foundations of the Commedia.

The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy

The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy PDF Author: Christian Moevs
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195372581
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book Here

Book Description
The recovery of Dante's metaphysics-which are very different from our own-is essential, argues Christian Moevs, if we are to resolve what has been called 'the central problem in the interpretation of the Comedy.' That problem is what to make of the Comedy's claim to the status of revelation, vision, or experiential record - as something more than imaginative literature. In this book Moevs offers the first sustained treatment of the metaphysical picture that grounds and motivates the Comedy, and the relation between those metaphysics and Dante's poetics. Moevs arrives at the radical conclusion that Dante believed that all of what we perceive as reality, the spatio-temporal world, is in fact a creation or projection of conscious being. Armed with this new understanding, Moevs is able to shed light on a series of perennial issues in the interpretation of the Comedy.

Heads Will Roll

Heads Will Roll PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004222286
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
The decapitation motif recurs in nearly all medieval and early modern genres, from saints' lives and epics to comedies and romances, yet decollation is often little regarded, save as a marker of humanity (that is, as the moment mortality exits) or inhumanity (that is, as the moment the supernatural enters). However, as a seat of reason, wisdom, and even the soul, the head has long been afforded a special place in the body politic, even when separated from its body proper. Capitalizing upon the enduring fascination with decapitation in European culture, this collection examines--through a variety of critical lenses--the recurring "roles/rolls" of severed human heads in the medieval and early modern imagination. Contributors are Nicola Masciandaro, Mark Faulkner, Jay Paul Gates, Christine Cooper-Rompato, Dwayne Coleman, Mary Leech, Tina Boyer, Renée Ward, Andrew Fleck, Thomas Herron, Thea Cervone, and Asa Simon Mittman. Preface by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen.

The Complete Danteworlds

The Complete Danteworlds PDF Author: Guy P. Raffa
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226702871
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy has, despite its enormous popularity and importance, often stymied readers with its multitudinous characters, references, and themes. But until the publication in 2007 of Guy Raffa’s guide to the Inferno, students lacked a suitable resource to help them navigate Dante’s underworld. With this new guide to the entire Divine Comedy, Raffa provides readers—experts in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Dante neophytes, and everyone in between—with a map of the entire poem, from the lowest circle of Hell to the highest sphere of Paradise. Based on Raffa’s original research and his many years of teaching the poem to undergraduates, The CompleteDanteworlds charts a simultaneously geographical and textual journey, canto by canto, region by region, adhering closely to the path taken by Dante himself through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. This invaluable reference also features study questions, illustrations of the realms, and regional summaries. Interpreting Dante’s poem and his sources, Raffa fashions detailed entries on each character encountered as well as on many significant historical, religious, and cultural allusions.

Imagining the Soul

Imagining the Soul PDF Author: Rosalie Osmond
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0752494864
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Basing her approach on historical sources, Rosalie Osmond explores the way the soul has been represented in different cultures and at different times, from ancient Egypt and Greece, through medieval Europe and into the 21st century.

Dante's Hermeneutics of Salvation

Dante's Hermeneutics of Salvation PDF Author: Christine O'Connell Baur
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 0802092063
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Widely considered one of the greatest works produced in Europe during the Middle Ages, Dante's La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy) has influenced countless generations of readers, yet surprisingly few books have attempted to explain the philosophical relevance of this great epic. Dante's Hermeneutics of Salvation takes on this ambitious project. Turning to Heidegger to provide a theoretical framework for her study, Christine O'Connell Baur illustrates how Dante's poem invites its readers to undertake their own existential-hermeneutic journey to freedom. As the pilgrim progresses in his journey, she argues, he moves beyond a merely literal, 'infernal' self-interpretation that is grounded on present attachments to things in the world. If we readers accompany the pilgrim in this hermeneutic conversion, we will see that our own existential commitments can help disclose the meaning of our world and our own finite freedom. A work of considerable importance both for and teachers and students of Dante studies, Dante's Hermeneutics of Salvation will also prove useful to scholars working in medieval studies, philosophy, and literary theory.

Dante's Philosophical Life

Dante's Philosophical Life PDF Author: Paul Stern
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812295013
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
When political theorists teach the history of political philosophy, they typically skip from the ancient Greeks and Cicero to Augustine in the fifth century and Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth, and then on to the origins of modernity with Machiavelli and beyond. Paul Stern aims to change this settled narrative and makes a powerful case for treating Dante Alighieri, arguably the greatest poet of medieval Christendom, as a political philosopher of the first rank. In Dante's Philosophical Life, Stern argues that Purgatorio's depiction of the ascent to Earthly Paradise, that is, the summit of Mount Purgatory, was intended to give instruction on how to live the philosophic life, understood in its classical form as "love of wisdom." As an object of love, however, wisdom must be sought by the human soul, rather than possessed. But before the search can be undertaken, the soul needs to consider from where it begins: its nature and its good. In Stern's interpretation of Purgatorio, Dante's intense concern for political life follows from this need, for it is law that supplies the notions of good that shape the soul's understanding and it is law, especially its limits, that provides the most evident display of the soul's enduring hopes. According to Stern, Dante places inquiry regarding human nature and its good at the heart of philosophic investigation, thereby rehabilitating the highest form of reasoned judgment or prudence. Philosophy thus understood is neither a body of doctrines easily situated in a Christian framework nor a set of intellectual tools best used for predetermined theological ends, but a way of life. Stern's claim that Dante was arguing for prudence against dogmatisms of every kind addresses a question of contemporary concern: whether reason can guide a life.

History in the Comic Mode

History in the Comic Mode PDF Author: Rachel Fulton Brown
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231508476
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
In this groundbreaking collection, twenty-one prominent medievalists discuss continuity and change in ideas of personhood and community and argue for the viability of the comic mode in the study and recovery of history. These scholars approach their sources not from a particular ideological viewpoint but with an understanding that all topics, questions, and explanations are viable. They draw on a variety of sources in Latin, Arabic, French, German, Middle English, and more, and employ a range of theories and methodologies, always keeping in mind that environments are inseparable from the making of the people who inhabit them and that these people are in part constituted by and understood in terms of their communities. Essays feature close readings of both familiar and lesser known materials, offering provocative interpretations of John of Rupescissa's alchemy; the relationship between the living and the saintly dead in Bernard of Clairvaux's sermons; the nomenclature of heresy in the early eleventh century; the apocalyptic visions of Robert of Uzès; Machiavelli's De principatibus; the role of "demotic religiosity" in economic development; and the visions of Elizabeth of Schönau. Contributors write as historians of religion, art, literature, culture, and society, approaching their subjects through the particular and the singular rather than through the thematic and the theoretical. Playing with the wild possibilities of the historical fragments at their disposal, the scholars in this collection advance a new and exciting approach to writing medieval history.

The Shadow of Dante in French Renaissance Lyric

The Shadow of Dante in French Renaissance Lyric PDF Author: Alison Baird Lovell
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501513591
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This book presents an interpretation of Maurice Scève’s lyric sequence Délie, object de plus haulte vertu (Lyon, 1544) in literary relation to the Vita nuova, Commedia, and other works of Dante Alighieri. Dante’s subtle influence on Scève is elucidated in depth for the first time, augmenting the allusions in Délie to the Canzoniere of Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca). Scève’s sequence of dense, epigrammatic dizains is considered to be an early example, prior to the Pléiade poets, of French Renaissance imitation of Petrarch’s vernacular poetry, in a time when imitatio was an established literary practice, signifying the poet’s participation in a tradition. While the Canzoniere is an important source for Scève’s Délie, both works are part of a poetic lineage that includes Occitan troubadours, Guinizzelli, Cavalcanti, and Dante. The book situates Dante as a relevant predecessor and source for Scève, and examines anew the Petrarchan label for Délie. Compelling poetic affinities emerge between Dante and Scève that do not correlate with Petrarch.

Dante's Plurilingualism

Dante's Plurilingualism PDF Author: Sara Fortuna
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351570196
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Dante's conception of language is encompassed in all his works and can be understood in terms of a strenuous defence of the volgare in tension with the prestige of Latin. By bringing together different approaches, from literary studies to philosophy and history, from aesthetics to queer studies, from psychoanalysis to linguistics, this volume offers new critical insights on the question of Dantes language, engaging with both the philosophical works characterized by an original project of vulgarization, and the poetic works, which perform a new language in an innovative and self-reflexive way. In particular, Dantes Plurilingualism explores the rich and complex way in which Dantes linguistic theory and praxis both informs and reflects an original configuration of the relationship between authority, knowledge and identity that continues to be fascinated by an ideal of unity but is also imbued with a strong element of subjectivity and opens up towards multiplicity and modernity.