Dante & the Unorthodox

Dante & the Unorthodox PDF Author: James Miller
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 0889209278
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
During his lifetime, Dante was condemned as corrupt and banned from Florence on pain of death. But in 1329, eight years after his death, he was again viciously condemned—this time as a heretic and false prophet—by Friar Guido Vernani. From Vernani’s inquisitorial viewpoint, the author of the Commedia “seduced” his readers by offering them “a vessel of demonic poison” mixed with poetic fantasies designed to destroy the “healthful truth” of Catholicism. Thanks to such pious vituperations, a sulphurous fume of unorthodoxy has persistently clung to the mantle of Dante’s poetic fame. The primary critical purpose of Dante & the Unorthodox is to examine the aesthetic impulses behind the theological and political reasons for Dante’s allegory of mid-life divergence from the papally prescribed “way of salvation.” Marking the septicentennial of his exile, the book’s eighteen critical essays, three excerpts from an allegorical drama, and a portfolio of fourteen contemporary artworks address the issue of the poet’s conflicted relation to orthodoxy. By bringing the unorthodox out of the realm of “secret things,” by uncensoring them at every turn, Dante dared to oppose the censorious regime of Latin Christianity with a transgressive zeal more threatening to papal authority than the demonic hostility feared by Friar Vernani.

Dante & the Unorthodox

Dante & the Unorthodox PDF Author: James Miller
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 0889209278
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
During his lifetime, Dante was condemned as corrupt and banned from Florence on pain of death. But in 1329, eight years after his death, he was again viciously condemned—this time as a heretic and false prophet—by Friar Guido Vernani. From Vernani’s inquisitorial viewpoint, the author of the Commedia “seduced” his readers by offering them “a vessel of demonic poison” mixed with poetic fantasies designed to destroy the “healthful truth” of Catholicism. Thanks to such pious vituperations, a sulphurous fume of unorthodoxy has persistently clung to the mantle of Dante’s poetic fame. The primary critical purpose of Dante & the Unorthodox is to examine the aesthetic impulses behind the theological and political reasons for Dante’s allegory of mid-life divergence from the papally prescribed “way of salvation.” Marking the septicentennial of his exile, the book’s eighteen critical essays, three excerpts from an allegorical drama, and a portfolio of fourteen contemporary artworks address the issue of the poet’s conflicted relation to orthodoxy. By bringing the unorthodox out of the realm of “secret things,” by uncensoring them at every turn, Dante dared to oppose the censorious regime of Latin Christianity with a transgressive zeal more threatening to papal authority than the demonic hostility feared by Friar Vernani.

Dante and Virgil

Dante and Virgil PDF Author: Herbert Macartney Beatty
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description


Dante

Dante PDF Author: John Took
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069120893X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
"For all that has been written about the author of the Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) remains the best guide to his own life and work. Dante's writings are therefore never far away in this authoritative and comprehensive intellectual biography, which offers a fresh account of the medieval Florentine poet's life and thought before and after his exile in 1302. Beginning with the often violent circumstances of Dante's life, the book examines his successive works as testimony to the course of his passionate humanity: his lyric poetry through to the Vita nova as the great work of his first period; the Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia and the poems of his early years in exile; and the Monarchia and the Commedia as the product of his maturity. Describing as it does a journey of the mind, the book confirms the nature of Dante's undertaking as an exploration of what he himself speaks of as "maturity in the flame of love." The result is an original synthesis of Dante's life and work." --Amazon.com.

Approaches to Teaching Dante's Divine Comedy

Approaches to Teaching Dante's Divine Comedy PDF Author: Christopher Kleinhenz
Publisher: Modern Language Association
ISBN: 1603294287
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Dante's Divine Comedy can compel and shock readers: it combines intense emotion and psychological insight with medieval theology and philosophy. This volume will help instructors lead their students through the many dimensions--historical, literary, religious, and ethical--that make the work so rewarding and enduringly relevant yet so difficult. Part 1, "Materials," gives instructors an overview of the important scholarship on the Divine Comedy. The essays of part 2, "Approaches," describe ways to teach the work in the light of its contemporary culture and ours. Various teaching situations (a first-year seminar, a creative writing class, high school, a prison) are considered, and the many available translations are discussed.

The Esoterism of Dante

The Esoterism of Dante PDF Author: René Guénon
Publisher: Sophia Perennis
ISBN: 9781597310581
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
Especially since the Renaissance, some in Western Christendom have suspected that the deeper dimension of their tradition has somehow been lost, and have therefore sought to discover, or create, an 'esoteric' or 'initiatic' Christianity. In the middle of the nineteenth century two scholars, Gabriele Rossetti and Eugène Aroux, pointed to certain esoteric meanings in the work of Dante Alighieri, notably The Divine Comedy. Partly based on their scholarship, Guénon in 1925 published The Esoterism of Dante. From the theses of Rosetti and Aroux, Guénon retains only those elements that prove the existence of such hidden meanings; but he also makes clear that esoterism is not 'heresy' and that a doctrine reserved for an elite can be superimposed on the teaching given the faithful without standing in opposition to it. One of René Guénon's lifelong quests was to discover, or revive, the esoteric, initiatory dimension of the Christian tradition. In the present volume, along with its companion volume Insights into Christian Esoterism (which includes the separate study Saint Bernard), Guénon undertakes to establish that the three parts of The Divine Comedy represent the stages of initiatic realization, exploring the parallels between the symbolism of the Commedia and that of Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, and Christian Hermeticism, and illustrating Dante's knowledge of traditional sciences unknown to the moderns: the sciences of numbers, of cosmic cycles, and of sacred astrology. In these works Guénon also touches on the all-important question of medieval esoterism and discusses the role of sacred languages and the principle of initiation in the Christian tradition, as well as such esoteric Christian themes and organizations as the Holy Grail, the Guardians of the Holy Land, the Sacred Heart, the Fedeli d'Amore and the 'Courts of Love', and the Secret Language of Dante. In addition to Dante, various other paths toward a possible Christian esoterism have been explored by many investigators-the legend of the Holy Grail, the Knights Templars, the tradition of Courtly Love, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, and Christian Hermeticism-and Guénon deals with all of these in the present volume as well as his Insights into Christian Esoterism. In the latter, one chapter in particular, 'Christianity and Initiation', will be of special interest with regard to the history of the Traditionalist School. When first published as an article, it gave rise to some controversy because Guénon here reaffirmed his denial of the efficacy of the Christian sacraments as rites of initiation, a point of divergence between the teachings of Guénon and those of other key perennialist thinkers. Both The Esoterism of Dante and Insights into Christian Esoterism will be of inestimable value to all who are struggling to come to terms with the fullness of the Christian tradition.

Dante's Persons

Dante's Persons PDF Author: Heather Webb
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019105321X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Dante's Persons explores the concept of personhood as it appears in Dante's Commedia and seeks out the constituent ethical modes that the poem presents as necessary for attaining a fullness of persona. The study suggests that Dante presents a vision of 'transhuman' potentiality in which the human person is, after death, fully integrated into co-presence with other individuals in a network of relations based on mutual recognition and interpersonal attention. The Commedia, Heather Webb argues, aims to depict and to actively construct a transmortal community in which the plenitude of each individual's person is realized in and through recognition of the personhood of other individuals who constitute that community, whether living or dead. Webb focuses on the strategies the Commedia employs to call us to collaborate in the mutual construction of persons. As we engage with the dead that inhabit its pages, we continue to maintain the personhood of those dead. Webb investigates Dante's implicit and explicit appeals to his readers to act in relation to the characters in his otherworlds as if they were persons. Moving through the various encounters of Purgatorio and Paradiso, this study documents the ways in which characters are presented as persone in development or in a state of plenitude through attention to the 'corporeal' modes of smiles, gazes, gestures, and postures. Dante's journey provides a model for the formation and maintenance of a network of personal attachments, attachments that, as constitutive of persona, are not superseded even in the presence of the direct vision of God.

Dante Satiro

Dante Satiro PDF Author: Fabian Alfie
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793621721
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
This collection of essays is the first comprehensive study on Dante and satire within his entire corpus that has been published. Its title evokes the moment when Virgil leads Dante through Limbo, the uppermost portion of Hell. There, they are joined by four classical poets, and Virgil describes one of them as “Horace the satirist” (“Orazio satiro,” 4:89). By applying the expression to Dante himself, this volume seeks to explore the satirical elements in his works. Although Dante is not typically described as a satirist, anyone familiar with his works will recognize the strong satirical element in his many writings. Ultimately, this study shows that Dante engages in satire in order to attain the primary literary tool at his disposal for his prophetic objectives: the castigation of vice.

Dante's Divine Comedy

Dante's Divine Comedy PDF Author: Joseph Luzzi
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691156778
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
"A new volume in the Lives of Great Religious Books series, this book explores the creation and cultural afterlives of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy"--

Dante and Heterodoxy

Dante and Heterodoxy PDF Author: Maria Luisa Ardizzone
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443868213
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Dante and Heterodoxy: The Temptations of 13th Century Radical Thought, edited and with an introduction by Maria Luisa Ardizzone, collects several studies devoted to discussing Dante’s work in the light of the intellectual debate that developed in thirteenth century Europe after the entrance of new Aristotelian learning and the diffusion of Greek-Arabic thought, in particular the Latin translations of works by Ibn Rushd (Averroes). What takes form in the various articles is the emerging of an interest in the philosophical and scientific contents of Dante’s opus. Heterodoxy in this volume is thus linked to, but not always coincident with, what medieval scholars such as Ferdinand Van Steenberghen or Alain De Libera term “radical Aristotelianism” or “Integral Aristotelianism”. The word “temptations”, as its meaning clearly shows, delineates not an organic link with heterodox or radical ideas, but rather an intermittent inclination to include or evaluate themes related to these ideas. “Temptations” implies a search, an interrogation that consists of the doubts and uncertainties of a poet strongly involved in the intellectual debate of his time and culture, and for whom philosophy and theology are not fields of opposition but different modes of inquiry.

Reading Dante

Reading Dante PDF Author: Jesper Hede
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739121962
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Reading Dante: The Pursuit of Meaning examines the problem of determining the thematic unity of Dante's Divina Commedia in the history of Dante studies. The question of unity has puzzled Dante readers for centuries, due to an apparent discrepancy between Dante's construction of the afterworld and medieval Christian teachings on the conditions of the afterlife. If all sins condemned in Hell can be forgiven, we would expect to see them purged in Purgatory and their virtuous opposite celebrated in Paradise. In Dante's account, however, the three realms of the afterlife appear as self-contained entities with only partially related structures that undermine the establishment of thematic correspondences and the determination of the poem's thematic unity. Was Dante inconsistent in his exposition of the divine order, or have Dante scholars been inconsistent in their treatment of the poem's thematic content? Jesper Hede examines the prevalent strategies of reading applied by Dante scholars in their attempt to solve the problem of unity. Detailing the major contributions to the resolution of the problem and focusing on medieval philosophy and modern hermeneutics, Hede argues that a systematic parallel reading of the poem's three parts reveals that it is the vision of divine order that gives the poem its thematic unity.