Dante Studies

Con la metodologia di analisi esegetica creata da Carlos López Cortezo si esamina l'episodio del cielo di Marte con speciale attenzione alla cornice iconografica che precede il dialogo fra Dante e Cacciaguida e che lo condiziona e dà di esso chiavi di lettura imprescindibili per la sua comprensione.

The Mont Saint-Michel is a small, rocky tidal island in France located in a large bay at the mouth of the Couesnon.
The granite massif of Mont Saint-Michel is crowned with a medieval abbey. It's a table moutain; a remaining of a prehistoric petrified treetop.
Since 1898, the spire of the abbey church has a statue of Saint Michael that protrudes a hundred and seventy meters above the bay. The island is located about 1 kilometer from the coast near the town of Avranches in Normandy . It was originally a tidal island : it was accessible by land at low tidebut at high tide it was surrounded by water. Today a narrow bridge, with shuttle service, runs to the island. Mont Saint-Michel, with its pedestrian streets, is only accessible to pedestrians.

The first text about an abbey is the 9th-century Latin text Revelatio ecclesiae sancti Michaelis in monte Tumba written by a chanoine living at Mont Saint Michel or at the Cathédrale Saint-André d'Avranches. This text was written at a time of power struggle between Brittany and the County of Normandy against Francia as well as during canon law reforms by Roman emperors.

When Christianity expanded to the area, around the 4th century, Mont Tombe, the original name of Mont Saint Michel, was part of the Diocese of Avranches. By the middle of the 6th century, Christianity had a stronger presence in the bay. By this time, Mont Tombe was populated by religious devotees, hermits (probably some Celtic monks) supplied by the curé of Astériac, (Asterix) who took care of the site and led a contemplative life around some oratories. The hermits Saint Pair and Saint Seubilion dedicated one of the oratories to Saint Étienne, midway through the mont and one to Saint Symphorien, at the foot of the rock.

Saint Aubert
In 710, Mont Tombe was renamed Mont Saint Michel au péril de la Mer ("Mount Saint Michael at the peril of the sea) after erecting an oratory to Saint Michael by bishop Saint Aubert of Avranches in 708. According to the legend, Aubert received, during his sleep, three times the order from Saint Michael to erect an oratory on the Mont Tombe. The archangel was reputed to have left his finger mark on Aubert's skull. This skull is displayed at the Saint-Gervais d'Avranches basilica with such a scar on it.

This sanctuary should be, according to the archangel, a replica of the Gargano in Italy (from the 5th century). Aubert had a local religious artifact removed and instead a circular sanctuary built, made of dry stones. Around 708, Aubert sent two monks to get some artifacts from the Italian sanctuary Gargano (a rock with his foot print and a piece of tissue from the altar). During this mission, the March 709 tsunami is supposed to have destroyed the Scissy forest and turned the Mont into an island. On October 16 709, the bishop dedicated the church and put twelve chanoine there. The Mont-Saint-Michel was born.

The remains of the oratory were found in the chapel Notre-Dame-Sous-Terre. This sanctuary contained the tomb of Aubert and most likely the artifacts brought from Gargano. The chapel Notre-Dame-Sous-Terre is today under the nave of the abbey-church.

The first buildings became too small and under the Western Roman Empire multiple buildings were added. Charlemagne chose saint Michel as a protector of his empire during the 9th century and tried to have the place renamed Mont-Saint-Michel, but during the Middle Ages it was usually called Saint-Michel-aux-Deux-Tombes (Saint Michel with two tombs) (Mons Sancti Michaelis in periculo maris, in reference to Tombelaine).

History of the abbey
Church of Saint Michel during 9th and 10th centuries
The Mont-Saint-Michel monks, during the first century of their institution, venerated the archangel Michael. The Mont became a place of prayer and study, but the stability period, known as the Neustria, during the reign of Charlemagne ended when he died. As the rest of Gaule was fighting invasions, religion and science found some welcoming in the diocese of Avranches and at the Mont-Saint-Michel.

At first, pilgrims kept coming to the Mont. After the Vikings captured the Mont in 847, the monks departed. But, as an island, it offered some protection for the local population and thus never stayed empty.

After the signature of the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, Rollo (Gange-Hrólfr "Rollo" Ragnvaldsson de Normandie) started repairing the damages inflicted to the religious buildings. He generously financed the Mont and called back the monks displaced by the war, returning the Mont to its previous condition.

The wealth and support that the Mont suddenly obtained from Rollo started to fundamentally affect its inhabitants, taking them away from their solitary, religious life. After William I of Normandy took over his father's title as Duke of Normandy in 927, he expanded his support toward monasteries until his assassination in 932; but his wealth, from which they benefited, further exacerbated their mundane life style. Because of their generous contributions to the Mont, the Dukes of Brittany Conan 1st, who died in 992, and Geoffrey 1st, who died in 1008, were buried in the Mont as benefactors.

Questo articolo prende in considerazione l'esegesi dei primi versi del Paradiso contenuta nella terza parte dell'Epistola a Cangrande, mostrando come l'identificazione lì proposta tra luce e gloria di Dio sia per molti versi insostenibile. Distinguere i due concetti consente, al contrario, di conservare al «poema sacro» un'indispensabile coerenza, tanto in sé quanto in rapporto al Convivio e ad altre fonti filosofiche medievali. ||

This article takes into account the exegesis of the very first lines of Dante's Paradiso, as it is proposed in the third part of the Epistola a Cangrande, showing that the identification there suggested between the glory of God and His light is untenable on various grounds. On the contrary, maintaining the distinction between the two concepts allows one to keep safe the coherence of the «sacred poem», both in itself and in its relationship with the Convivio and with other medieval philosophical sources.

'Dante’s Masterplot and Alternative Narratives in the "Commedia"’ questions the familiar narrative arc at play in the writings of Dante Alighieri and opens his masterpiece to three alternative models that resist it. Dante’s masterplot is the teleological trajectory by which the poet subordinates the past to the authority of a new experience. The book analyses the masterplot’s workings in Dante’s text and its role in the interpretation of the poem, and it documents its overwhelming success in influencing readings of the 'Commedia' over the centuries. The volume then explores three competing narrative models that resist and counter its monopoly which are enacted by paradoxes, alternative endings and parallel lives, and the future. By focusing on these non-linear modes of storytelling and testing the limits of linear narration, the book questions critical paradigms in the scholarship of the 'Commedia' that favour a single normative master truth, exposes their problematic authoritarian implications, and highlights the manifold poetic, theological, and ethical tensions that are often neglected due to the masterplot’s influence. The new picture of a vulnerable author and open-ended text that emerges from this study thus doubles as a metacritical reflection on the state of the field. The book’s impassioned argument is that, alongside established notions of his trademark plurality of linguistic registers and styles, Dante’s narrative pluralism can, and should, come to play a key role in contemporary and future readings of the 'Commedia'.

Il Dante personaggio conosce, anche sul tema della giustizia, un itinerario di conversione: nell’Inferno aderisce, anche attivamente, alla giustizia retributiva che deriva direttamente da Lucifero e che egli è portato a far coincidere con la giustizia divina; nel Purgatorio condivide - nei gesti, nelle parole, nel tono - la giustizia riparativa, che ricuce le relazioni infrante dal peccato; nel Paradiso riconosce, con un atto di fede, di quella fede che viene in soccorso alla ragione, l’eccedenza della giustizia/misericordia di Dio rispetto alle categorie umane.
Per il Dante autore, spiegare al lettore la teoria e la prassi della giustizia retributiva applicata nell’Inferno non è difficile; più difficile, ma non troppo, indurlo ad accettare una concezione di giustizia non più rigidamente formale e prevedibile, ma traversata e aperta e modificata dall’amore che perdona e che salva. Il vero problema lo pone ciò che Dante apprende nel Paradiso: come comunicare al lettore l’idea della incomprensibilità e nel contempo della profonda verità della misericordiosa giustizia di Dio? Il Dante autore rinuncia a razionalizzare e a verbalizzare ciò che non lo è; decide invece, con uno dei suoi colpi di genio, di riprodurlo nel proprio poema. Come Dio pone davanti al pellegrino dei dannati che il giudizio del mondo presumeva salvi e, per converso, dei penitenti o dei beati che si supponevano condannati, fino al caso scandaloso di Rifeo, allo stesso modo il Dante autore, costruendo la propria opera, pone di fronte al lettore dei veri e propri enigmi: dal Dante personaggio stesso, di fatto condannato dal “duro giudicio” di Dio eppure fatto salvo, al suicida e pagano e anticesariano Catone, custode dell’intero Purgatorio.

Como si no hubiera sido suficiente con la publicación de una nueva traducción de la Comedia (una de referencia: la de Claudia Fernández Speier), los 700 años de la muerte de Dante Alighieri trajeron también uno de esos ensayos que aparecen muy cada tanto (y cada tanto es cada vez menos). Me refiero a La palabra deseada. La Divina comedia en el mundo contemporáneo, recién salido con el sello Mardulce, del argentino Mariano Pérez Carrasco.

"When Ezra Pound quipped in a letter to R.P. Blackmur in 1924 that ‘one can no longer put Mt Purgatory forty miles high in the midst of Australian sheep land’, he was of course mocking the medieval cosmography of Dante’s La Divina Commedia, which locates Mount Purgatory in the Antipodes..."

Il dantismo montaliano è un chiaro esempio della capacità di un grande lettore di immergersi nella suggestione della Commedia e di farla propria senza l’illusione di volerla rifare. L’intervento si focalizza su due casi in cui memoria di Dante e valore della memoria, temi cari a Montale, si compenetrano creando nuove soluzioni. In Sul limite (1946), prosa raccolta in Farfalla di Dinard, Montale, nella struttura e nel tema, rielabora un’atmosfera da Purgatorio dantesco che diventa preludio necessario alla lettura di Voce giunta con le folaghe (1947), raccolta nella Bufera. Un ardito volo transoceanico ci può condurre ad un altro lettore di Dante: Borges che nel 1964 riscrive, forse proprio alla luce delle letture dantesche, la poesia Limites. Per Montale e Borges al di là del tempo non c’è che un “vuoto inabitato”, un vuoto ed una nostalgia di fede che il senso della perfetta costruzione dantesca sembra poter in qualche misura colmare.

Se poco prima Dante si era sentito accolto «sesto tra cotanto senno» (Inf., IV 102), pare che nel quinto canto dell’Inferno, egli abbia la prima vera occasione di corrispondere a quell’onorevole privilegio. Dunque, davanti a Virgilio, giudice unico di questo certame letterario, il nuovo poeta entra nell’agone, consapevole di legittimare quell’epiteto se la sua poesia saprà trasformare una sconosciuta relazione tra un uomo e una donna in un nuovo mito d’amore e di morte. L’amore di Francesca e del suo compagno è un amore irresistibile, esclusivo, duraturo, così intenso che non si arresta nemmeno con la morte, caratteri che furono prerogative pure dell’amore di Dante per Beatrice. Non possono non stupire, allora, i fitti contatti tra Inf., V e Purg., XXX-XXXI, quando l’appena ritrovata Beatrice rimprovera l’agens per i suoi traviamenti. Per amore ci si perde e per amore ci si salva: il crinale è stretto. Il fedele consiglio della ragione può orientarlo, ma l’uomo è fragile. Se la Commedia è il poema dell’amore, Francesca – l’unica donna ad aver voce nell’inferno a parte (e non certo casualmente) Beatrice – ha un compito decisivo, cosicché l’episodio degli amanti menati dal vento come colombe si irradia in punti nevralgici dell’intera opera.

Dall’esame di alcuni punti d’incontro tra Ulisse dantesco e Odisseo omerico a partire da Inf. I 91, sembrerebbe ragionevole ipotizzare che Dante avesse qualche conoscenza dell’episodio omerico di Circe e del viaggio di Odisseo agli Inferi. Più significative delle affinità sembrano però le differenze. Nel contesto di queste ultime l’A. considera la possibilità, suggerita da vari studiosi, che Dante fosse a conoscenza di una variante del mito omerico secondo la quale Odisseo sarebbe uscito dal Mediterraneo per raggiungere la terra dei morti. Ma come poteva Dante conoscere varianti del mito senza conoscere il mito stesso? L’A. sostiene che in ogni caso qualsiasi variante dell’Odissea che contempli la morte di Ulisse prima che rientri a Itaca, come avviene nel racconto dantesco, mina la struttura stessa del poema omerico, in quanto, se Ulisse non giunge all’isola dei Feaci, non può nemmeno raccontare le sue avventure. Presenta infine un saggio di Enrico Fenzi che prova quanto quella di Ulisse sia figura positiva per Petrarca, e suggerisce che l’Ulisse dantesco viene condotto alla morte non dai suoi vizi ma dalle sue virtù, e per questo appunto la sua fine è tragica.

Alice Davis Hitchcock Award for 1992, Society of Architectural Historians.
Most Outstanding Book in Architecture and Urban Planning, Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, Association of American Publishers, Inc., 1991.
International Architecture Book Award, American Institute of Architects, 1992: "This is magisterial history with a grand sweep, an eye for detail and a determination not to simplify.  If Modern architecture in Italy over five generations was complex, paradoxical and full of counter-tendencies in any one architect, then these are lovingly pulled apart and exposed.""

While verses detailing hellish suffering are plentiful in Dante’s Purgatory, the poet unambiguously represents Hell as an eternal prison which he strikingly carves out in Inferno 10 dedicated to the heretics where we discover Farinata and Cavalcante in one of the most poignant cantos of the 'Inferno.'

In this essay, I will focus on Dante and Virgil’s entrance into lower Hell (the city of Dis) and particularly Circle 6 dedicated to the heretics with the objective of exploring how the poet constructs and amplifies the metaphor of Hell as a prison which echoes the characterization delineated in the widely read apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus where Christ’s Descent into Hell is described as a liberation of pre-Christian souls from Satan’s infernal prison-house.  My reading of Dante’s poem aims to enhance our understanding of Inferno 10 by revealing another layer of meaning in this very complex canto through the notion of Hell as a place of eternal confinement.

Links with Dante Alighieri that can be found in Leonardo da Vinci's works. Direct links in painted, written or drawned works, but also indirect that scholars find as likely source of inspiration. Most of them refer to the Divine Comedy.
We can see that Dante was a source of inspiration for Leonardo from the beginning till the end of his life, from his very first known drawing till his last in France.
In this 700th year of Dante's death it is time to return him his laurels as source of major inspiration, or even main, for Leonardo.

Smith College - Department of Italian Studies
with the participation of SCMA
presents:
Consuming the Soul: Visions of Hell between Dante and Sargent
Virtual Conference
Friday, December 3, 2021
2:30 PM EST

Speakers:
Danielle Carrabino (SCMA)
Marco Piana (Smith College)

Join us in a virtual exploration of Sargent's visual masterpiece, Hell, through Dante's Commedia. The talk, organised in honor of Smith College Emeritus Professor Alfonso Procaccini, will investigate Sargent's work and its interaction with the medieval and Dantesque themes of hell as ingestion and digestion.

To book a spot, RSVP here:
https://smith.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIof-isqzIuG9VCk4zVO4ekqYAcnpUYu4at

Or contact Marco Piana (mpiana@smith.edu)

The volume is available for free download at https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/106880.

Ethics, Politics and Justice in Dante presents new research by international scholars on the themes of ethics, politics and justice in the works of Dante Alighieri, including chapters on Dante’s modern ‘afterlife’. Together the chapters explore how Dante’s writings engage with the contemporary culture of medieval Florence and Italy, and how and why his political and moral thought still speaks compellingly to modern readers. The collection’s contributors range across different disciplines and scholarly traditions – history, philology, classical reception, philosophy, theology – to scrutinise Dante’s Divine Comedy and his other works in Italian and Latin, offering a multi-faceted approach to the evolution of Dante’s political, ethical and legal thought throughout his writing career. Certain chapters focus on his early philosophical Convivio and on the accomplished Latin Eclogues of his final years, while others tackle knotty themes relating to judgement, justice, rhetoric and literary ethics in his Divine Comedy, from hell to paradise. The closing chapters discuss different modalities of the public reception and use of Dante’s work in both Italy and Britain, bringing the volume’s emphasis on morality, political philosophy, and social justice into the modern age of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.

CU Boulder - FREN1200
Offered FA2014, FA2015, FA2016
Course Description: The popularity of George RR Martin's fantasy saga A Song of Ice and Fire and its Emmy-winning HBO adaptation Game of Thrones shows us that major themes from medieval stories still resonate with audiences a thousand years after their composition. This course will examine major epic and romance texts of the Middle Ages such as Beowulf, The Song of Roland, and The Death of King Arthur. We will aim to understand the rich literary tradition that has led to our modern interest in dragons, knights, heroes and magic. We will also look at how representations of medieval culture in contemporary series such as Game of Thrones influence our conceptions (and misconceptions) of the Middle Ages. Much like Sansa, we will find that the stories do not necessarily reflect the reality.