Dante's Studies

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 chooses the person who embodies the highest form of these virtues, and then proceeds to show that without faith they amount to nothing. Which is why I believe that the Florentine author depicts his Ulysses as a catastrophic failure: according to Dante if man is guided by faith he can become a giant: “You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honour” (Psalm 8), but when he is alone he is like a reed bent by the wind, to use Pascal’s famous image. In fact, man’s inanity also leads the psalmist to write: “what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8 again).

Questo articolo esamina la struttura e il contesto del capitolo XII del primo libro della Monarchia dantesca, mostrando come l’autorità filosofica sia in generale preponderante all’interno dell’opera, e in particolare in questa specifica sezione. Da queste considerazioni emerge un’incompatibilità di fondo del celebre inciso sicut in Paradiso Comedie iam dixi (Mn I XII 6) con il suo contesto prossimo, corroborata del resto anche da argomenti di contenuto, legati alla dottrina dantesca della libertà e della felicità dell’uomo. ||

This article examines the structure and the context of chapter 12 of the first book of Dante’s Monarchia, showing that philosophical authorities are globally predominant in the work, and in particular in this section. The famous parenthesis sicut in Paradiso Comedie iam dixi (Mn I XII 6) seems therefore incompatible with its immediate context. This incompatibility is strengthened by some doctrinal argumentations linked with Dante’s theory of free will and human happiness.

Dante, il Profeta e il Libro studies the role of the Holy Book in the legend of the bull in the Divine Comedy and in particular in Inferno 28 and in Filippino Lippi’s The Adoration of the golden calf. The poet Dante condemns Mohammed, the Prophet of Islam, to Hell (Inferno 28) for being a schismatic. His punishment is to be divided into two on account of the religious rift he brought about.  In 1502 the painter Filippino Lippi makes an enigmatic yet innovative allusion to Exodus 32: 1-6, when the Israelites worshipped the golden calf while Moses was on the Mount Sinai.  His painting suspends the bull in the air, endowing it with liveliness, not immobility, and not gold as in the Old Testament tradition.  Why did Lippi chose to represent a dynamic bull rather than the golden calf? The answer may lie in an unusual tie between Mohammed and the Bull, in a Byzantine legend tell of how this animal brings him the Holy book of Islam.  This relationship may help to explain also why Dante places Mohammed among the schismatics instead of the heretics. Morosini’s book addresses some of these questions while analyzing through texts and images the role that the Book, as guarantor of prophetic Truth, plays for Dante and Filippino Lippi. Ultimately the question was not a religious one, but rather a matter of civilization and knowledge, by which only the Wisdom of the Book could vanquish Malice. 

Dante, the Prophet and the Book includes 112 beautiful images in color, from XIII to XVI Century.

Già verso il XII secolo inizia a circolare nel Mediterraneo una leggenda nata nell' Oriente cristiano e subito diffusa in Occidente: la leggenda del libro sacro mandato da Dio al Profeta per mezzo di un toro che lo porta tra le sue corna, sotto gli occhi della folla attonita riunita su una montagna, proprio come Mosè sul Sinai riceve le tavole della nuova Legge. Un' altra leggenda, più diffusa in Italia e tra i commentatori danteschi del XIV secolo, racconta di una colomba che un religioso, irato contro la Chiesa, ha addestrato a beccare nell' orecchio del giovane Maometto, in modo che si creda che sia lo Spirito Santo disceso a dettargli la nuova Legge dell' Islam.
Questo saggio studia il ruolo del Libro sacro nella leggenda del toro nella Commedia di Dante, e in particolare nel canto XXVIII dell'Inferno, e nel dipinto l' Adorazione del vitello d' oro di Filippino Lippi (1502).

Nel canto XXVIII dell'Inferno, in cui sono puniti gli scismatici e i seminatori di discordia, Dante non spiega quale sia la colpa del personaggio Maometto che, diviso com'è, sembra essere proprio un libro che si squaderna, aperto e lacerato: secondo la legge del contrappasso, potrebbe essere quel Libro portato dal toro, che, secondo i polemisti cristiani, era la contraffazione e manipolazione della Bibbia.

Per comprendere gli elementi costitutivi del dipinto del Lippi il saggio tiene conto dell' impatto prodotto in Occidente dalla caduta di Costantinopoli (1453) e dal timore per l' espansione turca, e in particolare dell' importanza del Libro - e quindi della conoscenza - nel ciclo di affreschi della cappella Carafa in Santa Maria sopra Minerva (1488-1493), una chiesa sorta proprio nei pressi del tempio di Minerva Calchidica. Arriva così a proporre una nuova ipotesi di lettura di quel toro sospeso in aria: se rappresenta il nuovo idolo adorato dal popolo in preda all' irrazionalità e al delirio, il quadro esprime il timore di una nuova barbarie che si contrappone alla compostezza dei costumi e di un atteggiamento misurato incoraggiato dal sapere cristiano e antico racchiuso nel Libro, contro ogni forma di oscurantismo.

Roberta Morosiniè Professore Ordinario di lingue e letterature romanze presso Wake Forest University (USA). Si interessa di geografia letteraria  e dei rapporti cristiani-musulmani in una prospettiva pan-mediterranea.

E' autrice di numerosi saggi su Boccaccio, sul viaggio delle donne e dei testi nel Mediterraneo medievale, e in particolare su Maometto e Alessandro Magno nella tradizione narrativa italiana (XIII-XVI) di cui è in preparazione il primo studio sistematico in inglese e in italiano.

Per i tipi de L' ERMA di BRETSCHNEIDER è co-direttrice con Lorenzo Braccesi della collana Circolarità mediterranee.
Year: 2018
Series Mediterranean circularities / Circolarità mediterranee, 1
ISBN: 978-88-913-1205-1
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 378, 1 ill. Col.
Size: 17 x 24 cm

Delle molte lettere che sicuramente Dante avrà scritto, solamente un esiguo numero è giunto fino a noi; la Società Dantesca Italiana ha stabilito che tredici sono le Epistole dantesche, risalenti tutte al periodo dell'esilio, alcune sicuramente dell'Alighieri, altre di cui non si è totalmente certi dell'autenticità. Il mio articolo analizza da un punto di vista linguistico e stilistico la dodicesima, unica fra le tràdite, secondo la critica tradizionale, a mostrare il poeta sotto un punto di vista meno formale rispetto al gruppo di lettere diplomatiche o di richiesta di aiuto. In conclusione, mostreremo come nonostante gli studiosi riportino tradizionalmente questa epistola come la più sentita e autentica fra quelle a noi pervenute, nella quale la figura di Dante emerge nella sua umanità prima che nel ruolo di diplomatico, essa è forse la più retoricamente costruita e attenta.

This collection of studies and essays, originally delivered at a conference held at Stony Brook University, NY, in December, 2015, but greatly recast and expanded, examines aspects of the large footprint Dante has left in Western societies. In particular , they explore the dynamic of " worlding " that the Florentine effects on a host of authors and contexts, from radical culture-changing proposals within his own socio-cultural mileau, to his regenerative power in entire cultures, such as the Spanish, Latin American, and Albanian, to his shaping trans-national processes, such as with travel, diaspora and immigrant writers.

Dante e la scienza contemporanea nel Paradiso, la cosmologia di Dante mostra sfumature tali da far pensa-re ad alcuni aspetti di quella contemporanea. sembra quasi che Dante ab-bia avuto alcune sorprendenti intuizioni sulla struttura dell'universo, sulla sua natura non euclidea, sulla nozione di spazio-tempo quadri-dimensiona-le, che mostrano come alcuni punti d'arrivo della scienza contemporanea siano rileggibili anche alla luce del pensiero teologico dantesco e, più in generale, del tempo di Dante. in particolare, le nozioni di universo come ipersfera a quattro dimensioni, di cui la quarta è il tempo, e il legame fra la vita dell'universo e l'inizio del tempo, sono presenti in alcuni canti verso la fine del viaggio, in Paradiso, preceduti simmetricamente da una sorta di introduzione, o prefigurazione, nel canto XXViii del Purgatorio. Le simmetrie fra purgatorio XXVIII e paradiso XXVIII in Purgatorio XXViii Dante entra nel paradiso terrestre. Qui incontra una bellissima donna intenta a cogliere fiori e ne svelerà solo più avan-ti il nome, matelda. il compito di questa donna, oltre che di sottolineare l'atmosfera serena e già soprannaturale del nuovo ambiente, è anche di prefigurare l'arrivo di Beatrice. così come matelda prefigura Beatrice, il paradiso terrestre prefigura l'empireo: Dante nel rivolgersi a lei, subito dopo averla vista, sottolinea la sua appartenenza a una dimensione d'amo-re puro, già diversa da quella del mondo terreno. la sede di Dio e la sua autentica natura saranno infatti raffigurati in Paradiso XXViii, con perfetta simmetria (Purgatorio XXViii, 37-45).

"The Mediterranean is not only geography" once said Predrag Matvejevitć to whom this book is dedicated.  Starting from the definition of the Greek who  first called the  Mediterranean  "the salty sea",  I try to “read ” in geocritical terms the Mediterranean as a literary space in Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio's works (the Decameron, the Genealogy of the Pagan Gods and the De mulieribus), to  share the story of the sea and its protagonists, women forced to crossed its waters, pirates, merchants.

How does Dante narrate the sea and what role does it have in the Comedy?  What does the sea represent for Petrarch, the only one of the Three Crowns who had actually sailed? How do Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio narrate the Mediterranean ? and does it have a functional role in their works? if so what does the sea as a literary space tell us about Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio  and the world that they were living in ?  What does the sea tell us about geography, society, economy, trades, women and slavery?
In a fascinating journey that studies boats, sailings and nautical imagery  in political, social and geographical terms through texts and 77 images,  the volume offers a study of the three different ways Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio conceived the  Mediterranean , in the attempt to experiment tools to study the sea in a literary text,  for the articulation of a  poetic of the Mediterranean: making the sea a subject of literary inquiry.
From these pages, the wish for a  Mediterranean of peace,  that finds again its essence in its being  «tra discordanti liti», as  Dante writes, that is a sea that celebrates and praises the diversity of its shores, faiths, cultures and traditions.

Novità dell'approccio critico gramsciano al celebre Canto X dell'Inferno, alla questione della lingua e alla storia della letteratura italiana, rispetto al metodo critico "estetizzante" di Benedetto Croce.
Contributo al Convegno internazionale della SDU “Autocommento e autoriflessione in Dante”,  tenutosi  all'Accademia d’Ungheria in Roma nei giorni 10 -11 dicembre 2015.

Dante's Inferno presents an essentially non-tragic view of reality based on the Christian concept of Man in his historical and eschatological aspect. Nonetheless, some of Dante's episodes, like the one of Farinata degli Uberti, appear to contain a certain element of tragedy because of the virtues marking the characters involved, which endow them with a certain nobility, giving rise to an air of tragedy. To examine the nature of this "tragic" quality, I shall invoke Erich Auerbach's concept of figural realism as applied to Dante's masterpiece. A character's life on earth is a prefiguration of his life after death, the fulfilment of his earthly existence concluding his earthly deeds. The soul's fate post mortem bespeaks the quintessence of its life, the tangible sign of which is its contrappasso. The chief conflict takes place between the character and his fulfilment, but it also generates further conflicts: between the soul's past on earth and its current condition in Hell; between the qualities that marked it in the past that could objectively be considered virtuous, and its current status amongst the damned, and others. Only in the eyes of sinners are these conflicts seen as tragic, but not from the point of view of Dante the Author, who discredits these conflicts with a variety of rhetorical and stylistic devices. I endeavour to explain the seemingly tragic quality in Farinata degli Uberti, one of the "magnanimous" spirits confined in Hell. At first glance he may seem reminiscent of the heroes of Greek tragedy, but on closer scrutiny his "magnanimity" takes on a sinister quality, and this is how Dante wants his readers to see the connection between Farinata's perverse political commitment verging on fanaticism, and his sin of heresy, to which Farinata seems to turn a blind eye.

Dante’s cosmus: a trip to the ends of medieval (and modern) world · Ancient and modern commentaries on Dante have analysed his works from a literary and textual criticism perspective and, to some extent, as an object of historical investigation. However, philosophical, metaphysical and theological themes, far from modern sensitivity, are still little known and very much debated by specialists. Outstanding contributions have been made by renowned scholars of the past (e.g., Nardi, Auerbach, Gilson, Mellone), as well as by some modern ones (e.g., Fioravanti, Imbach, Bianchi, Porro, Falzone). However, in all Dantean commentaries, Dante’s cosmological vision is either trivialized or misrepresented. This paper aims to contribute to this debate by providing new elements that highlight Dante’s remarkable intuitive and speculative view, somehow beyond the borders of Scholasticism
(e.g., the Empyrean), and at the same time lead to reject the occasional anachronistic inclusion of Dante in the number of the precursors of the great scientists of the modern age (Galileo, Newton, Riemann, Einstein, Hubble).

“Pandemic Perspectives: Reflections on the Consequences of COVID-19 • Pandemische Perspektiven: Zu den Folgen von COVID-19 • Perspectives pandémiques : Réflexions sur les conséquences du COVID-19”
A Series of Explorative Events organized by the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (EASA), Class I, Humanities (https://www.euro-acad.eu)
Event 1: “Dante, the Divine Comedy and COVID-19” Date: 18 September 2021, online

Rationale
Starting with the outbreak of the COVID-19-pandemic in 2020, European society is placed in its largest cataclysmic crisis since 1945. After more than 75 years, progress towards an ever closer civilizational union has come to a dramatic halt. Real and perceived threats from within an outside have challenged the European project, but the pandemic has thrown the people, organizations and institutions of our continent into a limbo where sense (again) has to be created in the face of the looming abyss.
The original meaning of the Greek noun for crisis, ‘κρίσις’ entails to choose and to make a decision. This is what we have identified as the starting point for a series of four explorative events – organized in autumn 2021 and in spring 2022 – during which members of the EASA and guests will explore answers to existential questions emanating from our current situation. For 2021, we have chosen to seek inspiration from two literary anniversaries: 700 years ago, poet, writer and philosopher Dante Alighieri passed away. Immortal for his Divina Commedia, Dante invites us to reflection about navigating different circles of hell, but also to seek for guidance and orientation with the aim to reach perfection and consolation. In 1821, Fyodor Dostoevsky was born. He dedicated his literary career to the existentialist exploration of the contradictory human psyche, trapped in an eternal fight between divine as much as deplorable desires. From here it is possible to ask the question whether it is possible to establish trust and hope as the basis of European society.
Our first event, hosted 18 September 2021 online, invites scholars to reflections on “Dante, the Divine Comedy and COVID-19”. What can Dante tell us about the transgression of trauma and diffusing disorientation?
Please read further down concerning a more detailed rationale for this event.
If you have any questions, please direct them to professor Önnerfors, andreas.oennerfors@euro-acad.eu (English, German) or to professor Boštjan Marko Turk, bostjan-marko.turk@guest.arnes.si (French). To propose a paper for discussion, please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words no later to the Email-addresses above no later than 18 August 2021. For registration and participation, please fill in the following form: https://forms.office.com/r/s5ZWpMuKH0
We look very much forward to your participation,
Andreas Önnerfors and Boštjan Marko Turk (Dean and Vice-Dean of Class I, Humanities, European Academy of Sciences and Arts)
   
Dante, the Divine Comedy and COVID-19: preliminary reflections
Dante lived at a time when epidemics were rampant and death from infectious diseases was part of everyday life. The Covid 19 pandemic represents the largest global catastrophe since the Second World War. The following overview provides with support for our supposition:
In times of misfortune, cataclysms and wars, the suicide rate has always plummeted. The number of personal hardships has also been lower. The reason is plain to see. When a person is threatened from the outside, internal distresses are pushed aside. COVID-19, however, is the first natural disaster to defy this rule. The suicide rate did not decrease (L'INSEE, France), on the contrary, the suicide ideation increased (Centre for Mental Health at the University of Melbourne).
How to explain this phenomenon? There has not been a war (or any major catastrophe) in Europe for 75 years. The comparison of suicide rate applies to the period before the Second World War. But Europe has changed in the last three quarters of a century. Technological progress has not been followed by what can be called individual fulfilment. The society has become atomized, the anxiety within its vital tissue has grown and, above all, it appears as if the bearings walls, the caryatides of the civilization, have come down. Today’s civilization, which is on the wane, has been left without its founding pillars. Thus, the acute problem of the absence of meaning, significance and sense has emerged. Man can live without order, without security, even without a home, but he cannot live without meaning. COVID-19 caused so much psychological trauma or depressive symptoms because it
has stricken at a population that, in the absence of meaning, had become severely susceptible to psychological abuse.
Dante Alighieri has much to say to us today in this very direction. However, to understand his message properly, it is necessary to think about it in a slightly unconventional way. We should question Dante Alighieri as a human being and ask him about his message for the time we live in. La Divina Comedia, in which the poet himself appears in the first person, offers an opportunity for this. At the half-way point of his life, he sets out to explore the value system of the world, its morality, but also the meaning of human life and the mysteries of that what comes in supremis.
Thinking along these lines, the great text must be understood outside the allegorical meanings and symbolism of the time. It is necessary to place oneself in the position of the poet and ask how and in what way today's intellectual could relive his experience. The Divina Comedia is the story of a political dissident who was expelled from his native Florence for attacking the supreme papal authority, Rome at the time. Although persecuted, he did not bow down: his work is a testimony of an intellectual non-conformist, who chooses two meaningful companions for his journey through the fundamental spheres of human existence, hell, purgatory and heaven: Virgil, who stands for wisdom, and Beatrice, who represents the never completed ideal of eternal, divine love. This is also why Beatrice appears only at the third stage of the journey, where life takes on its final meaning. This is also why this is a ‘comedia’, a story with a happy ending.
The challenge for intellectuals today is finding the lost meaning. Great works are always great projections of ideas. But it is the conviction that things can retrieve their meaning and bring a happy ending that has always been the first stance of critical intellectuals. In the Greek sense of the word ‘crisis’, a pandemic can be an opportunity for going over trauma and reconstruct the vanishing unity of our civilization, its significance and its designs of meaning.

The paper addresses the sc. Cacciaguida's prophecy (Par., XVII 46-78) on Dante's exile. For new proposals have been recently issued by authoritative scholars (Tavoni, Pontari, Pellegrini), but with unsound links to contemporary documents and other Dantean texts, the reader will find here a full disclosure and walk through of mentioned evidences in order to better support a sound view on early years Dante's exile (1302-1304), partially amending previous scholars' communis opinio.

The letter of friar Ilaro of S. Croce del Corvo is one of the most long-lasting Dantean cruces, because of a number of different methods that scholars have used. The present paper looks-through the facts, clarifying and improving a little our knowledge of the history, the background and the local context the text shows(-off ). Given friar Ilaro never existed, as a recent contributor claims triggering the following paper, as long as such a controversial claim of inauthenticity is based on
mere clues (e.g. a well-known Pisan document, dated January, 19th, 1315, where there’s no Ilaro), a number of queries regarding a forged text (particularly a Dantean text), remain to be answered. Borrowing from legal defense, the guilt (the inauthenticity) not the innocence (complained by the text), has to be proven.

Pourquoi Dieu se serait-il fait homme ? Y-a-t-il un lien symbolique entre Adam et le Christ ? Pourquoi pour racheter l’humanité, Dieu aurait-il décidé, même s’il disposait – on peut le supposer – d’autres moyens, qu’il fallait que son fils prenne une forme humaine et qu’il soit crucifié ? Et d’autre part, si la passion et la mort de Jésus sur la croix ont été décidées par Dieu afin de racheter le genre humain, pourquoi se serait-il fâché ensuite contre les Hébreux, qui somme toute, en demandant la condamnation de Jésus, n’avaient qu’incarné les instruments inconscients de ses desseins impénétrables ? Comment pourrait-on alors justifier les châtiments (la destruction de Jérusalem, la dispersion) que la colère divine leur a infligés ? Pourquoi, dans un monde où tout semble voué à la disparition, le corps de l’homme serait-il éternel ?
Les questions que Dante se pose dans le septième chant du "Paradis" de sa "Divine Comédie", qui fait l’objet de ce petit livre, avaient donné matière, à son époque, à plusieurs subtiles disquisitions. En termes purement rationnels, il s’agit parfois d’apories conceptuelles apparemment sans issue, qui semblent aujourd’hui dépasser la frontière du raisonnable : mais les arguments dont le poète se sert reposent sur une logique et des présupposés qui appartiennent désormais à un autre temps, à une autre civilisation. Et c’est précisément cela qui fait son charme…

RIVISTA DI LETTERATURA ITALIANA, vol. XXV (2007), pp. 21-50 - The article studies the history ofthe comparison
between Dante and Homer, starting from Petrarch and
Boccaccio up to the beginning of the 1600s. There are
brief notes on subsequent developments in order to
show that this humanistic and academic formula of
the Dantesque exegesis of Florentine tradition assumes
the militant function of negotiating forms and limits
in the literary re-use of the Commedia. Those who
prefer Dante to Homer want to make the Commedia
contemporary to the Renaissance; thus one asks on
which criteria can the irrepressible semantic charge
of a work the Renaissance itself called “divine”, its
vitality enduring as it is passed down, be based? The
question of the pre-eminence of one or the other of the
poets becomes secondary to the definition of a global
poetics, finally suggesting several powerful themes in
16th century scholarship.

Catalogo della mostra «Onorevole e antico cittadino di Firenze». Il Bargello per Dante, patrocinata dal Comitato Nazionale per le Celebrazioni del 700° Anniversario della morte di Dante Alighieri.
Il Bargello è luogo dantesco per eccellenza a Firenze: qui si trova il più antico ritratto di Dante, realizzato entro il 1337 da Giotto e la sua bottega negli stessi anni in cui ferveva l’industrioso lavoro di diffusione della Commedia nella città gigliata. Il catalogo illustra il complesso legame tra Dante, la sua opera e Firenze ripercorrendo la fitta trama dei rapporti tra pittori, miniatori, copisti e commentatori, impegnati in un’impresa editoriale e artistica senza precedenti. Dante ha frequentato le sale del Bargello come priore e in queste stesse sale ha ricevuto la condanna prima all’esilio, poi a morte (10 marzo 1302). La ricostruzione del delicato rapporto tra il Poeta e Firenze assume un’importanza che va ben oltre questi confini, investendo in modo indelebile la storia della fortuna di Dante e il modo in cui noi oggi ancora guardiamo a lui e alla sua opera.

A textual journey through Dante s Comedy must begin from its beginnings. For this reason I chose the utmost classical approach of the lectura to examine the first three cantos as a textual whole in three movements, as they develop the exposition of the Third Way in Thomas demonstration of the existence of God (Summa Theologiae I, II, 3). Dante s Comedy is a unitary text distinguished by a strong hysteron proteron narrative pattern, where the Author embeds in his main character a manifold profile: pilgrim, reporter and narrator. The narrator has grown in experience through the journey from a complete loss of orientation to a gradual regain of the natural order of things, i.e. from a complete mental submission to contingency or disorder misleading to suicide to a natural order of things wanted by God. The Third Way of Thomas demonstration leads from a crypto-atheism, i.e. God does not exist, to the demonstration that a necessary being has to be. I analyzed Thomas Third Way and then applied this perspective to the first three cantos of Dante s Comedy. At the end I noticed that the Comedy as a whole is necessarily contingent, so that a further analysis of the threefold feature of Dante was crucial for the comprehension of the whole. His experience as a man and above all as a man of culture required also awareness of his contemporary culture and of the main influences he may have perceived and left a print in his conscience. Therefore I chose to investigate contingency as a state of the mind, as the medieval philo-theologicians did too: they understood contingency not only as the interaction of matter and form, but as a condition of the soul between earthly disorder and celestial natural order.

Gli antichi commenti alla Commedia sono i primi mediatori tra l’opera dantesca e il pubblico del Trecento e del primo Quattrocento. Sono essi stessi il primo “pubblico”, i primi lettori, secondo quanto scrive S. Bellomo, e quella che trasmettono nei loro commenti è una visione ideologica –
consapevole o no- della realtà che analizzano attraverso il poema. Troviamo degli esempi a cominciare dai proemi di alcuni dei primi commentatori, attraverso i verbi utilizzati per spiegare l'allegoria nella Commedia: dimostrare, correspondēre, interpretare o addirittura essere, ognuno dei quali fa riferimento a un proprio paradigma mentale e apre a un differente orizzonte del reale. Come intellettuali, i commentatori rivelano l’eterodossia o l’ortodossia del poema dantesco attraverso quello che potremmo definire l’inconscio letterario della borghesia medievale che sta cercando di affermare la propria individualità a livello sociale, in una specie di processo di individuazione collettivo che trova nella Commedia e nella lingua volgare, per richiamare la tesi di R. Imbach, l’opera comune di riferimento.

Con il presente contributo si intende fornire al lettore interessato allo studio di Dante una rassegna critica aggiornata sulle principali risorse digitali dantesche. Per facilitare la consultazione, quest’ultime sono state catalogate in tre distinte categorie (motori di ricerche lemmatizzati ; software e siti di commento e confronti intertestuali ; siti d’integrazioni audio-visive) alle quali si affianca poi un prospetto in cui sono illustrate
quelle applicazioni di non immediata classificazione. Il lavoro si chiude con una serie di suggerimenti per poter implementare l’efficienza delle strumentazioni considerate.

L’articolo prende in esame la tradizione italiane dei "Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis" di Macrobio, censendone i testimoni fino all’epoca di Dante. Particolare attenzione è rivolta al corredo paratestuale, essenziale per ricostruire le modalità di lettura dell’opera. Gli accessus editi in appendice (in molti casi per la prima volta) presentano il "Somnium" come testo volto a insegnare l’importanza della giustizia attraverso la contemplazione del destino ultraterreno delle anime; il commento di Macrobio integra, inoltre, alla rappresentazione ciceroniana dei luoghi celesti destinati ai benemeriti quella dei luoghi delle pene per i reprobi. Lo studio delle glosse permette anche di ipotizzare che Dante sia giunto al "Somnium" tramite la mediazione della "Consolatio Philosophie" di Boezio: dai manoscritti emerge, infatti, che i passi delle due opere sulla vanità della gloria terrena erano abitualmente letti in parallelo. Questa ricostruzione trova conferma nel fatto che le fonti di Boezio e di Cicerone (integrato dal commento di Macrobio) sono riprese congiuntamente da Dante in più luoghi della "Commedia".

L’articolo discute il contributo di G. Albanese-B. Figliuolo-P. Pontari, Giovanni Villani, Dante e un antichissimo codice fiorentino della ‘Commedia’, in SD, a. lxxxiii 2018, pp. 349-412, e illustra alcuni aspetti della diffusione della Commedia a Firenze nel secondo quarto del Trecento, con particolare attenzione alla vicenda di un Liber Dantis appartenuto e rubato a Giovanni Villani, poi da lui recuperato anche con l’ausilio di Andrea Lancia.
The paper discusses the recent essay by G. Albanese-B. Figliuolo-P. Pontari, Giovanni Villani, Dante e un antichissimo codice fiorentino della ‘Commedia’, in SD, a. lxxxiii 2018, pp. 349-412, and outlines some aspects of the circulation of the Commedia in Florence in the second quarter of 14th century, with a particular attention to the episode of the Liber Dantis once belonging Giovanni Villani, which was stolen and then recovered also thanks to Andrea Lancia’s help.