Department of Italian

Paper It 7

Dante and the Culture of his Age

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This course allows you to study Dante's works in the context of his time, focussing on the social and cultural history of a turbulent period which saw the economic, political and artistic self-assertion of the city-republics in an Italy where Pope and Emperor still laid claim to supreme power. Students will be encouraged to develop their particular interests in specific contexts, whether literary, philosophical, historical, or religious.

Texts and Topics

• Dante, La commedia, La vita nuova, Le rime, Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia, Monarchia
• Duecento Poetry: Giacomo da Lentini, Guido delle Colonne, Guittone d'Arezzo, Jacopone da Todi, Guido Guinizzelli and Guido Cavalcanti
• The history of the period with special reference to the Papacy and the Empire, and the Franciscan movement

Preparation

It is likely that you will have been drawn to this paper by your work for IT A3, It 1, It 3 and It 4, but whatever your existing knowledge of the period, and whatever your choice of individual works or topics may prove to be, the best way to prepare yourself will be to read as much as you possibly can of the Commedia, while contemporaneously refreshing your knowledge of the culture of Dante's Age. If you were to limit yourself to three or four cantos of the Commedia a day, read them carefully and make a few notes, it will take you something like five weeks to get through the whole poem. During those weeks you could be tackling some of the works listed immediately below.

Dante

For your reading of the Commedia you will probably want to make use of a translation into English prose, but you should definitely buy an edition with an Italian commentary. The best such commentary currently available is that by Anna Chiavacci Leonardi (3 vols. Mondadori: Meridiani, 1990-8); a cheaper version of the Inferno (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1999), intended for school use and including a complete translation into modern Italian prose, is available. The earlier commentaries by N. Sapegno (rev. ed. 1968), and by U. Bosco and G. Reggio (1980) are both good.

The age of Dante

• Waley, D., The Italian City Republics (London, 1969)
• Larner, J., Italy in the Age of Dante and Petrarch 1216-1380 (London, 1980)
• Martines, L., Power and Imagination: City States in Renaissance Italy (London, 1983)
• Brand C. P., and Pertile, L.(eds.), The Cambridge History of Italian Literature, pp. 5-69
• Valency, M., In Praise of Love: An Introduction to the Love Poetry of the Renaissance (New York, 1958), esp. pp. 106-272
• Cole, B., Giotto and Florentine Painting (New York, 1976)
• Smart, A. The Dawn of Italian Painting (Oxford: Phaidon, 1978)
• Knowles, D., The Evolution of Medieval Thought (London, 2nd edn. 1988, rev. D. E. Luscombe and C. N. L. Brooke)
• Brooke, R. and C., Popular Religion in the Middle Ages: Western Europe 1000-1300 (London, 1984)

The examination

From Tripos 2013, students will have two choices in this examination: Either you will answer three questions, choosing between questions that include commentary, various topics on Dante's works, the poets of the Duecento, and topics on the relationship between Dante's works and the culture of his age. Or you may take the entire three hours to answer just one question chosen from a selection of the questions on the paper. The questions included in this option will be identified with an asterisk *.

Suggestions for further reading

Dante

The bibliography on Dante is immense and it would only be disheartening to give you more than a brief sample at this stage. Your supervisors will give you further ad hoc guidance when they discover where your particular interests lie.

Collections of Lecturae Dantis (expositions of single cantos)

• Foster K., and Boyde, P.(eds), Cambridge Readings in Dante's Comedy (Cambridge, 1981)
• Limentani, U., Dante's Comedy: Introductory Readings of Selected Cantos (Cambridge, 1985)
• Wlassics, T. (ed.), Dante's Divine Comedy. Introductory Readings, I: Inferno, (Virginia, 1990)

If you find these essays helpful, you will find many other similar collections, both in English and Italian, in the Faculty Library.

Overview of Dante's Life and Works

• Bemrose, S., A New Life of Dante (Exeter, 2000)
• Holmes, G. Dante (Oxford, 1980)
• Mineo, N. Dante (Laterza: Letteratura italiana Laterza, vol. 5; Duecento, §§167-192, 3rd ed. 1989)

Other works by or attributed to Dante

In each case your best point of departure will be the introductions, notes and bibliographies accompanying the following translations:

• Dante's Lyric Poetry, ed. and trans. by K. Foster and P. Boyde, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1967)
• The Banquet (Convivio), trans. by C. Ryan (Stanford, 1989)
• De vulgari eloquentia, trans. by S. Botterill (Cambridge, 1996)
• Monarchy, trans. by P. Shaw (Cambridge, 1996)
• The 'Fiore' and the 'Detto d'Amore', ed. and trans. by S. Casciani and C. Kleinhenz (Notre Dame, 2000)
• Rime giovanili e della 'Vita Nuova', Teodolinda Barolini and Manuele Gragnolati, (Milan, 2009)
• Petrie, J., and Salmons, J. (eds.), Vita Nuova (Dublin, 1994); student edition with introduction and notes

Important general studies on Dante

Out of many scores of important general books on Dante, your attention is drawn to the following dozen, all of which have a broad theme or a challenging thesis, and all of which have been found stimulating by your predecessors. The titles speak for themselves.

• Armour, P., The Door of Purgatory: A Study of Multiple Symbolism in Dante's 'Purgatorio' (Oxford, 1983)
• Auerbach, E., Dante: Poet of the Secular World (Chicago and London, 1961)
• Barolini, T., The Undivine Comedy: Demythologizing Dante (New York, 1993)
• Botterill, S., Dante and the mystical tradition (Cambridge, 1994)
• Charity, A.C., Events and their Afterlife . The Dialectics of Christian Typology in the Bible and in Dante (Cambridge, 1966)
• Boyde, P., Dante Philomythes and Philosopher. I Man in the Cosmos (Cambridge, 1981), II Perception and Passion in Dante's 'Comedy' (Cambridge, 1993); III Human Vices and Human Worth in Dante's 'Comedy', (Cambridge 2000)
• Freccero, J., Dante: The Poetics of Conversion (Cambridge, Mass., 1986)
• Kirkpatrick, R., Dante's Inferno: Difficulty and Dead Poetry (Cambridge, 1988)
• Mazzotta, G., Dante: Poet of the Desert (Princeton, 1979)
• Morgan, A., Dante and the Medieval Other World (Cambridge, 1990)
• Russo, V., Il romanzo teologico (Naples, 1984)
• Scott J., Dante's Political Purgatory (Philadelphia, 1996)
• Took, J. F., 'L'etterno piacer'. Aesthetic Ideas in Dante (Oxford, 1984)
• Woodhouse, J. R.(ed.), Dante and Governance (Oxford, 1997)

Duecento Poetry (roughly in chronological order)

• Battaglia, S., La coscienza letteraria del Medioevo (Florence, 1965)
• Jensen, F., The Poetry of the Sicilian School (New York, 1985)
• Moleta, V., The Early Poetry of Guittone d'Arezzo (London, 1975)
• Hughes, S. and E., The Lauds: Jacopone da Todi (New York, 1982)
• Marti, M., Storia dello stil nuovo (Lecce, 1972-3)
• Nelson, L., The Poetry of Guido Cavalcanti (New York, 1986)
• Corti, M., La felicità mentale: nuove prospettive per Dante e Cavalcante (Turin, 1983)

Historical Topics (see also the books listed under Preparation above)

• Van Cleeve, T. C., The Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen (Oxford, 1972)
• Becker, M., Medieval Italy: Constraints and Creativity (Bloomington, 1981)
• Hyde, J. K., Society and Politics in Medieval Italy: the evolution of the civil life 1000-1350 (London, 1973)
• Moleta, V., From St Francis to Giotto: the Influence of St Francis on Early Italian Art and Literature (Chicago, 1983)
• Moorman, J., A History of the Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford, 1968)
• Wickham, C., Early Medieval Italy: Culture, Power and Local Society (London, 1981)

Further information

If you wish to discuss any aspect of the paper further, please contact Dr Heather Webb.