Suchergebnisse

While we are accustomed to Dante's appropriations ad revisions of history, the case of Francesca da Rimini (Inf. 5.73-142) is rather different from the norm, since in her case no trace remains of the historical record that the poet could have appropriated. There is no completely independent documentation of Francesca's story; we are indebted for what we know to Dante and to his commentators. A fourteenth-century chronicler of Rimini, Marco Battagli, alludes in passing to the event, but his history was written in 1352, thus postdating by three decades Dante's death in 1321.Therefore, Battagli's passing and indirect reference (to which we shall return in due course) serves at best as plausibly independent confirmation of an occurrence about which the contemporary historical record is silent. That silence is broken by Dante.By reintegrating history-including the silence of history-into our reading of canto, we restore a context in which to remember that in the case of Francesca da Rimini Dante is the historian of record: in effect he saved Francesca from oblivion, giving her a voice and a name.

The ten readings in this slim volume were originally given as lecturae Dantis at the University of Cambridge between 1969 and 1984. Limentani seems to favor transitional and political cantos (the readings chosen are Inferno 1, 6, 8, 17; Purgatorio 1, 5, 8; Paradiso 1, 6, 17); he is adept at noting the canto's position within the poem as a whole. His method is to give an overview of the canto that follows its own organization, proceeding from one block of verses to the next; his style melds a willingness to offer an "impressionistic" reaction (for instance, regarding Inferno 1: "This vagueness as to details adds to the Canto the air of a dream-like scene that I myself find very appealing" [p. 2]) with a certain amount of textual precision (shortly before offering he above comment, he pointed out that "the words 'parea' and 'sembiava' appear three times between lines 46 and 50" [p. 1]). The lectura of Inferno 6 is particularly satisfying for its stress on the link between gluttony and Florentine politics; Limentani also makes the interesting point that this canto is, with Inferno 11, the shortest in the poem. Indeed, most useful, from this reader's perspective, were the occasional observations that set one thinking of the poem as a whole: thus Limentani informs us that Inferno 17 contains more similes than any other canto, notes that "If Purgatory is the antechamber of Paradise, Ante-Purgatory is the antechamber of the antechamber" (p. 81), and reminds us that there is no Roman emperor in hell.

Charles Davis, President of the Dante Society of America from 1991 to 1997, died on April 10, 1998. His first book, Dante and the Idea of Rome (1957), is a classic of Dante scholarship, but his many important essays on medieval Italy and Italian political theorists and historians, some collected in Dante's Italy (1984), have also changed and enriched our views of fourteenth-century Florence and Italy. What follows are a collection of thoughts about Charles from friends and colleagues, beginning with those who knew him longest.

The stature Dante grants Sordello in the Comedy has long puzzled critics, since it seems greater than warranted by the achievements of this Provençal poet. Not only does the meeting with Sordello, in the sixth canto of the Purgatorio, serve as the catalyst for the stirring invective against Italy that concludes the canto, but Sordello is assigned the important task of guiding Vergil and Dante to the valley of the princes and identifying for the two travelers its various royal inhabitants. This seems a large role for a poet who was-and is-best known as the author of a satirical lament with political overtones, the lament for Blacatz. Indeed, although there is a definite consonance between the tone of that lament and the hortatory tone of the character in the Comedy, Sordello's poetic oeuvre does not by itself convincingly account for his function in Dante's poem. In the absence of other explanations, however, critics have traditionally agreed that we must turn to Sordello's planh for an understanding of his position in the Comedy.

Hrotsvit von Gandersheim and the political uses of astrology / Joan Cadden -- Under whose care? the Madonna of San Sisto and women's monastic life in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Rome / Anne L. Clark -- Sister acts : conventual performance and the visitatio sepulchri in England and France / Margaret Aziza Pappano -- On the borders of exile : the poetry of Solomon Simhah of Troyes / Susan L. Einbinder -- Ubi sunt? Three lost (and found) ladies in troubadour lyric / Roy Rosenstein -- Lives and works : Chaucer and the compilers of the troubadour songbooks / Laura Kendrick -- Following instructions : remaking Dante's Vita nova in the fourteenth century / H. Wayne Storey -- The straits of empire : Sicily in Vergil and Dante / Sarah Spence -- Woman as mediator in medieval depictions of Muslims : the case of Floripas / Suzanne Conklin Akbari -- Lifting the veil? notes toward a gendered history of early italian literature / Teodolinda Barolini -- Afterword : in praise of a nonpareil colleague / Robert W. Hanning.