"Why Did Dante Write the Commedia?" or the Vision Thing

The simple answer to this question is Dante's own: "Però, in pro del mondo che mal vive, / al carro tieni or li occhi, e quel che vedi, / ritornato di là, fa che tu scrive" (Purg. XXXII, 103-105). Exchanging the chariot with any of the other sights that the pilgrim encounters on his journey, any of the other cose nove he sees along the way, we get an answer to our query: on behalf of the world that lives evilly, keep your eyes on what is in front of you, and that which you see--once you return to earth--be sure to write down

Sociology of the Brigata: Gendered Groups in Dante, Forese, Folgore, Boccaccio -- From 'Guido, i' vorrei' to Griselda

God is not otherness but sameness, never aliud but always ipsum: "qui non es alias aliud et alias aliter, sed idipsum et idipsum et idipsum" ("who art not one thing in one place and another thing in another place but the Selfsame, and the Selfsame, and the Selfsame" [12.7]). So writes Augustine in the Confessions, in a haunting phrase whose hammering repetition--"sed idipsum et idipsum et idipsum"--performs what it signifies: sameness. Against this backdrop of belief as a rejection of the other, as the ultimate identity, I want to consider Dante's sympathy for the other

Dante and Francesca da Rimini: Realpolitik, Romance, Gender

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

Dante and the Medieval Other World. by Alison Morgan

In this useful book Alison Morgan organizes and classifies information derived from representations of the other world, paying particular attention to prefigurings of Dante's Commedia. Not the least of this book's helpful features are its two appendices: appendix 1 is a chronological table of principal representations of the other world, while appendix 2 offers summaries of the same texts (now arranged alphabetically rather than chronologically), with background and bibliographical information provided as well

Integrated versus Separated Regulation: An Application to the Water Industry

The regulation of monopolistic firms has been widely investigated in the economic literature. Particular emphasis has been placed on the relationship between the regulated monopolist and the regulator. The present work deals with problems that may arise from the presence of several regulators. If regulators have different objective functions, inefficiency is likely to arise. A theoretical model with two regulators, one monopolistic firm and a renewable natural resource is presented. In this set up the level of demand relative to the sustainable use of the water resource plays a major role. The main result is the characterization of the cases in which the outcome of the regulation actually differs between the integrated-regulator and the separate-regulator scenarios. We find that the main determinants of the equilibrium are the level of demand and the marginal environmental damage. The equilibria obtained are analyzed in terms of price, environmental tax levels, and in terms of welfare distribution among the components of the regulator(s)' objective function

"Only Historicize": History, Material Culture (Food, Clothes, Books), and the Future of Dante Studies

The Commedia has produced a prodigious amount of exegesis since the fourteenth century, and consequently one of our tasks is to direct and reassure the responsible young scholar who may think there is nothing left to say. The fact, however, is that there is plenty left to say, in part because for many centuries many commentaries did little more than repeat previous commentaries and in part because the implicit hermeneutic guidelines structured by Dante into his text determine, indeed overdetermine, interpretation. My advice to the young Dante scholar is "only historicize.

Toward a Sexual Poetics of the Decameron

I will begin with a proverb, one which the Dizionario comparato di proverbi e modi proverbiali gives in Latin, French, Spanish, German, and English, as well as Italian. It is "Le parole son femmine e i fatti son maschi" (or, in Florio's 1598 translation from the Italian, "Wordes they are women, and deeds they are men"), and I will be using it as a rubric and point of departure for conceptualizing a pervasive Decameronian thematic regarding the relation of words to deeds and of both to gender

"Sotto benda": The Women of Dante's Canzone "Doglia Mi Reca" in the Light of Cecco d'Ascoli

Whereas the courtly canzone frequently opens with a conventional address to ladies who then disappear from the poem (Cavalcanti's "Donna me prega," Dante's "Donne ch'avete intelletto d'amore"), the female addressees whom Dante enlists in the struggle against male vice in stanza one of "Doglia mi reca" do not disappear from view but are summoned again prior to the canzone's midpoint and again at the conclusion

Dante and Cavalcanti (On Making Distinctions in Matters of Love): Inferno v in Its Lyric Context

The lyric context of Inferno v is a great deal richer and more complex than the routine citations of Guido Guinizzelli's Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore vis-à-vis Francesca's Amor ch'al cor gentil ratto s'apprende would suggest. While we have discussed Francesca's self-congratulatory exploitation of Guinizzellian principles on love and inborn nobility into our reading of Inferno v, her blatant citational tactics seem to have obscured the importance of the lyric tradition for other parts of the canto. I will attempt in this essay to cast a wider net with respect to Inferno v and the Italian lyric tradition, and to explore how Dante fashions the canto as a meditation of that tradition and that discourse--quintessentially a discourse of desire

Bertran de Born and Sordello: The Poetry of Politics in Dante's Comedy

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