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Rachel Jacoff & William Stephany.
Lectura Dantis Americana: Inferno II.
Philadelphia: Pennsylvania U.P., 1989.
ISBN 0812281772.
Hardback, stitch bound; issued without a dustjacket.
155x233x17mm.
xxiii,144pp.
English; includes Italian text of the canto with facing English translation.
Unused bargain.This item £8.50
417g.Although the conventional lectura typically follows its canto's sequential presentation of material, the authors have chosen to organise this essay thematically, dividing the discussion into three related parts. The introductory chapter discusses and analyses a pattern seen throughout the canto; it is at once a summary and a prelude and takes the form of an explication de texte. Consideration is given to various aspects of the canto's concern with language and with literature, arguing for its implicit metaliterary dimension. Questions of representation are central to the second chapter, which begins with an analysis of the tre donne benedette considered first as a triad and then in terms of the specific attributes of each of the ladies. The analysis of the nature of representation exemplified by Dante's figuration of these female figures leads to a culminates in a discussion of allegory. The third chapter explores Dante's diverse use of the canto's three major subtexts - Scripture, the Aeneid, and the Consolation of Philosophy. Throughout the Commedia, Dante's progressive poetic self-definition is in large part accomplished by his imaginative and strategic use of these texts. Their importance to Canto II is examined in relation to Dante's subsequent understanding of his vocation as the author of a "poema sacro".
The volume includes an Italian text of the canto together with a new translation into English by Patrick Creagh and Robert Hollander.
Related pages: | Dante |
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