Dante: The Poet, the Political Thinker, the Man [Paperback]

Barbara Reynolds (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 28, 2007

Dante is one of the towering figures in world literature, and yet many riddles and questions about his life and work persist. In the first full-length biography of him in more than twenty years, Barbara Reynolds offers provocative new ideas in every chapter. For example, many have read the Commedia as a lyrical parable about reward and punishment; Reynolds suggests that Dante was arguing against the Pope and for an Emperor as supreme secular authority of medieval Europe. Drawing from an impressive array of sources, Reynolds delivers a comprehensive analysis of the poet, placing him within the context of his culture and society to deepen our understanding of a complicated man who was irritable, opinionated, vengeful, and an extraordinary genius.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) is a most difficult subject for a biography as nearly every factual assertion about him is disputed. He may have had five children, perhaps six, maybe seven or even just three. Who was Beatrice, his poetic inspiration? Was she the daughter of Folco Portinari, or did she exist solely in Dante's imagination? Reynolds (Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul), a retired Italianist at Cambridge University, has her work cut out for her. She succeeds, however, in marshaling all the known facts of Dante's life, and slots them into perspective by explaining his era's tumultuous events and issues. Reynolds demolishes previous theories that Dante was an aloof genius concerned only with creating beautiful parables, and instead highlights the personal, public and very political agenda of the Commedia and other works. Along the way, she raises a few intriguing possibilities: that Dante's magnificent religious visions in Paradiso were induced by psychedelic drugs, for instance. Readers should be warned that this is neither a straightforward biography nor a light read for the airplane. Though provocative and fascinating in many places, it requires a solid grounding in the master's works to fully comprehend its sweep. Illus. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Dante achieved some of his loftiest poetic flights by using cannabis? Acclaimed translator and scholar Barbara Reynolds thinks it quite possible, and adduces textual evidence from the Commedia to support her provocative view. To be sure, Reynolds' new biography of the Florentine poet offers much more than controversy over psychedelic substances. Limning a unifying theme in Dante's masterpiece, Reynolds illuminates the poet's conviction that right governance would come to Europe only when all recognized the Holy Roman emperor--and not the pope--as the supreme political authority. Impressive close readings of pivotal passages reveal how deeply Dante yearned for the triumph of the ideal secular monarch and how bitterly disappointed he was by the papal intrigues that denied Emperor Henry VII such a triumph. But Reynolds also shows how Dante found both solace and financial security in the poetic art he turned to after a failed venture in philosophical writing. The Commedia reflects far more than its creator's financial circumstances, however. In Dante's intense love for Beatrice, Reynolds discerns an intellectual passion that transforms an otherwise obscure young Florentine lady into a complex figure capable of descending to crude invective and of rising to heavenly truth. Serious readers of Dante will find much here to ponder--and debate. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint; First Trade Paper Edition edition (August 28, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593761627
• ISBN-13: 978-1593761622
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,007,934 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Too ambitious, insufficiently organized, March 9, 2008

By 

J. C. Woods "silvannus" (Malden, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dante: The Poet, the Political Thinker, the Man (Paperback)

Reading Peter Hawkins' "Dante: a Brief History" helps to clarify the problem with this book. The author tries both a) to write an intellectual biography of Dante and b)to offer a detailed precis of the Commedy. But she deals with these subjects concurrently, so that if you bought the book to read about the Comedy you end up slogging through endless(not literally, but it feels so) pages of biography, and story of the intellectual genesis of Vita Nuova and the two great, unfinished Latin essays Dante abandoned to write the Comedy. I felt great guilt fast-forwarding through this part, but that did not ultimately deter me. And once she gets going with the Comedy, she feels the need to stop between cantica and update us as to the events in Dante's life. Hawkins is much more sparing on biographical detail (which he restricts to a single chapter) and his comments on the Comedy (which appear in a separate chapter) and he from there offers two more essays and that's that. Dr. Reynolds' is presentation is more sprawling, detailed and less well-organized. But it is a good book. I even like her theory about the identity of the "Greyhound" in the first canto of the Inferno. While I admit that there are better books available on the subject, I can not fathom giving it only one star, nor can I give it five.

6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing portrait of an amazing man, April 23, 2007

By 

Anyechka (Rensselaer, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dante: The Poet, the Political Thinker, the Man (Hardcover)

I fell in love with Dante when I first read 'The Divine Comedy' and 'La Vita Nuova' when I was 24 years old, and reading this wonderful biography made me love and respect him even more. Ms. Reynolds is dealing with a subject that many people would probably consider rather scholarly and academic, yet the writing is never boring. She manages to make it all interesting and relevant instead of the stuff of a stuffy academic treatise that doesn't engage the reader. And since she's one of the world's most renowned Dante scholars, she really knows her stuff. This book has everything one ever wanted to know, and then some, about Dante, his writings, and his times.

Given the era in which Dante lived, this can't be as detailed and in-depth as the biography of a more modern figure on a subject such as his day-to-day personal life or even some more basic subjects such as his relationship with his wife and children, but the information we do have on Dante's life is fascinating. Ms. Reynolds is able to cover in depth such subjects as the political and religious situation in Italy and the Holy Roman Empire (in an era long before separation and church of state, these two things were deeply intertwined), his bitterness and sadness over his exile from Florence, his relationship with Beatrice, his various benefactors, his early education, and, of course, his writing. Among the works covered are 'Il Convivio' ('The Banquet'), 'La Vita Nuova,' 'Monarchia,' and 'De Vulgari Eloquentia' ('On the Art of Writing in the Vernacular'). The major focus of the book, however, is on his masterpiece 'The Divine Comedy,' all three parts of it. As someone who read the work on my own, without a teacher or some sort of commentary, it gave me a whole new understanding of so many things in it. One can't really fully understand the work, even if one likes it, without an in-depth understanding of Dante as a person, the times he lived in, the public figures he knew and knew of, the understanding of theology at the time, the works of literature he was familiar with, and all of the stories from mythology, history, and religion which would have needed no explanations in his era but which often don't ring a bell with the average modern reader.

Overall, this is a thorough tome on the man who arguably is considered the next-greatest writer of all time, after Shakespeare, and his writings. Ms. Reynolds really makes both Dante and his writing come alive and transcend their long-ago era, becoming relevant to all time.

11 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not Surprising, just sad!, August 14, 2007

By 

Gregory J. Furke - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dante: The Poet, the Political Thinker, the Man (Paperback)

One wonders if Ms. Reynolds was enjoying an afternoon on the grass herself when she came upon her theory. Or was it simply an effort to get some publicity for a book that in no way measures up to the competition. Perhaps there was consideration of calling it "Dante's Trip: What a Comedy" to broaden readership.

In any case, with all the great works about the Divine Comedy, including Joseph Gallagher's "Modern Reader's Guide" and Eric Auerbach's "Dante, Poet of the Secular World," and biographies such as Paget Toynbee's "Dante Aligieri: His Life and Works," I recommend that you avoid Ms. Reynolds attempt at originality.

I understand that Academics live under the rule "Publish or Perish" but one encounters sufficient sensationalism in our modern inferno, must we project our own shallowness into the past?

It is sad that many of us are unable to imagine a time when gifted people could experience a spiritual journey and exercise their imagination without chemical support.