Customer Reviews

Dante: The Poet, the Political Thinker, the Man

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

We read Dante to feed our souls. Barbara Reynolds biography completely missed this point.

Her conclusions are weird and unsupported. It causes me to wonder at her affiliation with Dorothy Sayers: Sadly, it appears that nothing of Dorothy's passionate intellect rubbed off on her.

Much better works on Dante include the Dante Papers Trilogy: Introductory Papers on Dante (vol. 1), Further Papers on Dante (vol. 2), The Poetry of Search and the Poetry of Statement (vol. 3). Also worthy of mention is The Figure of Beatrice by Charles Williams.

The author'e premise is that Dante used marijuana ( !!?) , and that led him to write his most esteemed works.

Obviously this is wild and unfounded speculation and makes the author look unprofessional and unschooled. She fails miserably in her "proof" of that fallacious and malicious speculation.

Fans of Dante,the world's greatest poet ever , will want to steer clear of this pile of nonsense, and the author , Barbara Renalds, should attend a school where Dante is taught properly!

Have a great day.