Journey to Beatrice (Dante Studies, No. 2) [Paperback]

Professor Charles S. Singleton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1977

This second volume of Dante Studies is aimed at bringing into view the main outline of allegory in the Comedy, and is written on the persuasion that, for some time now, we have been reading the great work in what amounts to an amputated version. It is not that the text of the poem, as we have it, suffers from any serious lacunae. We would seem to have the work in its entirety as to text. The lacunae are rather in us and, the readers, and reside in that deficient knowledge and lack of awareness which we continue to bring to our reading of the poem. Let this indictment be confirmed by the fact that not one of the dozens of commentaries of the Comedy published in the last half-century is concerned to follow the outline of the allegory in more than a sporadic matter, wherein the reader's attention is called to the merest disjecta membra of that continuous dimension of the poem. Small wonder that in our time we have deemed the allegory to be such a negligible part of the poetry. There has been method in the madness of such a view, the signal instance in our own day being Benedetto Croce's reading of Dante. Yet no one seems to have noted that Croce's rejection of the allegory and the "allotria," as he called it, is but a late example of what is clearly a very old trend - as old as the Renaissance, in fact, which means about as old as may be, in this case, since that age followed so closely upon Dante's. Nor should this fact hold a special mystery for us, when we realize that the allegory of the Comedy is itself an imitation of Biblical allegory, as the Middle Ages concede that matter; and it is common knowledge that the Renaissance soon disclosed a strong desire to discount and reject that way of reading Scripture. There came a time when God's way of writing allegory could no longer be taken seriously. Is it then any thing surprising that Dante's allegory, an imitation of God's, should suffer the same rejection? --- from book's Preface

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (September 1, 1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801820057
• ISBN-13: 978-0801820052
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,990,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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