Epistle to Cangrande

By the turn of the twentieth century, the Vita nuova had secured its reputation among the English-speaking public. Over the span of 60 years, the prosimetrum had broken free from the condition of remote obscurity inflicted by its classification as an opera minore, gaining full recognition as the indispensable key for unlocking Dante's development from young love poet to mature auctor of the Commedia. The previous chapters have retraced the translational and reception history of the libello throughout the better part of the nineteenth century. This contribution investigates its development throughout the last decades of the Victorian period, illustrating the progressive material diversification, hermeneutical sophistication, and dissemination of a sizeable corpus of new English translations and editions issued between 1893 and 1906.

Dante beyond influence is the first study to conceptualise and historicise the hermeneutic turn in Dante reception history and Victorian cultural history, charting its development across intellectual realms, agents and forms of readerly and writerly engagement. Unearthing previously unseen manuscript and print evidence, the book conducts a material and book-historical inquiry into the formation and popularisation of the critical and scholarly discourse on Dante through Victorian periodicals, mass-publishing, traditional and Extramural higher education. The book demonstrates that the transformation of Dante from object of amateur interest (dantophilia) to subject of systematic interpretive endeavours (dantismo) reflected paradigmatic changes in Victorian intellectual and socio-cultural history.

For those numerous courses taught in En glish we highly recommend duallanguage editions for the fa cil i ty they offer those instructors who wish to note certain aspects of the Italian text. In par tic u lar, we would note the translations with commentary by Allen Mandelbaum; Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander; and Robert Durling and Ronald L. Martinez; as well as those by Robin Kirkpatrick and Stanley Lombardo for their readability, valuable notes, and sometimes extended commentary on points of interest. We recognize the appeal that some earlier versions have for many instructors (e.g., those by Mark Musa, John D. Sinclair, Charles S. Singleton, John Ciardi, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow). We also would note that, among the many recent translations, those by Robert Pinsky, Anthony Esolen, Clive James, and Mary Jo Bang have been used to good effect by instructors. Madison Sowell's essay on evaluating En glish versions of the Comedy discusses the vari ous ele ments involved in choosing translations for a course on Dante. Readings from Dante's minor works are also used profitably in many courses. At times, the entire Vita nuova is assigned and relevant sections of the Monarchia, the Letter to Can Grande, Convivio, and De vulgari eloquentia are incorporated to provide background material for the study of the Comedy or to highlight their intrinsic importance in the more general medieval context. John Took provides a fine overview of these writings in Dante: Lyric Poet and Phi loso pher. Therefore, in addition to the editions and versions of the Comedy noted above, we call attention to several recent En glish translations of Dante's minor works that are impor tant additions to class syllabi. The most frequently used text in classes is the Vita nuova, often read in its entirety, and instructors should note the debate concerning its division and presen ta tion, even though these considerations do not affect its meaning vis-à-vis the Comedy. 2 Generally, earlier En glish translations of the Vita Nuova-those of Musa and Barbara Reynolds-still enjoy great popularity, although the more recent versions by Anthony Robert Mortimer and by Andrew Frisardi have received favorable comments. Dante Gabriel Rossetti's nineteenth-century version is also available in a 2002 edition. Small but representative se lections from the other minor works often find their way into course syllabi and can be impor tant additions. For investigations of Dante's views on language and lyric poetry, readings from De vulgari eloquentia are very impor tant, and two translations have recently appeared by Marianne Shapiro and Steven Botterill, respectively. Similarly, for Dante's ideas about the proper relationship between church and state, the Monarchia is the crucial document, and some recent translations include those by Richard Kay and by Shaw, although for classroom purposes the latter is more manageable.

For those numerous courses taught in En glish we highly recommend duallanguage editions for the fa cil i ty they offer those instructors who wish to note certain aspects of the Italian text. In par tic u lar, we would note the translations with commentary by Allen Mandelbaum; Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander; and Robert Durling and Ronald L. Martinez; as well as those by Robin Kirkpatrick and Stanley Lombardo for their readability, valuable notes, and sometimes extended commentary on points of interest. We recognize the appeal that some earlier versions have for many instructors (e.g., those by Mark Musa, John D. Sinclair, Charles S. Singleton, John Ciardi, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow). We also would note that, among the many recent translations, those by Robert Pinsky, Anthony Esolen, Clive James, and Mary Jo Bang have been used to good effect by instructors. Madison Sowell's essay on evaluating En glish versions of the Comedy discusses the vari ous ele ments involved in choosing translations for a course on Dante. Readings from Dante's minor works are also used profitably in many courses. At times, the entire Vita nuova is assigned and relevant sections of the Monarchia, the Letter to Can Grande, Convivio, and De vulgari eloquentia are incorporated to provide background material for the study of the Comedy or to highlight their intrinsic importance in the more general medieval context. John Took provides a fine overview of these writings in Dante: Lyric Poet and Phi loso pher. Therefore, in addition to the editions and versions of the Comedy noted above, we call attention to several recent En glish translations of Dante's minor works that are impor tant additions to class syllabi. The most frequently used text in classes is the Vita nuova, often read in its entirety, and instructors should note the debate concerning its division and presen ta tion, even though these considerations do not affect its meaning vis-à-vis the Comedy. 2 Generally, earlier En glish translations of the Vita Nuova-those of Musa and Barbara Reynolds-still enjoy great popularity, although the more recent versions by Anthony Robert Mortimer and by Andrew Frisardi have received favorable comments. Dante Gabriel Rossetti's nineteenth-century version is also available in a 2002 edition. Small but representative se lections from the other minor works often find their way into course syllabi and can be impor tant additions. For investigations of Dante's views on language and lyric poetry, readings from De vulgari eloquentia are very impor tant, and two translations have recently appeared by Marianne Shapiro and Steven Botterill, respectively. Similarly, for Dante's ideas about the proper relationship between church and state, the Monarchia is the crucial document, and some recent translations include those by Richard Kay and by Shaw, although for classroom purposes the latter is more manageable.

Il contributo riesamina il ramo α dello stemma codicum dell’Epistola a Cangrande tracciato, nel 1995, da Enzo Cecchini e ne propone la semplificazione, individuando nel codice Ambrosiano C 145 inf. un possibile codice descriptus.

This paper reconsiders the α family in the stemma codicum of Dante’s ‘Epistle to Cangrande’ (ed. Cecchini), and proposes to regard the Ambrosiano C 145 inf. as a codex descriptus.

Hovey's constant refrain is that martyrdom is not about achieving something. The church bears its cross for no other reason than that Jesus did so first. Hovey wants us to see martyrdom as a non-instrumental expression of a vulnerable testimony that awaits the eschatological vindication of God. I agree to a point, but I wonder whether this might create the mistaken impression that cross-bearing and martyrdom have no intrinsic rationality in the interim. In a world marred by the destructive force of reciprocal violence, the martyr's willingness to suffer violence without retaliation arguably reveals precisely what is needed in order to interrupt cycles of personal and social violence. As such, martyrdom can be said to participate in a practical rationality that proves vital to the survival of the human race. To this reviewer, the most provocative insight appeared in Chapter 4 as the author explored Jesus' nonviolence at Gethsemane. While Jesus accepted his cross, those around him did not. The mysterious figure that cut off the soldier's ear and the disciples who couldn't watch and pray represent two alternatives to the cross: fight or flight. When Jesus asked his disciples to pray in the garden, suggests Hovey, perhaps it was not chiefly to garner support in his hour of need but to help his disciples find the strength neither to flee nor fight, so that they could take up their own crosses and follow him to death. The fact of the disciples' desertion of Jesus has long been interpreted as a necessary corollary of Jesus' uniqueness. But things didn't need to happen as they did, says Hovey, and we are prone to draw the wrong inferences about Christian life when we read the story this way. If Jesus is the exception such that fighting and fleeing are suspended only for him, then martyrdom will become impossible for the church. To Share in the Body is a book brimming with insight and provocation. Artfully written and carefully constructed, its sentences are trees ripe with fruit for those willing to work. It is not an easy read. Readers must be prepared to take their time and brood over difficult sections. But this little book helps us to see the cross in a new light.

pena del sacco come stilema della sopraffazione 115 Jelena Todorović, Avarice Is the Most Dangerous Sin: "la maladetta lupa" in Dante's Commedia 131 Leyla M. G. Livraghi, Vanni Fucci e Capaneo: metamorfosi dell'eroe sacrilego dall'epos classico alla Commedia 149 Dabney G. Park, "I am Not Uzzah": Dante Speaks Truth to Power 167 Filippo Fabbricatore, Un silenzio che turba più delle parole: Geri Del Bello e la contraffazione della giustizia divina (Inf. 29.1-36) 185

This is the introduction to the new edited collection, The Afterlife of Dante's Vita Nova in the Anglophone World.

This volume, edited by Federica Coluzzi and Jacob Blakesley, provides the first systematic study of the translation and reception of Dante's Vita Nova in the Anglophone world, reconstructing for the first time the contexts and genesis of its English-language afterlife from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Dante is one of the foremost authors of the Western canon, and his Vita Nova has been repeatedly translated into English over the past two centuries. However, there exists no comprehensive account of the critical, scholarly, and creative English-language reception of Dante's work. This collection brings together scholars from Dante studies, translation studies, English studies, and book history to examine the translation and reception of the Vita Nova among modern English-speaking publics, in both academic and non-academic con texts, and thus represents a major contribution to Dante studies. The Afterlife of Dante's Vita Nova in the Anglophone World will be an essential reference point for scholars and students in English and Italian studies, literary and cultural studies, and translation and reception studies in the UK, Ireland, the USA, and Italy, where Dante is taught and researched.

provenance in the Christmas canticle points to yet another path calling for further exploration; and it is probably here that the liturgiologist will settle down and let Korhammer continue on his journey accompanied only by the philologist. At this point, a summary of the results so far acquired is given (chapter ten): the canticle list would likely have originated in Italy, with regional varieties developing elsewhere. From eastern France and Germany early Type I would have reached England by way of tenth-century "Benedictine" reform communities; and Type II, which later predominated, would have arrived with the Normans, and would have owed its diffusion largely to the influence of Cluniac communities. Part two deals with the Latin text of five Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, which are compared with some fifty-two manuscripts of diverse origins. Though related to manuscripts from northeastern France and Germany, and innocent as yet of Norman influences, the five Anglo-Saxon manuscripts fall into two recognizably distinct groups on the basis of textual variants. Of special interest is V, which presents not one, but two versions of the canticle series-a normal text (Vm) followed by another text which is anything but normal (Vp), since the word order of the Latin has been systematically altered. Korhammer argues convincingly that this shifting about was done for pedagogical purposes, to help the youngsters of some abbey school to get a better grasp of the elements of Latin syntax. With part three the focus narrows to the three manuscripts that have Old English glosses-D, V, and British Library MS Cotton Julius A.vi (=J). D and J are independent of Vp, and closer to a common archetype, with D receiving higher marks for fidelity to that archetype. On the other hand, Vp provides a much more idiomatic translation, a refreshing contrast to the error-ridden literalism of D and J. As for the language itself, it is West Saxon with some non-West Saxon characteristics, all of which are carefully subjected to analysis by Korhammer. In the case of Vp, the vocabulary is that of Winchester, but the phonology is that of Kent. Did Vp get to Canterbury from Winchester via an East Anglian monastery where the glossing might have taken place? Part four narrows the focus still more, presenting the integral text of D and Vp in an edition that is both diplomatic and synoptic; however, the critical apparatus takes into account other manuscripts and deals with the Latin as well as with the Old English text. The edition of the twenty-seven canticles is followed by detailed philological notes, an excellent bibliography with subject matter distributed under six different headings, a list of manuscripts referred to in the course of the book, and an index of Old English words. A useful summary in English answers the need of the reader unable to cope with the German of the dissertation, or of the scholar too impatient to follow in detail the leisurely presentation of the author.

In 1986, Giuseppe Mazzotta, addressing the legacy of the great Dante scholar Charles Southward Singleton, argued that the fairest way to confront the power of Singleton’s work was to avoid the veneration of the master by his disciples and let oneself be guided by a different, more vital principle: perplexity. Veneration, Mazzotta argued, is violent, for “it freezes the thinking of both the scholar and his epigones, it rigidifies it in fixed formulae and, in effect, destroys it.” But “perplexity,” etymologically, involves “interlacing,” “mixing together.” In this sense, perplexity is the best way to approach the production of a scholar like Singleton, as it forces us to actively face our debt to—and distance from—his work, all while intertwining our perspectives with his. For the seven-hundredth centenary of Dante’s death, this special issue of MLN revives this exercise in perplexity, celebrating the vitality of Singleton’s teachings in contemporary Dante studies. Francesco Brenna and Alberto Zuliani asked both emergent and affirmed scholars to reflect upon this matter by asking how Singleton’s intellectual legacy still affects their work and have collected the results here as an homage to the ability of Singleton’s teachings to still function as a trigger or reagent for new ideas and for the advancement of our understanding of Dante’s work. A perplexed homage, indeed, where worship finds no quarter and where Singleton and even Dante can be read anew.

Ancient and medieval usages of the Latin noun auctoritas display an intractability that induced one lexicographer not fifty years ago to warn bluntly against trying even to translate it: The word auctoritas belongs to the most significant and lasting coinages of the Latin language. Its meaning is not always easy to ascertain, and attempting to translate it causes even more trouble. A wise person will do better to refrain from the effort. 2 To guard against such difficulties, I will not unfold a full history of auctoritas and auctores from the beginning of the Latin language down to the present day. Furthermore, I will not attempt to address systematically the vast scholarship on authorship, as distinct (sometimes) from auctoritas, in the Middle Ages. 3 Instead, I will aim mainly to sketch attitudes toward authority, and authors, that prevailed among rhetoricians, grammarians, and exegetes through the earlier Middle Ages and to offer a partial list of new stances that developed afterward. In so doing, I will train my sights on literary auctoritas and auctores, those implicated in reading and writing. Even within this restricted ambit, I accept the impossibility of attaining exhaustive completeness. The period I will seek eventually to elucidate may be called the long twelfth century. Centuries are arbitrary slices of time, and major transitions may refuse willfully to take place just as the ninety-ninth year yields to the hundredth. In my definition, the long twelfth century extends from after the Great Schism of 1054 that divided the Greek and Latin branches of Christendom to around the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.

Outside of core curriculum programs or Great Books classes, few undergraduates who are not literature majors read and discuss Dante’s Divine Comedy. This paper describes the redesign of a course in the history of Christian theology as a model for integrating the study of Dante into additional contexts within general education. Reading Dante not only as poet but also as theologian can enhance students’ learning and their engagement with medieval theology. A focused reading of Paradiso provides a novel and exciting way for a survey course in historical theology to balance general education’s needs for both breadth and depth. At the same time, reading Dante also helps students to experience the significant intersections of culture and theology in the medieval period.

Recensioni Similarly Havely is not overzealous in identifying Franciscan elements in every line of the Commedia, recognizing that the Franciscan debate on poverty is by no means the only important factor in the construction of Dante's literary per-sona. He does, however, present a convincing argument in favour of its pervasive influence throughout the work. To this end, Havely has been painstaking in his efforts to locate the most Franciscan aspects of all three canticles of the Commedia., focusing on avarice and authority in the Inferno, poverty of the spirit in the Purgatorio and on poverty and authority in the Paradiso. Throughout the book as well Havely emphasizes that the debate on poverty was not simply one that pitted Franciscans against the papacy, especially given the existence of periodic papal support for the movement, but rather as one that ultimately also pitted the Spirituals against the Conventuals, confirming the difficulty of resolving the issue, but also accoun...

Massimo Cacciari (born 1944) is one of the most popular Italian philosophers, politicians, and intellectuals of his generation. Much of his philosophical career has been centred on the concept of “negative thought”, inspired by philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and is conveyed through a dialogue between philosophical and theological reflection. He has published numerous books on both “negative thought” and the relationship between philosophy and theology, including Krisis, Saggio sulla crisi del pensiero negativo da Nietzsche a Wittgenstein (1976), Pensiero negativo e razionalizzazione (1977), L’angelo necessario (1986), Dell’inizio (1990), and most recently Il lavoro dello spirito (2020).

The Epistle to Cangrande is one of the most debated documents in the production of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. For more than a hundred years scholars have been debating over its real paternity, whether it should be considered a work by Dante or a malicious forgery by an unnamed author. In this work, we try to address this philological problem through the methodologies of computational authorship verification and machine learning, by training a classifier on a dataset of medieval Latin prose texts and by using a set of authorship-related features. Although the project is still in a preliminary phase, the early results seem to confirm the hypothesis of a forgery.

Daas's fourth chapter, "Poetical History or Historical Poetry?" opens with a discussion of thirteenth-century constructions of historicity and their connections to oral and written discourses. Daas's discussion of historical narration versus poetic narration draws on various critics' appropriations of Barthesian concepts and highlights poetic discourse's "myth-busting" potential. The topic of the interplay of oral and written discourse is an important one in the subfield of mester de clerecía studies at the moment, and Daas's discussion is an important contribution; however, it is only loosely integrated into the larger arguments of the book. Of the three lesser-connected chapters, chapter 4 is the most relevant, but as it stands, this information forms more of a corteza or husk-to use a conceit familiar to Berceo's readers-that one could easily remove before arriving at the kernel of the matter. Even the husk has its purpose. Biologically, it protects the kernel, and chapters 1, 2, and 4 would certainly forfend accusations of an insufficiently contextualized argument. These chapters also provide essential material for novices or nonspecialists who might need an extensive exposition of the broader context of thirteenth-century Peninsular power dynamics, the evolution of Marian theology, or matters of orality and textuality in mester de clerecía poetry. There are a few problems with Daas's book that are editorial in nature. These range from minor editing or typesetting concerns, such as the occasional missing paragraph break, to more serious concerns like completely missing pages. Even though the missing content is from the scholarly apparatus rather than the body of the text, the absence detracts from the volume's utility. Two full pages are missing from the bibliography (98-99) representing a lacuna between an entry for Anthony Lappin and one for Raymond Williams; another two pages are missing from the index (102-3), which is the beginning of the index through the entry for Lionel Grossman. These are issues that cannot be assigned to the author, however, and therefore do not detract from Daas's fine contribution to the subfield of mester de clerecía literature.

The Epistle to Cangrande is one of the most debated documents in the production of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. For more than a hundred years scholars have been debating over its real paternity, whether it should be considered a work by Dante or a malicious forgery by an unnamed author. In this work, we try to address this philological problem through the methodologies of computational authorship verification and machine learning, by training a classifier on a dataset of medieval Latin prose texts and by using a set of authorship-related features. Although the project is still in a preliminary phase, the early results seem to confirm the hypothesis of a forgery.

The idea of weeping has played an important role in the development of Dante's theological implications through the Christian doctrine. Because the idea has been neglected for a number of centuries, it is not surprising that a scholarly volume such as Dante's Tears: The Poetics of Weeping from "Vita Nuova" to the "Commedia" has come under scrutiny. Rossana Fenu Barbera models her wellconstructed argument around the complex notion of tears and their importance for understanding the scholarly elaboration around the sphere of Dante's works. It is the first critical work from which Barbera demonstrates the centrality of tears in the development of Dante's lifelong search for a new poetics. While she hopes to reveal the correlation between Vita Nuova, Inferno, and Purgatorio, the scholar constructs a new model for the poetics of tears, which turns out to be hermeneutically evocative in Dante's text. Barbera divides her scholarly work into five chapters, along with an introduction and a conclusion, and carefully provides a succinct outline for each chapter. She organizes her volume into two sections: one section features the significance of tears from the Vita Nuova and Inferno, while the second features weeping in Inferno and Purgatorio. In the first section, she analyzes Dante's tears from Vita Nuova by taking into account the figure of Beatrice in the face of Dante's "desires and fears in his dreams" (p. XII). She also demonstrates how Dante moves from developing a poetics of tears through his inner struggles to defining the "performances of tears" (p. XIII), which convey special meanings through the description of characters like Paolo Malatesta and Count Ugolino. The second section unfolds with the scholar's re-interpretation of tears through a dual line of argument. The empirical evidence from antiquity to Dante's time serves Barbera's need to trace direct and indirect sources, a transition from a direct weeping to an indirect form of tears, which leads us to understand how tears become useful for the Florentine poet as a poetic mediation. This mediation serves as a witness to Dante's defiance against communal life through a socio-political flouting of the order of civic life and the city of Florence through the last tears for Dante in Purgatorio (p. XV). The scholar's final focus on Purgatorio XXX establishes a contrast between the static tears in Inferno and the

Dante was attached, simultaneously, to Christianity and to paganism. This was not a halfway position, nor a wavering between two conceptions of life according to mood or circumstance. The attachment to paganism was more like that which a man may feel to his youth, except that paganism was a stage in the history of Dante's race, not of himself individually. Yet there is a sense in which the pagan 'object' of his attachment was not something past and done with, existing only in history or legend or works of art; rather it was a permanent part of himself, an alter ego; it was that second self which his imagination took into the Other World in the form of Virgil and which, once it had assumed this form, was allowed to take charge of, to guide and govern the Christian protagonist of the resulting poem. 1

My lecture aims to point out the similarities between Dante's notion and the medieval Jewish concept of space and the Other World. I mostly choose passages from Hebrew mystical literature and Immanuel Romano's description of Heaven and Hell.

Normally the teaching of European literature begins with the Middle Ages, the birthplace of various national literature: this, however, leads to a problem for the student, who is compelled to start from the literary texts which are farther from both their linguistic and cultural points of view. These difficulties are emphasized if we consider an Asian student, who in most cases lacks the philosophical, religious, and artistic points of reference necessary to understand the literary texts. In the field of teaching medieval literature, a special role is played by the Divine Comedy, a text that probably represents the highest point in the medieval literary production, both in terms of breadth and depth. The Divine Comedy continues to be a matter of privileged study not only in the Italian field, but also in culture and medieval society in general. The following paper proposes to follow a different teaching approach in introducing the work to Asian students, starting not only from the c...

Rnrr.xsKìNi "Hntrc sens et non sens: approches comparatives de la tenso ti'oc et du jeu-parti arrageois"; Dominii.]ue Billv, "Pour une réhabilitation de la terminologie des troubadours: tenson, parumen et expressions synonymes"; 'i'rançois Zufferey, "Tensons réelles et tensons fictives au sein de la littérature provençale"; Marie-Claire Gérard-Zai, "La forme dialogique dans Las Novas del Papagay occitanes; Paolo Gresti, "Un nuovo trovatore italiano? Osservazioni sul partimen tra Aycard de Fossat e Girard Cavalaz, Se paradis et enfernz son aitai (Bd.T 6a.l)"; Carlos Alvar, "Il dibattito nella poesia dei cancioneros"; Miriam Cabré, "Du genre débat dans l'oeuvre de Cerverf de Girona"; Tobias Brandenberger, "Trcjvadores y juglares en la tençon gallego-portuguesa medieval." Pedroni's usetul Index of

identify nineteen to twenty-one passages in the Commedia in which Dante interrupts his narrative with a few lines beginning "lettor", "tu che leggi", or a similar vocative. Lanci (1970) offers the following summary of the explicit addresses. See:

Piccola biblioteca moneylenders or, by analogy, liars and poets), and she shows how Dante's preoccupation with problems of reference leads him to adopt the kind of neologistic, often self-contradictory poetic language found in Paradise, a language designed to transcend "the limitations of material values and goods ... by giving financial terms a metaphorical meaning, by turning the commercial perspective from profit and loss in money to gains in love and knowledge" (379). Extensive footnotes. Index.

Literary theory accounts for the nature of written discourse and the methods of interpreting it. It seeks to articulate the principles underlying phenomena like language, style, genre, authorship, linguistic truth, and fiction. In the Middle Ages, or the millennium stretching between 500 and 1500 CE, no single discourse or discipline was responsible for literary theory, nor did the Middle Ages have a term exactly equivalent to what "literary theory" means in literary studies today. Nonetheless, the thinkers and writers working in Western Christendom regularly investigated and debated the workings of written language. They did so as part of varied intellectual undertakings that ranged from interpreting sacred scripture to reconsidering pagan myths, and from making manuscripts to teaching children to read. As historians of medieval thought, we may be tempted to delimit medieval literary theory to the systematic treatises composed for medieval schools and universities. But the theorization of literature also took place in less academic and less expository frameworks. Medieval poems and fictional narratives often included self-conscious reflections on their own meaning-making, and the layout of just one manuscript page could testify to broader notions of textuality undergirding the scribe's work. The practical know-how entailed in the everyday activities of medieval literacy-in reading texts, listening to them, copying, translating, commissioning, or composing them-possessed its own theoretical significance. Such activities manifested specific ideas of what literature could be and do.

What is allegory? What can it tell us? What kinds of intellectual and tropological structures inform the production and reception of allegory? Is it generalizable, or is it specific to particular cultural formations? The vast project of Fredric Jameson's Allegory and Ideology locates these questions in the long history of allegorical analysis, identifying the structures that undergird much of the Western tropological imaginary and that provide ways of modulating individual identity with collective action and belief: namely, ideology. Yet Jameson's critique of allegory goes beyond this relation, showing how more complex forms of allegory extend into allegoresis, whereby the gaps and slippages in the structure of allegory afford libidinal energies that in turn subject allegory to its own critical apparatus.

Few areas of Dante scholarship have received more attention than the question of allegory, especially with regard to the Commedia. Dante himself fed the debate by his interest in literary theory. He distinguished two types of allegory: allegoria dei poeti, where a text of fiction conceals a hidden truth, and allegoria dei teologi, where the letter of the text also signifies the reality of God's book; thus the stories of the Old

Erich Auerbach, “Epilegomena to Mimesis.” As appendix to fiftieth-anniversary edition of Mimesis. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Pp. 559-574. Originally published in German in 1953.
Auerbach responds to reviews of his Mimesis that appeared in the first six years after its initial publication.