Dante Alighieri (Mhra Critical Texts 6 6) de Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri: Mhra Critical Texts 6 6

Dante Alighieri

Dante's political thought has long constituted a major area of interest for Dante studies. Yet there has been a tendency for the poet's views on matters of politics to be seen by critics as a self-contained, discrete area for study. This edition of four political letters examines the extent to which they can be said to contain the seeds of the political poetry of the Commedia, and to look again at the ways in which the author transforms the Latin political rhetoric of the letters into the Italian poetic language of his vernacular masterpiece. Table of Contents: 1. Introduction: 'Rome once had two suns' 2. The Letter to the Princes and Peoples of Italy (Epistola V) 3. The Letter to the Florentines (Epistola VI) 4. The Letter to the Emperor Henry VII (Epistola VII) 5. The Letter to the Italian Dr Claire Honess is a Senior Lecturer in the Italian Department at the University of Leeds.

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Durante degli Alighieri (1265 - 1321), was a major Italian poet of the Late Middle Ages. His Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa and later christened Divina by Boccaccio, is widely considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature. In the late Middle Ages, the overwhelming majority of poetry was written in Latin and therefore accessible only to affluent and educated audiences. In De vulgari eloquentia (On Eloquence in the Vernacular), however, Dante defended use of the vernacular in literature. He himself would even write in the Tuscan dialect for works such as The New Life (1295) and the aforementioned Divine Comedy; this choice, although highly unorthodox, set a hugely important precedent that later Italian writers such as Petrarch and Boccaccio would follow. As a result, Dante played an instrumental role in establishing the national language of Italy.