This book is devoted to a full and lucid exposition of Boyde's ideas. In the first two parts, the author presents a systematic account of the universe as Dante accepted it, and explains the processes of 'creation' and 'generation' as they operate in the non-human parts of the cosmos. Dr Boyde then shows how the two processes combine in Dante's theory of human embryology, and how this combination affects the issues of love, choice and freedom. The third and last part of the book consolidates these expository sections with a generous selection of quotations from Dante's authorities and from his own works in prose. At the same time, the book offers far more than a clear account of Dante's cosmology and anthropology. Dr Boyde is interested in Dante's ideas in so far as they inspired and gave shape to the Divine Comedy. Furthermore, in every chapter he demonstrates how the relevant concepts and habits of thought were transmuted into imagery, symbolism, and dramatic scenes, or simply transformed by the energy and concision of Dante's poetic style.

Patrick Boyde brings Dante's thought and poetry into focus for the modern reader by restoring the Comedy to its intellectual and literary context in 1300. He begins by describing the authorities that Dante acknowledged in the field of ethics and the modes of thought he shared with the great thinkers of his time. After giving a clear account of the differing approaches and ideals embodied in Aristotelian philosophy, Christianity and courtly literature, Boyde concentrates on the poetic representation of the most important vices and virtues in the Comedy. He stresses the heterogeneity and originality of Dante's treatment, and the challenges posed by his desire to harmonize these divergent value-systems. The book ends with a detailed case study of the 'vices and worth' of Ulysses in which Boyde throws light on recent controversies by deliberately remaining within the framework of the thirteenth-century assumptions, methods and concepts explored in previous chapters.

When political theorists teach the history of political philosophy, they typically skip from the ancient Greeks and Cicero to Augustine in the fifth century and Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth, and then on to the origins of modernity with Machiavelli and beyond. Paul Stern aims to change this settled narrative and makes a powerful case for treating Dante Alighieri, arguably the greatest poet of medieval Christendom, as a political philosopher of the first rank. In Dante's Philosophical Life, Stern argues that Purgatorio's depiction of the ascent to Earthly Paradise, that is, the summit of Mount Purgatory, was intended to give instruction on how to live the philosophic life, understood in its classical form as "love of wisdom." As an object of love, however, wisdom must be sought by the human soul, rather than possessed. But before the search can be undertaken, the soul needs to consider from where it begins: its nature and its good. In Stern's interpretation of Purgatorio, Dante's intense concern for political life follows from this need, for it is law that supplies the notions of good that shape the soul's understanding and it is law, especially its limits, that provides the most evident display of the soul's enduring hopes. According to Stern, Dante places inquiry regarding human nature and its good at the heart of philosophic investigation, thereby rehabilitating the highest form of reasoned judgment or prudence. Philosophy thus understood is neither a body of doctrines easily situated in a Christian framework nor a set of intellectual tools best used for predetermined theological ends, but a way of life. Stern's claim that Dante was arguing for prudence against dogmatisms of every kind addresses a question of contemporary concern: whether reason can guide a life.

This book, first published in 1996, is a translation of a fascinating work by one of the world's great poets.

The object of this work is to define Dante's attitude or, if need be, his successive attitudes towards philosophy. It is therefore a question of ascertaining the character, function and place which Dante assigned to this branch of learning among the activities of man. My purpose has not been to single out, classify and list Dante's numerous philosophical ideas, still less to look for their sources or to decide what doctrinal influences determined the evolution of his thought.

This book explores the tangled relationship between literary production and epistemological foundation as exemplified in one of the masterpieces of Italian literature. Filippo Andrei argues that Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron has a significant though concealed engagement with philosophy, and that the philosophical implications of its narratives can be understood through an epistemological approach to the text. He analyzes the influence of Dante, Petrarch, Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle, and other classical and medieval thinkers on Boccaccio's attitudes towards ethics and knowledge-seeking. Beyond providing an epistemological reading of the Decameron, this book also evaluates how a theoretical reflection on the nature of rhetoric and poetic imagination can ultimately elicit a theory of knowledge.

Available for the first time in paperback, this essential resource presents a systematic introduction to Dante's life and works, his cultural context and intellectual legacy. The only such work available in English, this Encyclopedia: brings together contemporary theories on Dante, summarizing them in clear and vivid prose provides in-depth discussions of the Divine Comedy, looking at title and form, moral structure, allegory and realism, manuscript tradition, and also taking account of the various editions of the work over the centuries contains numerous entries on Dante's other important writings and on the major subjects covered within them addresses connections between Dante and philosophy, theology, poetics, art, psychology, science, and music as well as critical perspective across the ages, from Dante's first critics to the present.