Dante's Comedy is a puzzling poem because the author wanted to lead his readers to understanding by engaging their curiosity. While many obscure matters are clarified in the course of the poem itself, others have remained enigmas that have fascinated Dantists for centuries. Over the last thirty-five years, Richard Kay has proposed original solutions to many of these puzzles; these are collected in the present volume. Historical context frames Kay's readings, which relate the poem to such standard sources as the Bible, Aristotle, Aquinas, and the Latin classics, but he also goes beyond these Scholastic sources to exploit Dante's use of less familiar aspects of Latin clerical culture, including physiognomy, Vitruvian proportions, and optics, and most especially astrology. Kay explores new ways to read the Comedy. For instance, he argues that Dante has embedded references to his authorities in a continuous series of acrostics formed by the initial letters of each tercet. Again, he shows how Dante returns to the theme of each infernal canto and develops it in the parallel cantos of Purgatorio and Paradiso. Particularly worthy of note are four essays on the poem's finale in the Empyrean.

A wide-ranging and original study on how enigmas and riddles work in literature.

Historical context frames Richard Kay's readings of some of the enigmas in Dante's Divine Comedy. These relate the poem to such standard sources as the Bible, Aristotle, Aquinas, and the Latin classics, but also go beyond these Scholastic sources to exploit Dante's use of less familiar aspects of Latin clerical culture, including physiognomy, Vitruvian proportions, and optics, and most especially astrology. Kay explores new ways to read the Comedy, investigating acrostics, parallelisms between cantos of Purgatorio and Paradiso, and aspects of the poem's finale in the Empyrean.

This collection – to be issued in three volumes – offers an unprecedented repertoire of vertical readings for the whole poem. As the first volume exemplifies, vertical reading not only articulates unexamined connections between the three canticles but also unlocks engaging new ways to enter into core concerns of the poem. The three volumes thereby provide an indispensable resource for scholars, students and enthusiasts of Dante. The volume has its origin in a series of thirty-three public lectures held in Trinity College, the University of Cambridge (2012-2016) which can be accessed at the Cambridge Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy website.

Traducere și note de Gabriela Lungu În 2021, când s-au împlinit 700 de ani de la moartea lui Dante, Matteo Strukul a publicat romanul de față, care ne oferă o imagine inedită asupra tinereții florentinului și evenimentelor legate de geneza Divinei Comedii. Romanul Dante: Enigma a ajuns imediat după apariție în vârful topurilor de vânzări din Italia. Florența, 1288. Un oraș sumbru, terifiat, aflat în mâinile lui Corso Donati, conducătorul guelfilor cel însetat de sângele ghibelinilor care i-au măcelărit aliații la Pieve al Toppo. În acest teatru al apocalipsei se mișcă Dante Alighieri: demn, curajos, devotat lui Beatrice, dar nevoit să trăiască alături de soția sa, Gemma; prieten cu Giotto, iubitor de poezie și artă, dar chemat să-și facă datoria pe câmpul de luptă. Dante va înfrunta moartea la Campaldino, într-o zi sângeroasă care a schimbat cursul istoriei. Bărbat zbuciumat, războinic lucid, poet îndrăgostit – un Dante necunoscut.