Accessible and informative account of Dante's great Commedia: its purpose, themes and styles, and its reception over the centuries.

A fully updated 2007 edition of this useful and accessible coursebook on Dante's works, context and reception history.

As one of the supreme Christian epic poems, Dante's Divine Comedy provides not only far more personality and emotional depth than the pagan epics, it also opens up all the issues on which Western history turns - truth, beauty, goodness, sin, sanctification, and triumph. For all that, C.S. Lewis loved the Comedy for its seemingly effortless poetry. In this guide Peter Leithart uses a biblical angle to open up the Comedy for students, high school and up. He begins his discussion by examining the meaning and place of the courtly love tradition and then introduces us to the varied levels of meaning throughout the work. In the heart of the guide, Leithart walks us carefully through the craft and symbolism of each progressive stage - Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Each section contains helpful study questions.

Leading scholar Albert Russell Ascoli traces the metamorphosis of Dante Alighieri – minor Florentine aristocrat, political activist and exile, amateur philosopher and theologian, and daring experimental poet – into Dante, author of the Divine Comedy and perhaps the most self-consciously 'authoritative' cultural figure in the Western canon. The text offers a comprehensive introduction to Dante's evolving, transformative relationship to medieval ideas of authorship and authority from the early Vita Nuova through the unfinished treatises, The Banquet and On Vernacular Eloquence, to the works of his maturity, Monarchy and the Divine Comedy. Ascoli reveals how Dante anticipates modern notions of personalized, creative authorship and the phenomenon of 'Renaissance self-fashioning'. Unusually, the book examines Dante's career as a whole offering an important point of access not only to the Dantean oeuvre, but also to the history and theory of authorship in the larger Italian and European tradition.

From its ancient incarnation as a song to recent translations in modern languages, Homeric epic remains an abiding source of inspiration for both scholars and artists that transcends temporal and linguistic boundaries. The Cambridge Guide to Homer examines the influence and meaning of Homeric poetry from its earliest form as ancient Greek song to its current status in world literature, presenting the information in a synthetic manner that allows the reader to gain an understanding of the different strands of Homeric studies. The volume is structured around three main themes: Homeric Song and Text; the Homeric World, and Homer in the World. Each section starts with a series of 'macropedia' essays arranged thematically that are accompanied by shorter complementary 'micropedia' articles. The Cambridge Guide to Homer thus traces the many routes taken by Homeric epic in the ancient world and its continuing relevance in different periods and cultures.

"e;Life of Dante"e; brings together the earliest accounts of Dante available, putting the celebratory essay of literary genius Giovanni Boccaccio together with the historical analysis of leading humanist Leonardo Bruni. Their writings, along with the other sources included in this volume, provide a wealth of insight and information into Dante's unique character and life, from his susceptibility to the torments of passionate love, his involvement in politics, scholastic enthusiasms and military experience, to the stories behind the greatest heights of his poetic achievements.Not only are these accounts invaluable for their subject matter, they are also seminal examples of early biographical writing. Also included in this volume is a biography of Boccaccio, perhaps as great an influence on world literature as Dante himself.

A major re-evaluation of Boccaccio's status as literary innovator and cultural mediator equal to that of Petrarch and Dante.