Dante's «Convivio»: Or How to Restart a Career in Exile (Leeds Studies on Dante)

300 Pages·2018·3.517 MB·English

by  Franziska Meier (editor)

D ’ C
ante s onvivio
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leeds studies on dante
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’s Or HOw tO restart a Career in exile

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Dante’s unfinished work, the Convivio, his first book written in exile, n
v
is often overlooked. This volume, instead of promoting the idea that i
v
Dante’s career evolved continuously from the youthful Vita nova i
o
through to the Commedia, takes the Convivio as Dante’s first attempt :

O
to reassemble and reshape the remains of his Florentine past — from
r
his love poetry to his philosophical readings — in order to construct H
a new way of defining himself as a writer after 1302. Contributors to o
w
the volume explore the Convivio from a variety of different angles,

t
including the issue of genre, the relationship between poetry and o

prose and Dante’s concept of the reader, as well as examining the R
e
importance of ideas such as nobility, the vernacular and Roman law. s
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FRANZISKA MEIER is Professor of Romance Philology (French and Italian

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Literature) at the Georgia Augusta University, Göttingen. Her early x
i
research in Italian studies focused on modern literature, particularly l
e
the relationship of novelists with fascism and the anti-fascist resistance
movement. More recently, her scholarly interests have converged on
Dante, Boccaccio and Renaissance art history.
M
e
i
e
r

(e Edited by Franziska Meier
d
.
)
ISBN 978-3-0343-1835-8
www.peterlang.com 9 783034 318358 Peter Lang
D ’ C
ante s onvivio
D
leeds studies on dante
a
n
t
e
’s Or HOw tO restart a Career in exile

C
o
Dante’s unfinished work, the Convivio, his first book written in exile, n
v
is often overlooked. This volume, instead of promoting the idea that i
v
Dante’s career evolved continuously from the youthful Vita nova i
o
through to the Commedia, takes the Convivio as Dante’s first attempt :

O
to reassemble and reshape the remains of his Florentine past — from
r
his love poetry to his philosophical readings — in order to construct H
a new way of defining himself as a writer after 1302. Contributors to o
w
the volume explore the Convivio from a variety of different angles,

t
including the issue of genre, the relationship between poetry and o

prose and Dante’s concept of the reader, as well as examining the R
e
importance of ideas such as nobility, the vernacular and Roman law. s
t
a
r
t

a

C
a
r
e
e
r

i
n
FRANZISKA MEIER is Professor of Romance Philology (French and Italian

E
Literature) at the Georgia Augusta University, Göttingen. Her early x
i
research in Italian studies focused on modern literature, particularly l
e
the relationship of novelists with fascism and the anti-fascist resistance
movement. More recently, her scholarly interests have converged on
Dante, Boccaccio and Renaissance art history.
M
e
i
e
r

(e Edited by Franziska Meier
d
.
)
www.peterlang.com Peter Lang
Dante’s Convivio
Leeds Studies on Dante
Series Editors
Claire E. Honess, University of Leeds
Matthew Treherne, University of Leeds
PETER LANG
Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien
Dante’s
Convivio
Or How to Restart a Career in Exile
Edited by Franziska Meier
PETER LANG
Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National-
bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017945171
Published with the help of funding from the Italienische Kulturinstitut Berlin.
Cover image: Portrait of Dante in Florence’s Palazzo dell’Arte dei Guidici e Notai.
Photograph by Sailko (source: Wikimedia Commons).
issn 2235-1825
isbn 978-3-0343-1835-8 (print) • isbn 978-1-78874-315-0 (ePDF)
isbn 978-1-78874-316-7 (ePub) • isbn 978-1-78874-317-4 (mobi)
© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2018
Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland
[email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net
All rights reserved.
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.
Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of
the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.
This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and
processing in electronic retrieval systems.
This publication has been peer reviewed.
Contents
Abbreviations and Note on Translations vii
Notes on Contributors ix
Franziska Meier
Introduction 1
Zygmunt G. Barański
1 ‘Oh come è grande la mia impresa’: Notes towards Defining
Dante’s Convivio 9
Enrico Fenzi
2 ‘Per suo desiderio sua perfezione non perde’: Knowledge and
Happiness in the Third and Fourth Books of the Convivio 27
Theodore J. Cachey Jr
3 ‘Alcuna cosa di tanto nodo disnodare’: Cosmological
Questions between the Convivio and the Commedia 55
Anna Pegoretti
4 ‘Da questa nobilissima perfezione molti sono privati’:
Impediments to Knowledge and the Tradition of
Commentaries on Boethius’ Consolatio Philosophiae 77
Franziska Meier
5 ‘Questa sarà luce nuova, sole nuovo’: Dante and the
Vernacular in Convivio I 99
vi
Albert Russell Ascoli
6 ‘Ponete mente almeno come io son bella’: Prose and Poetry,
‘pane’ and ‘vivanda’, Goodness and Beauty, in Convivio I 115
Maria Luisa Ardizzone
7 ‘Ne la selva erronea’: Dante’s Quaestio on Nobility and the
Criticism of Materialism 145
Andrea Aldo Robiglio
8 ‘Poi che purgato è questo pane’: Vindication and Recognition
in Dante’s Convivio 173
Lorenzo Valterza
9 ‘Però si mosse la Ragione a comandare che …’: Roman Law
and Ethics in the Convivio 191
Enrica Zanin
10 ‘Miseri, ’mpediti, affamati’: Dante’s Implied Reader in the
Convivio 207
Donatella Stocchi-Perucchio
11 ‘Tu l’hai fatto di poco minore che li angeli’: Nobility,
Imperial Majesty, and the Optimus
Finis in Convivio IV and Monarchia 223
Luca Azzetta
12 ‘Di questo parla l’autore in una chiosa d’una sua canzone’:
The Convivio through the Eyes of Its First Readers 247
Index 283
Abbreviations and Note on Translations
The following editions are used throughout, unless otherwise stated:
Commedia La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata, ed. by Giorgio
Petrocchi, 2nd edn, 4 vols (Florence: Le Lettere, 1994)
Conv. Convivio, ed. by Franca Brambilla Ageno, 2 vols (Florence:
Le Lettere, 1995)
Dante’s ‘Il Convivio’ (The Banquet), trans. by Richard
Lansing (New York and London: Garland, 1990)
<https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/text/dantes-works/
the-convivio/>
DVE De vulgari eloquentia, ed. by Mirko Tavoni, in Dante Alighieri,
Opere, dir. by Marco Santagata, vol. I (Milan: Mondadori,
2011)
Ep. Epistole, ed. by Arsenio Frugoni and Giorgio Brugnoli, in
Opere minori, II (Milan: Ricciardi, 1979–88), 505–643
Inf. Inferno, in La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata
Mon. Monarchia, ed. by Diego Quaglioni, in Dante Alighieri,
Opere, vol. II (Milan: Mondadori, 2014)
Monarchy, ed. by Prue Shaw (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996)
Par. Paradiso, in La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata
Purg. Purgatorio, in La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata
VN Vita nuova, ed. by Domenico De Robertis, in Opere minori,
I. i, 1–247