Dante’s Modern Afterlife: Reception and Response from Blake to Heaney

277 Pages·1998·4.2 MB·English

by  Nick Havely (eds.)

DANTE'S MODERN AFTERLIFE
Also by Nick Havely
CHAUCER'S BOCCACCIO
CHAUCER'S DREAM POETRY (co-editor with Helen Phillips)
CHAUCER: The House of Fame
GEOFFREY CHAUCER: Friar's, Summoner's and Pardoner's Tales
Dante's Modern
Mterlife
Reception and Response from
Blake to Heaney
Edited by
NickHavely
Senior Lecturer
Department of English and Related Literature
University of York
First published in Great Britain 1998 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London
Companies and representatives throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-333-67004-0
First published in the United States of America 1998 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-1-349-26977-8 ISBN 978-1-349-26975-4 (eBook)
DOl 10.1007/978-1-349-26975-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dante's modem afterlife: reception and response from Blake to Heaney
I edited by Nick Havely.
p. em.
Six of the essays in the volume were first delivered as papers at
a conference on Dante and the modems, March 15, 1996, Institute of
Romance Studies, University of London.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0--312-21581-9
1. English poetry-Italian influences. 2. American poetry
-History and criticism. 3. Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321-Influence.
4. English poetry-History and criticism. 5. American poetry
-Italian influences. 6. Medievalism in literature. I. Havely, N.
R.
PR129.18D35 1998
821.009--dc21 98-6726
CIP
Selection, editorial matter, Introduction and Chapter 12 ©Nick Havely 1998
Chapters 1-11, 13-15 ©Macmillan Press Ltd 1998
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1998 978-0-333-67004-0
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made
without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with
written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to
criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and
sustained forest sources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98
In memory of
Alan Charity
1935-92
Contents
List of Plates ix
Acknowledgements
X
Notes on the Contributors xii
Introduction: Dante's Afterlife: 1321-1997 1
Nick Havely
PART I PRE-ROMANTIC PROLOGUE
1 Foreseeing and Foreknowing: Dante's 'Ugolino'
and the Eton College Ode of Thomas Gray 17
John Roe
PART II ROMANTIC READINGS
2 Dante and Blake: Allegorizing the Event 33
Jeremy Tambling
3 Figuration in Shelley and Dante 49
Stuart Curran
4 The Shelleys and Dante's Matilda 60
William Keach
PART III VICTORIAN EVALUATIONS
5 Moral Luck in the Second Circle: Dante and the
Victorian Fate of Tragedy 73
Alison Milbank
6 'The Perilous Depth of Doubt': Dante, Plumptre
and Victorian Faith 90
Ralph Pite
vii
viii Contents
PART IV MODERN REVISIONS
7 Ezra Pound: Quotation and Community 113
Matthew Reynolds
8 Dante and Louis MacNeice: A Sequel to the Commedia 128
Steve Ellis
9 Purgatory Regained? Beckett and Dante 140
Hugh Haughton
PART V ECHOES IN POST-WAR ITALY
10 Micol and Beatrice: Echoes of the Vita Nuova
in Giorgio Bassani' s Garden of the Finzi-Contini 167
Judith Woolf
11 'Una Pitta di Rimorso': Dante in Sereni 185
Peter Robinson
PART VI CONTEMPORARY DIRECTIONS
12 'Prosperous people' and 'the real hell' in Gloria
Naylor's Linden Hills 211
Nick Havely
13 The Place of the Poet: Dante in Walcott's
Narrative Poetry 223
Mark Balfour.
14 Dante's Versatility and Seamus Heaney's Modernism 242
Bernard O'Donoghue
PART VII 'THE DEEP AND SAVAGE PATH'
15 Translation of Inferno, Canto 2 261
Seamus Heaney
Index 267
List of Plates
1 'Ug olino and his Sons in the Tower of Famine', wax relief by
Pierino da Vinci (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford).
2 'Ugolino and his Sons', oil painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds
(Knole House, Kent).
3 'Ugolino and his Sons', engraving from a lost painting by Johann
Heinrich Fuseli (photo-collection of Dame Frances Yates).
4 'Dante Meditating', oil painting by Joseph Noel Paton (Bury Art
Gallery).
5 'Francesca, Paolo and Gianciotto', engraving by Gustave Dore
(Cambridge University Library).
6 An illustration of Dante's popularity in the early twentieth cen
tury. Advertisement from The Bioscope (British Film Institute).
ix
Acknowledgements
Many of the contributors to this collection were colleagues, friends
or students of Alan Charity, who died in 1992. Alan wrote eloquently
about Dante and the reception of the Commedia. His major critical
work, Events and their Afterlife: The Dialectics of Christian Typology in
the Bible and Dante (Cambridge, 1966), has for over thirty years
inspired lungo studio and grande amore - as well as envy for what
Frank .Kermode described as 'its beautiful title'. We have progressed
from envy to theft by appropriating part of that title and, to make
amends, we dedicate the book to Alan Charity's memory.
The encouragement and support of Charmian Hearne have been
invaluable in guiding the project towards publication. The editor
would also like to thank Mark Balfour in particular, for biblio
graphical assistance, and the staff of the British Film Institute for
supplying some of the material for the 'Note on film and video'.
Six of the essays in the volume were first delivered as papers at a
conference on 'Dante and the Modems' held at the Institute of
Romance Studies, University of London, 15 March 1996. Thanks
are due to the Institute, its Secretary, Simona Cain, and the confer
ence organizer, Steve Ellis, for providing this initial forum.
The translation of Inferno, Canto 2, by Seamus Heaney was first
published in Dante's 'Inferno': Translations by Twenty Contemporary
Poets (New York: Ecco Press, 1993), and we are grateful to Seamus
Heaney for permission to print his revised version here. Italian
versions of the essays by Stuart Curran and William .Keach pre
viously appeared in Shelley e l'Italia, ed. L. M. Crisafulli and A.
Goldoni (Naples: Liguori, 1998), and the collaboration of the editors
of that volume is much appreciated.
The editor and publishers would like to thank the following
institutions for permission to reproduce works in their collections:
the Tate Gallery for the illustration by William Blake on the cover;
the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, for the wax relief by Pierino
da Vinci (Plate 1); the National Trust (Knole House, Kent) for
the painting by Joshua Reynolds (Plate 2); Bury Art Gallery for the
painting by Joseph Noel Paton (Plate 4); and Cambridge University
Library for the engraving by Gustave Dore (Plate 5). The engraving
by Fuseli (Plate 3) is from the photo-collection of Dame Frances Yates
X