Dante’s Prayerful Pilgrimage: Typologies of Prayer in the Comedy

273 Pages·2019·0.934 MB·English

by  Alessandro Vettori

Dante’s Prayerful Pilgrimage
Medieval and Renaissance
Authors and Texts
Editor-in-Chief
Francis G. Gentry (Emeritus Professor of German, Penn State University)
Editorial Board
Teodolinda Barolini (Lorenzo Da Ponte Professor of Italian, Columbia
University)
Cynthia Brown (Professor of French, University of California, Santa Barbara)
Marina Brownlee (Robert Schirmer Professor of Spanish and Professor of
Comparative Literature, Princeton University)
Keith Busby (Douglas Kelly Professor of Medieval French, University of
Wisconsin-Madison)
Craig Kallendorf (Professor of English and Classics, Texas A&M University)
Alastair Minnis (Professor of English, Yale University)
Brian Murdoch (Professor of German, Stirling University)
Jan Ziolkowski (Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval Latin, Harvard
University and Director, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection)
volume 22
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/mrat
Dante’s Prayerful
Pilgrimage
Typologies of Prayer in the Comedy
By
Alessandro Vettori
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Part of the subject matter of Chapter Two “The Psalms. Poetic Prayer of Ascent” was published in “I salmi
nella Commedia di Dante, ovvero la poetica dell’ascesa nel Purgatorio.” Dialogo. Studi in memoria di Angela
Caracciolo-Aricò. Venezia: Centro di Studi Medioevali e Rinascimentali E.A. Cicogna, 2017. 395–408.
Part of the subject matter of Chapter Three “Prayer As Art in Movement” appeared in Italian in “La breccia
silenziaria in Purgatorio X,” Lectura Dantis 20–21 (Spring–Fall 1997) 78–100.
I am grateful to the editors for allowing me to reprint that material here.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Vettori, Alessandro, author.
Title: Dante’s prayerful pilgrimage : typologies of prayer in The comedy /
 by Alessandro Vettori.
Description: Boston : 2019. | Series: Medieval and Renaissance authorities
 and texts | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019021311 (print) | LCCN 2019981467 (ebook) |
 ISBN 9789004405240 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004405257 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321. Divina commedia. | Prayer in
 literature.
Classification: LCC PQ4419.P73 V48 2019 (print) | LCC PQ4419.P73 (ebook)
 | DDC 851/.1—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019021311
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019981467
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 0925-7683
isbn 978-90-04-40524-0 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-40525-7 (e-book)
Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi,
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This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.
For my mother Marina Pieralli
∵

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Pilgrimage and Exile 1
1 Blasphemy in Inferno 15
2 The Psalms: Poetic Prayer of Ascent 47
3 Prayer as Art in Movement 96
4 Intercessions, Prayerful Locations, and the Theatrics of Prayer 128
5 Dancing Souls in Paradiso 175
Conclusion: Prayer as Desire to Be Elsewhere 212
Appendix 221
Works Cited 245
Index 256

Acknowledgments
I began researching the concept of prayer in Dante’s Comedy during a graduate
course at Yale University many years ago and the paper I wrote for that class
constitutes the core of the present study. Many people have inspired me to
reflect and think about prayer and pilgrimage in Dante’s work in the course
of subsequent years. I am thankful to Giuseppe Mazzotta for introducing me
to Dante Studies “the American way,” to the many conversations I had with
my colleagues, the late Tibor Wlassics, while I taught as an assistant profes-
sor at the University of Virginia, and later with the late Franco Ferrucci at
Rutgers University, to the many scholarly dialogues I had on this topic with
Paola Gambarota, Timothy Johnson, Elizabeth Leake, Ernesto Livorni, Steven
McMichael, and Mary Watt. Wayne Storey has been a steady guide throughout
the years; from our (all too infrequent) conversations I have learned an im-
mense amount. The most consistent and steady interlocutor on this topic has
been Erminia Ardissino, who is a constant source of inspiration for her love of
literature and dedication to her students. Because the gestation of this book
has been so long, over the years I have benefited from the discerning and in-
tuitive comments of colleagues at the various conferences and lectures where
I presented the material on prayer and pilgrimage. To all who offered their
critique and suggestions I am very grateful. In more recent times Teodolinda
Barolini has been the most acute and perceptive reader of my work and I am
truly grateful to her for her many insights into this subject and the original and
unexpected extrapolations she is always able to draw from it; her passion for
reading and rereading Dante’s text has changed my way of interpreting and
understanding it. Sandy Waters has been a most careful (and quick to respond)
reader and editor. Mary Bly has put up with my monologues on prayer in Dante
(sometimes somewhat skeptically) for almost thirty years and she has my eter-
nal gratitude.