Dante and the Making of a Modern Author

by Albert Russell Ascoli

• ISBN13: 9780521882361
• ISBN10: 0521882362
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-04-21
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Leading scholar Albert Russell Ascoli traces the metamorphosis of Dante Alighieri - minor Florentine aristocrat, political activist and exile, amateur philosopher and theologian, daring experimental poet - into Dante, author of the Divine Comedy and perhaps the most self-consciously 'authoritative' cultural figure in the Western canon. This is the first 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 new 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.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Abbreviations of primary texts and translations	p. xiv
Introduction
The author in history	p. 3
What is an "auctor"?	p. 3
The autore of the Commedia	p. 12
Theory	p. 21
History	p. 29
Criticism	p. 44
Organization	p. 54
"What is an 'Other'?"	p. 61
An Author in the Works: Dante Before The Commedia
Definitions: The vowels of authority	p. 67
The problem of Convivio	p. 67
"Author" and "authority" in medieval discourse	p. 75
Dante's "maggiore autoritade" (Convivio 1.4.13)	p. 85
"Autore" from "autentin"	p. 97
"Autore" from "avieo"	p. 108
"La sua prima voce"	p. 122
Language: "Neminem ante nos"	p. 130
Vernacular authorship between Convivio and De Vulgari Eloquentia	p. 130
Vernacular and grammar	p. 136
Individuality and universality	p. 149
The poet's language	p. 157
The author's language in history	p. 169
Auto-commentary: Dividing Dante	p. 175
"Fo due parti di me"	p. 175
Vita Nova	p. 178
Convivio	p. 201
From Dante divided to the poeta-personaggio	p. 218
Authority in Person: Dante Between Monarchia and the Commedia
"No judgment among equals": Dividing authority in Dante's Monarchia	p. 229
Monarchia after Convivio and De Vulgari Eloquentia	p. 229
Auctoritas in Monarchia	p. 240
The Monarch's authority: Conflict and judgment	p. 248
"A Daniel come to judgment"	p. 263
Palinode and history	p. 274
Historicizing the palinode	p. 274
Palinode manque in Monarchia	p. 282
Beyond the palinode: Between Monarchia and the Commedia	p. 291
The author of the Commedia	p. 301
"In death he was undivided"	p. 301
When "Dante" met "Virgil"	p. 307
Virgilio crowns "Dante"	p. 329
A perfect poet	p. 357
"Di se parlando"	p. 369
The perfect poet	p. 400
Works consulted	p. 406
Index of proper names and works cited	p. 445
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