See his poems under the link “Key”
Marco Santagata, Dante: The Story of His Life (2016)
“Unlike Shakespeare, whose corpus one searches in vain for insight into the author’s selfhood, we have abundant access to Dante’s psyche, thanks to the self-editorializing drive in all his major works, from the Vita Nuova to the Convivio to The Divine Comedy. Dante funneled everything—history, truth, cosmos, salvation—through his first-person singular, the famous “I” who finds himself “in the middle of our life’s way” as the poem opens. Yet despite his bold self-exposure, the writing of the Comedy remains a mystery. How did the vision come to him, and how much of it did he have inside his mind when he began writing?
[…]
“Marco Santagata, a professor of Italian literature at the University of Pisa, has written an impressive new biography that takes into consideration every bit of reliable and semireliable information available to us about Dante’s life, from his birth in Florence in 1265 to his death in Ravenna in 1321, yet you reach the end of its 485 pages without getting one step closer to understanding how an electrician joined the ranks of Einstein and Fermi. That is because little in Dante’s life story helps us understand how he conceived, composed, and completed the Comedy, this despite the fact that much of what was going on around him at the time found its way into his poem.” — Robert Pogue Harrison, “Dante: He Went Mad in His Hell. Review of Marco Santagata, Dante: The Story of His Life,” New York Review of Books, Oct. 27, 2016
Contributed by Pamela Montanaro
Ben Brantley, “‘Miles for Mary,’ a Sendup of the Interminable Meeting From Hell”
“Though Dante cataloged many forms of diabolical torture in his Inferno, a guided tour of hell, he somehow missed out on what could well be the most excruciating eternal punishment of all. I mean (ominous organ chords, please) the staff meeting that never, ever ends.” –Ben Brantley, “Review: ‘Miles for Mary,’ a Sendup of the Interminable Meeting From Hell,” New York Times, October 9, 2016
Review of Steven Sherrill, The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time (2016)
“Ovid describes the Minotaur as ‘part man, part bull,’ half cattle-shaggy, half smooth. Surely this creature deserves a brief campaign bio here: You might remember how, when King Minos’ wife fell hard for a gigantic white bull, their calf-child arrived lactose-intolerant, hungry only for human flesh. (I am not making this up, either.) A subterranean maze gets constructed as Minotaur’s cradle and prison. Dante later defamed the creature’s violence with a walk-on role in the Inferno. And only one century ago, Pablo Picasso — boy-wizard at drawing animals and humans — found the Minotaur allowed both virtuosities concurrently. The horny, weak-eyed he-male beast became his spirit animal.” — Allan Gurganus, “A Minotaur’s in Maintenance in a Tale of Rust Belt America,” Review of The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time by Steven Sherrill, The New York Times, Sept. 30, 2016
Trovato canto inedito: “Quelli che se la sono cercata”
“ROMA – Questa è la prima terzina di un canto dell’Inferno di Dante, rimasto nascosto fino ad oggi e tornato alla luce dopo settecento anni, in cui il poeta racconta di un girone inedito, dedicato a ‘Coloro che se la son cercata.’ L’autore del sensazionale ritrovamento è Benigno Lucarelli, professore di Letteratura Italiana all’Università di Catanzaro, che ha annunciato la scoperta con un articolo su Il Volgare, settimanale specializzato in letteratura medievale e turpiloqui. ‘Il canto risulta incredibilmente attuale – ha dichiarato il professore – specie per il fatto che il Sommo Poeta sembri voler accontentate ipocriti e maldicenti inserendo gli sventurati in un girone dell’Inferno, tanto che alcuni di voi potrebbero pensare che in realtà l’ho scritto io, ieri sera, dopo aver preso qualche droga di troppo. Ma ovviamente non è così. No, davvero.'” —“Divina Commedia. Trovato canto inedito dell’Inferno: il girone di ‘Quelli che se la sono cercata’,” Lercio.it
Contributed by Chiara Montera (University of Pittsburgh ’17)
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