DANTE: THE CRITICAL HERITAGE THE CRITICAL HERITAGE SERIES General Editor: B. C. Southam The Critical Heritage series collects together a large body of criticism on major figures in literature. Each volume presents the contemporary responses to a particular writer, enabling the student to follow the formation of critical attitudes to the writer's work and its place within a literary tradition. The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to fragments of contemporary opinion and little published documentary material, such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included in order to demonstrate fluctuations in reputation following the writer's death. DANTE THE CRITICAL HERITAGE Edited by MICHAEL CAESAR R London and New York First published in 1989 Reprinted in 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN & 270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016 First issued in paperback 2010 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group Compilation, introduction, notes and index © 1989 Michael Caesar All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data ISBN 978-0-415-13397-5 (hbk) ISBN 978-0-415-60448-2 (pbk) ISBN 978-0-415-13396-8 (set) Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent For Ann and Geoffrey and Joe General Editor's Preface The reception given to a writer by his contemporaries and near-contemporaries is evidence of considerable value to the student of literature. On one side we learn a great deal about the state of criticism at large and in particular about the development of critical attitudes towards a single writer; at the same time, through private comments in letters, journals or marginalia, we gain an insight upon the tastes and literary thought of individual readers of the period. Evidence of this kind helps us to understand the writer's historical situation, the nature of his immediate reading-public, and his response to these pressures. The separate volumes in the Critical Heritage Series present a record of this early criticism. Clearly, for many of the highly productive and lengthily reviewed nineteenth- and twentieth- century writers, there exists an enormous body of material; and in these cases the volume editors have made a selection of the most important views, significant for their intrinsic critical worth or for their representative quality - perhaps even registering incompre- hension! For earlier writers, notably pre-eighteenth century, the materials are much scarcer and the historical period has been extended, sometimes far beyond the writer's lifetime, in order to show the inception and growth of critical views which were initially slow to appear. In each volume the documents are headed by an Introduction, discussing the material assembled and relating the early stages of the author's reception to what we have come to identify as the critical tradition. The volumes will make available much material which would otherwise be difficult of access and it is hoped that the modern reader will be thereby helped towards an informed understanding of the ways in which literature has been read and judged. B.C.S. vii Contents PREFACE XVI A NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS XIX ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS XX STANDARD REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS XXI INTRODUCTION 1 Dante's first readers: self-exegesis and opposition; the special case of the Monarchia i 2 The consensus around Dante: the early diffusion of his work, especially the Divina Commedia 3 3 The early fourteenth-century commentaries and the prob- lem of allegory 6 4 Cultural shifts in the mid-fourteenth century: Petrarch and Boccaccio 9 5 Biographies, commentaries, and the merchant-readers of the late fourteenth century 12 6 Dante's fortunes abroad, particularly in Spain 15 7 The humanist critique of Dante 18 8 Florentine patriotism and Neo-Platonism 20 9 Pietro Bembo and the 'question of the language' 23 10 Sixteenth-century editions and readers; the Florentine Academy 25 11 Dante and Petrarch; comparisons with contemporary painters 27 12 Dante's reception abroad in the sixteenth century; the special case of Protestant readings 29 13 Aristotelian poetics and the Dante-quarrel of the late sixteenth century 31 14 The Counter-Reformation and the definition of Christian poetry 34 15 Why was Dante not popular in the seventeenth century? 35 16 England, Germany, France. Neo-classicism and Arcadia 40 17 Gravina and Vico 42 18 The eighteenth century: erudition, primitivism, and emotionalism 43 ix