Teodolinda Barolini Livres

Focusing on the evolution of Dante scholarship, this collection of twenty-five essays offers a comprehensive survey and a call for innovative interpretations of the poet's work. Originating from a pivotal conference by the Dante Society of America, the essays tackle significant questions about unique methodologies and the American tradition in Dante studies. Contributors explore how contemporary global and postmodern contexts influence our reading of Dante, providing fresh insights into his texts and enduring legacy.

Teodolinda Barolini analyzes Dante's views on poets in his works, exploring his beliefs about textuality and its connection to truth. This title, originally published in 1984, is part of the Princeton Legacy Library, which aims to enhance access to significant scholarly texts from Princeton University Press.

Teodolinda Barolini delves into the foundations of Italian literary culture by examining its lyric poets and the pivotal figures known as the "three crowns": Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The exploration is framed through four distinct lenses: ideological and philosophical influences, intertextual and multicultural connections, structural and formal elements, and social contexts. This multifaceted approach offers a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of Italian literature and its rich cultural heritage.

Accepting Dante's prophetic truth claims on their own terms, Teodolinda Barolini proposes a "detheologized" reading as a global new approach to the Divine Comedy. Not aimed at excising theological concerns from Dante, this approach instead attempts to break out of the hermeneutic guidelines that Dante structured into his poem and that have resulted in theologized readings whose outcomes have been overdetermined by the poet. By detheologizing, the reader can emerge from this poet's hall of mirrors and discover the narrative techniques that enabled Dante to forge a true fiction. Foregrounding the formal exigencies that Dante masked as ideology, Barolini moves from the problems of beginning to those of closure, focusing always on the narrative journey. Her investigation--which treats such topics as the visionary and the poet, the One and the many, narrative and time--reveals some of the transgressive paths trodden by a master of mimesis, some of the ways in which Dante's poetic adventuring is indeed, according to his own lights, Ulyssean.

Focusing on Dante's transformative influence on Italian culture, this work offers a critical examination of his poetry and its enduring effects. It highlights Barolini's significant contributions to Dante studies, showcasing how the poet's ideas and themes continue to resonate within contemporary discussions of Italian literature and culture.