In this book, Guy Raffa offers a fresh reading of Dante's major literary works - the Divine Comedy and the Vita nuova - that combines central tenets of incarnational theology and dialectical thought to illuminate the poet's renowned ability to ‘have it both ways’ on issues that conventionally elicit an ‘either/or’ response. Viewing Dante as a poet of revision, not conversion, Raffa challenges a dominant paradigm in Dante criticism and takes full account of the poet's unconventional approach to such conventional dichotomies as eros and spirituality, fame and humility, action and contemplation, and obedience and transgression. Divine Dialectic ultimately argues that Dante crosses textual and theological boundaries in his medieval epic to promote the paradoxical union of contradiction and resolution as a way of reading his poem and, by extension, the world itself.

A fresh reading of Dante's major literary works – the Divine Comedy and the Vita nuova – that combines central tenets of incarnational theology and dialectical thought to challenge a dominant paradigm in Dante criticism.

  • Imprint: University of Toronto Press
  • Published: December 2000
  • Pages: 272

Guy P. Raffa is Associate Professor of Italian at the University of Texas at Austin.

Chapters

PDF
Acknowledgments
A Note on Texts and Translations
Introduction Dante's Incarnational Dialectic
Chapter One Divisive Dialectic: Incarnational Failure and Parody
Chapter Two Incarnational Dialectic Writ Large
Chapter Three Dante's Incarnational Dialectic of Martyrdom and Mission
Notes
Index

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