Description
Book SynopsisGroundbreaking, erudite and interdisciplinary volume on the influence of Dante throughout the Victorian period
Trade Review'Ambitious and compendious in range and with a fearless confidence in summarising complex movements in literary history. One is sometimes awestruck by the extent of Milbank's knowledge and the scope of her reading.' Steve Ellis, University of Birmingham
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Part I History
1. The early nineteenth century: Dante and Milton among the Whigs
2. Ruskin and Dante: Centrality and de-centring
3. Dante and the Victorian distancing of history
Part II Nationalism
4. Anello Aureo: The risorgimento and English poetry
5. George Eliot, Dante and Nationalist Aspiration
Part III Aesthetics
6. The Quest of the Historical Beatrice
7. 'Drawn Within the Circle': Uses of allegory by the Rossetti family
8. Moral luck in the second circle: Dante, Francesca and the Victorian fate of tragedy
Part IV Unreal Cities
9. Life after death and the hell of this world
10. No mans land: Dante between the Victorians and the Modernists