Description
Book SynopsisExperiencing the Afterlife provides an analysis of depictions of the afterlife written in Italy before the Divine Comedy by authors such as Uguccione da Lodi, Glacomino da Verona, and Bonvesin da la Riva. Manuele Gragnolati uses his readings of these poets to provide an interpretation of Dante's work.
Trade Review“Most impressive are the careful and innovative readings of largely undervalued texts by writers such as Uguccione da Lodi and Giacomino da Verona. Gragnolati skillfully uses these works, which express popular attitudes in early modern Italy about the materiality of the afterlife, to balance and further illuminate the more familiar pronouncements of medieval scholastic philosophers...Highly recommended.” - Choice
"Gragnolati's book draws an elaborate, far-fetched parallel between Dante's work and that of Bonvesin da la Riva, a popular poet whose visions of the afterlife foreshadowed Dante's."—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Manuele Gragnolati's lively and engaging book shines new light on the debate about the role of the body in the Divine Comedy's conception of personal identity . . . an illuminating analysis of a theme central to the Divine Comedy. It is, in short, an important contribution to Dante scholarship.” —Medium Aevum
“In his fine book, Manuele Gragnolati expertly explores the many issues and tensions that shaped the connections between grave, body, soul, and immortality. . . . Gragnolati's analyses provide a cultural context for the central innovation in Dante's vision of eschatological experience: the soul's generation of an aerial body when the fleshly body dies. . . . Wide-ranging yet precisely focused, Experiencing the Afterlife is an excellent companion to the other thought-provoking volumes in Notre Dame's Devers Series in Dante Studies.” —Speculum
“Experiencing the Afterlife studies the ontological status and value of the human body in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italy, in formal theology, in high literary culture, and in more popularizing literature. . . . This book makes a valuable contribution to Dante studies, medieval studies, Italian cultural and literary history, and the history of theology. Each new publication in the Devers Series in Dante Studies is a cause for celebration, and Experiencing the Afterlife is a superb addition.” —Church History
