Description
Book SynopsisAccepting Dante's prophetic truth claims on their own terms, this title proposes a 'detheologized' reading as a global approach to "The Divine Comedy". Foregrounding the formal exigencies that Dante masked as ideology, it moves from the problems of beginning to those of closure, focusing always on the narrative journey.
Table of ContentsPrefaceEditions and AcknowledgmentsCh. 1Detheologizing Dante: Realism, Reception, and the Resources of Narrative3Ch. 2Infernal Incipits: The Poetics of the New21Ch. 3Ulysses, Geryon, and the Aeronautics of Narrative Transition48Ch. 4Narrative and Style in Lower Hell74Ch. 5Purgatory as Paradigm: Traveling the New and Never-Before Traveled Path of This Life/Poem99Ch. 6Re-presenting What God Presented: The Arachnean Art of the Terrace of Pride122Ch. 7Nonfalse Errors and the True Dreams of the Evangelist143Ch. 8Problems in Paradise: The Mimesis of Time and the Paradox of piu e meno166Ch. 9The Heaven of the Sun as a Meditation on Narrative194Ch. 10The Sacred Poem Is Forced to Jump: Closure and the Poetics of Enjambment218Appendix: Transition: How Cantos Begin and End257Notes267Index349
