Dante (Penguin Lives) - Hardcover

Lewis, R. W. B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670899097 ISBN 13: 9780670899098

Publisher: Viking Press, 2001

Synopsis

A thoughtful biography of the great medieval Italian poet and historian examines the life of Dante Alighieri from his Florence youth and military career to his creation of The Divine Comedy, his masterful allegorical poem of redemption and self-discovery. 22,500 first printing.

About this title

Review:

History, literature, love, and religion come together in this graceful biography of the world's most revered and influential poet. R.W.B. Lewis, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Edith Wharton, displays the same intelligent understanding here of the complex interplay of inner and outer forces that shape an artist. His lucid account of political and literary conflict in 13th-century Florence (subject of another Lewis book, The City of Florence) illuminates the context in which Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) came of age, fell in love with the unattainable Beatrice Portinari, forged the "sweet new style" that transformed Italian literature, and embroiled himself in factional disputes he would angrily renounce after his exile from Florence in 1302. Lewis makes palpable the intellectual and imaginative energy that fired Dante to write an influential political treatise (De Monarchia), a powerful argument for literature written in the common tongue (De Vulgari Eloquentia), and of course his twin tributes to Beatrice: one of the most eloquent love poems ever written (La Vita Nuova) and that supreme chronicle of the human spiritual quest, Divine Comedy. The author notes autobiographical elements in all Dante's works without trivializing their creative majesty, and if the poet's personality is somewhat muffled across the distance of eight centuries, his artistic presence still "sparkles and sings and smiles like one of the spirits in Paradise." Drawing cogently (and with generous acknowledgment) on previous scholarship, this volume worthily fulfills its mission as an entry in the excellent Penguin Lives series of short biographies for the general reader. --Wendy Smith

About the Author:

R. W. B. Lewis is professor of English and American studies at Yale University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0670899097
• ISBN 13: 9780670899098
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224