Reading Dante's Stars

Naslovnica
Yale University Press, 1. sij 2000. - Broj stranica: 226
Astronomy is one of the most prominent and perplexing features of Dante's Divine Comedy. In the final rhyme of the poem's three parts, and in scores of descriptions and analogies, the stars are an intermediate goal and a constant point of reference for the spiritual journey the poem narrates. This book makes a sustained analysis of Dante's use of astronomy, not only in terms of the precepts of medieval science but also in relation to specific moral, philosophical, and poetic problems laid out in each chapter.For Dante, Alison Cornish says, the stars offer optical representations of invisible realities, from divine providence to the workings of the human soul. Dante's often puzzling celestial figures call attention to the physical world as a scene of reading in which visible phenomena are subject to more than one explanation, Cornish contends. The poetry of Dante's astronomy, as well as its difficulty, rests on this imperative of interpretation. Reading the stars, like reading literature, is an ethical undertaking fraught with risk, not just an exercise in technical understanding. Cornish's book is the first guide to the astronomy of Dante's masterpiece to encompass both ways of reading his work.
 

Odabrane stranice

Sadržaj

THE ALLURE OF THE STARS Vita nuova Convivio Commedia
12
THE DATE OF THE JOURNEY
26
THE HARVEST OF READING Inferno 20 24 26
43
ORIENTATION Purgatorio 9
62
LOSING THE MERIDIAN From Purgatorio to Paradiso
79
THE SHADOWS OF IDEAS Paradiso 13
93
THE SUFFICIENT EXAMPLE Paradiso 28
108
PLANETS AND ANGELS Paradiso 29
119
CONCLUSION
142
NOTES
145
INDEX
215
Autorska prava

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Popularni odlomci

Stranica 21 - E come, per sentir più dilettanza bene operando, l'uom di giorno in giorno s'accorge che la sua virtute avanza, si m'accors'io che 1 mio girar dintorno col cielo insieme avea cresciuto l'arco, veggendo quel miracol più adorno.

O autoru (2000)

Alison Cornish is assistant professor of Italian in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan.

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