Dante And the Origins of Italian Literary Culture

Barolini collects 16 essays published from 1983 to 2005, but mostly after 1992, that together buttress her opinion that Dante (1265-1321) began Italian literary culture. Her topics include Inferno 5 in its lyric and autobiographical context, whether Dante hopes for Vergil's salvation, time and narrative in Petrarch's Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, and notes toward a gendered history of Italian literature with a discussion of Dante's Beatrix Loquax. Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Teodolinda Barolini, past President of the Dante Society of America, is Lorenzo Da Ponte Professor of Italian at Columbia University. She is the author of Dante’s Poets: Textuality and Truth in the Comedy and The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante, and the co-editor, with H. Wayne Storey, of Dante for the New Millennium (Fordham).