Dante: The Poet, the Political Thinker, the Man - Hardcover

Barbara Reynolds is one of the world's best known Dante scholars. She completed the Penguin translation of Paradiso after the death of Dorothy L Sayers. She also translated Dante's early work La Vita Nuova and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. In addition, she has written a biography of Dorothy L Sayers and edited The Cambridge Italian Dictionary.

*Starred Review* Dante achieved some of his loftiest poetic flights by using cannabis? Acclaimed translator and scholar Barbara Reynolds thinks it quite possible, and adduces textual evidence from the Commedia to support her provocative view. To be sure, Reynolds' new biography of the Florentine poet offers much more than controversy over psychedelic substances. Limning a unifying theme in Dante's masterpiece, Reynolds illuminates the poet's conviction that right governance would come to Europe only when all recognized the Holy Roman emperor--and not the pope--as the supreme political authority. Impressive close readings of pivotal passages reveal how deeply Dante yearned for the triumph of the ideal secular monarch and how bitterly disappointed he was by the papal intrigues that denied Emperor Henry VII such a triumph. But Reynolds also shows how Dante found both solace and financial security in the poetic art he turned to after a failed venture in philosophical writing. The Commedia reflects far more than its creator's financial circumstances, however. In Dante's intense love for Beatrice, Reynolds discerns an intellectual passion that transforms an otherwise obscure young Florentine lady into a complex figure capable of descending to crude invective and of rising to heavenly truth. Serious readers of Dante will find much here to ponder--and debate. Bryce Christensen
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