Dante's Modern Afterlife

Book excerpt: Dante's persistent and pervasive presence has been a remarkable feature of modern writing since the late eighteenth century. These essays by an international group of scholars emphasize that presence in the work of major British and Irish writers (such as Blake, Shelley, Joyce and Heaney). They also focus on responses in America, the Caribbean and Italy and it deals with appropriations of Dante's work by poets (from Gray to Walcott) and novelists (such as Mary Shelley and Giorgio Bassani, and Gloria Naylor).