Reading Dante with Images

Book excerpt: This volume continues the Reading Dante with Images series, which brings together two great traditions in the critical engagement with Dante's Commedia: The Lectura Dantis, a canto-by-canto interpretation of the poem that dates back to the fourteenth century, and the artistic interpretation of Dante's work, which began among the earliest manuscript copies of the poem that generated rich and dynamically evolving iconographies. Each of these traditions played key roles in the early and continued diffusion of the text and its interpretation, and they have developed over the centuries in surprising and enlightening ways, mirroring expanding and renewing interest in Dante's masterpiece on the part of his readers. This series is itself one such renewal, bringing an interdisciplinary group of scholars and artists into engagements with the poem and its illustrations' visual commentaries. Volume two of this series features new perspectives from fields including philology, literary criticism, philosophy, art history, and design.