Human Vices and Human Worth in Dante's Comedy

Description

"Patrick Boyde brings Dante's thought and poetry into focus for the modern reader by restoring the Comedy to its intellectual and literary context in 1300. He begins by describing the authorities that Dante acknowledged in the field of ethics and the modes of thought he shared with the great thinkers of his time. After giving a clear account of the differing approaches and ideals embodied in Aristotelian philosophy, Christianity and courtly literature, Boyde concentrates on the poetic representation of the most important vices and virtues in the Comedy. He stresses the heterogeneity and originality of Dante's treatment, and the challenges posed by his desire to harmonise these divergent value-systems. The book ends with a detailed case-study of the 'worth and vices' of Ulysses in which Boyde throws light on recent controversies by deliberately remaining within the framework of the thirteenth-century assumptions, methods and concepts explored in previous chapters."--Jacket.

First Sentence

The Comedy is the first-person narrative of a divinely willed journey through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, a journey from which the author returns to write his poem 'for the good of the world that lives so ill' ('in pro del mondo che mal vive').

Subjects

Other Editions

• Human vices and human worth in Dante's Comedy: Patrick Boyde.Cambridge University Press2000-01-01
• Human Vices and Human Worth in Dante's ComedyPaperbackCambridge University Press2006-06-01