dante and renaissance florence, cambridge studies in medieval literature 56by simon a. gilson

Dante and Renaissance Florence, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 56 by Simon A.GilsonReview by: Charles FantazziInternational Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol. 14, No. 1/2 (SUMMER 2007), pp. 283-287Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25691166 .

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Book Reviews 283

seit einigen Jahren gefiihrt wird,5 darzulegen.6 Doch diese Bemerkung soli die bewundernswerte Arbeit Hehles nicht schmalern, die mit ihrer kultur- und literarhistorischen Einordnung, ihrer intensiven Kommentierung sowie einer Reihe von Hilfsmitteln (neuhochdeutschen Ubersetzungen in Kap. 7 und 8, einem Verzeichnis der von Notker zitierten Bibelstellen in Appendix 2, ver

schiedenen Registern zu Figuren, Personen, Werken, zu geographischen Namen, zu Handschriften und zu griechischen, lateinischen, alt- und neu

hochdeutschen Begriffen) das schwierige Werk Notkers der Wissenschaft und dem Seminarbetrieb neu erschlossen hat.

Heike Sahm Universitat zu Koln

Institut fur Deutsche Sprache und Literatur Altere Sprache und Literatur

Simon A. Gilson, Dante and Renaissance Florence, Cambridge Studies in Me dieval Literature 56 (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), XII + 324 pp.

Simon Gilson sets out to examine within a broad chronological frame work the vast cultural authority exercised by Dante over his city and his lit

erary successors. The parameters of the study extend from the first meeting of Petrarch and Boccaccio in 1350 to the celebrated Comento of Cristoforo Landino of 1481. By that first date he had already acquired the status of the

city's greatest vernacular poet and leading civic patriot. Each generation saw him in a different light and reconstructed him after its own image and inter ests. Dante himself seems to have been well aware that his poetry would be

subjected to different readings and interpreted his own poems in the Vita nuova and the Convivio and provided canons of interpretation for the reading of the Paradiso in the Epistle to Cangrande della Scala. In his approach Gilson

espouses to a certain extent the reception theories of Hans Robert Jauss while

insisting more on the multiplicity of reading practices within designated pe riods and the continued importance of the legacy of tradition in the case of

Dante.

The actual material copying out of the poem was undertaken on a large scale as early as 1350, with one workshop, that of Francesco di Ser Nardo da

Barberino, turning out a hundred copies. These early manuscripts frequently contain one or more of the many Trecento commentaries on the poem, which are essential to our understanding of how the poem was read at any given pe riod. They are the first to be written on an Italian, or for that matter, European

5. Vgl. zum Beispiel den Sammelband Latein und Volkssprache im deutschen Mittelalter 1100-1500. Regensburger Colloquium 1988, hg.v. Nikolaus Henkel und Nigel F. Pal

mer (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1992); Burghart Wachinger, "Autorschaft und Uberlieferung," in: Autorentypen, hg.v. Walter Haug und Burghart Wachinger (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1991) (Fortuna vitrea 6), S. 1-28; Karl Stack

mann, "Neue Philologie?" in: Modernes Mittelalter. Neue Bilder einer popularen Epo che, hg.v. Joachim Heinzle (Frankfurt a.M. / Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1994), S. 398-427.

6. Die Frage nach Notkers AutorbewuStsein wird spat gestellt (S. 302) und ihre Be

antwortung nur angedeutet (vgl. S. 302 Anm. 2).



284 International Journal of the Classical Tradition / Summer 2007

vernacular text, as Gilson is quick to point out. The first printed editions of the

poem were produced outside Florence, often together with a Trecento com

mentary, preludes to the most celebrated and widely influential edition and

commentary of Landino. The Comedy was also twice translated into Latin dur

ing the early fifteenth century. During the period under discussion, however, the most effective publicity for the poem in Florence was the public lecture on "il Dante", as the Comedy came to be known, instituted in 1374 in Florence and continued throughout the following two centuries. Gilson also empha sizes the representations of Dante in the visual arts, such as Andrea del

Castagno's portrait in the refectory of SanfApollonia and Domenico Miche lino's famous fresco in the Duomo. Manuscript illuminations and Botticelli's

designs for the Landino engravings and his drawings for the poem are like wise an important element in the diffusion of the poem.

A major concern of the book is the study of the humanist reaction to both Dante's style and content, beginning with Boccaccio and Petrarch. In the case of Boccaccio we have his own transcriptions of the Comedy, his short sum maries of the poem, both in prose and in verse, as well as his famous biogra phy, the Trattatello in laude di Dante, and an unfinished commentary, the

Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante Alighieri. In the Trattatello Boccaccio delib

erately models his life on the classical biographies of Virgil by Donatus and

Servius, portraying Dante as the vernacular equivalent of the Latin poet. Throughout the work he stresses Dante's connection to his classical heritage. At the same time he favors the view of Dante as the poeta-theologus, as he was called in the epitaph written by Giovanni del Virgilio. More humanistic prej udices are evident in Petrarch's estimation of his predecessor. He readily grants him the palm of vernacular eloquence in one of the Fami-liares (XV, 13) but implies the superiority of Latin over the vernacular. A significant episode in the reception of Dante is the series of public lectures given by Boccaccio on the Comedy, the Esposizioni,imtiated on Sunday 23 October 1373 in the church of Santo Stefano di Badia by official appointment of the city of Florence. In the manner of the medieval accessus ad auctores, he begins with a proem in

which he announces his intention to reveal the meaning hidden beneath the

veil, provides a short biographical sketch of Dante's life, a brief comment on the poem's ethical teachings, a lengthy exposition on Hell, and a justification of Dante's decision to write the poem in the vernacular. As in another me dieval commentary, Guido da Pisa's Expositiones, each canto is given a literal and an allegorical exegesis. Gilson sees the Esposizioni as a blend of moral and

religious conservatism with more innovative humanistic tendencies. What is

interesting in the approaches of Boccaccio and Petrarch is their dialogue with one another, readings of the poem that depend on their own critical responses to each other. Petrarch found it difficult to accept Dante's linguistic choice and

certainly did not share his fiorentinita. Boccaccio, on the other hand, is less prej udiced in favor of Latin as opposed to vernacular culture. Gilson emphasizes that the posthumous manuscript diffusion of Boccaccios's Esposizioni provides a point of reference for all later commentators on Dante, including the best of the Trecento commentators, Benvenuto da Imola, who was present at Boccac cio's lectures.

Among later Florentine humanists Coluccio Salutati is the first to concern

himself with the textual emendation of the Comedy. He writes to Niccolb da



Book Reviews 285

Tuderano, who had recently acquired books from the library of Meneghino Mezzani, a poet and close acquaintance of Dante during his years in Ravenna, in the hope of obtaining a correct copy of the poem, which he refers to as an

opus divinissimum. In homage to the elegant Florentine poetic idiom he trans lated some of Dante's hendecasyllables into Latin hexameters, though recog nizing that his efforts were far removed from the majesty of Dante's language. For Filippo Villani, chronicler of the city of Florence, Dante becomes the herald of a new dawn, the fons et origo of literary renewal in the city, thus becoming the successor, as it were, of the late Roman poet, Claudian, who was generally regarded in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance as a Florentine. Gilson refers to the passage in Villani's De Ori-gine civitatis Florentine et de eiusdem famosis civibus, where this identification is made, but does not explain how it came

about, viz., from the false interpretation of the proper name Florentinus, a pre fect of Milan, to whom Claudian addressed the second book of the De raptu Proserpinae. Villani began an Expositio in Latin but only completed the com

mentary on the first canto of the Inferno. The next important literary figure to celebrate Dante is the second hu

manist chancellor of Florence, Leonardo Bruni. In his Vita di Dante he fashions the poet into an emblematic figure who embodies the ideal Florentine citizen and in this way promotes a certain vision of Florence as a center of culture and learning. Gilson also devotes some pages to Matteo Palmieri's Vita civile, a work in dialogue form which presents the life of the virtuous citizen of a

good commonwealth as the best form of life to be lived. It contains many echoes of the Dantean afterlife intended as a manifestation of civic patriotism, which, as Gilson remarks, are quite removed from the political message of the

Comedy. The fourth chapter of the book treats of the increasing use of the vernac

ular for subjects previously reserved for Latin, and the importance of the Com

edy and other writings of Dante in promoting what is often known as vernacular humanism. A key document in this trasferimento of the literary qualities of Latin into the vernacular is Landino's prolusione to his lecture on Petrarch's vernacular poetry at the Florentine Studio. It is here that the famous

phrase: "e necessario essere latino chi vuol essere buon Toscano" occurs. A decade after Landino's prolusione the Raccolta aragonese, a collection of vernacular po etry from the Sicilian to contemporary Tuscan poets, was compiled by Lorenzo de' Medici and Poliziano, with an introductory epistle of the latter. This marks the beginning of the attempt to search out and collate manuscripts of the ver nacular lyric tradition in the same way as classical texts were collected a cen

tury earlier. Dante is given pride of place in the Raccolta with his Vita nuova, nineteen of his canzoni and nine other compositions. In his epistle Poliziano ac

knowledges Dante's centrality within the Tuscan tradition of vernacular po etry. A little known but intriguing work of Matteo Palmieri, the Citta di Dio, a

lengthy poem in terza rima, reaffirms the revalorization of the vernacular. Like the Commedia it describes an imaginary journey to the Elysian fields under the

guidance of the Cumaean Sibyl, but instead of finding damned souls the trav eler encounters the neutral angels, who take on human bodies as a punish

ment for their corrupt nature. The poem is divided into 100 cantos in three books and is filled with reminiscences and quotations from the Comedy, but its

philosophical and theological teachings are at variance with those of Dante. It



286 International Journal of the Classical Tradition / Summer 2007

is a good example of imitations of the Comedy produced in late fifteenth-cen

tury Florence. Gilson also traces briefly the presence of dantismi in Poliziano's Stanze per la giostra and in some of Lorenzo's poems.

The last third of the book examines Landino's commentary, Comento di

Christophoro Landino Fiorentino sopra la Comedia di Danthe Alighieri poeta fiorentino, published on 30 August 1481 and reprinted fifteen times before the end of the sixteenth century. It was solemnly presented to the representatives of the Signoria of Florence in a dedicatory oration. Marsilio Ficino composed a Latin letter on Dante's symbolic return to the city that is incorporated into the proemio and Sandro Botticelli provided the original illustrations from

which a series of copperplate engravings were made. It marks a pivotal mo ment in the Florentine cult of Dante, as Gilson states. The author draws on the studies of numerous scholars and benefits by the recent four-volume crit ical edition published by Paolo Procaccioli (Cristoforo Landino, Comento sopra la Comedia, a cura di Paolo Procaccioli, Edizione nazionale dei commenti dan teschi 28, 4 vols. [Rome: Salerno, 2001]) in his thorough discussion of Landino's use of Plato, scientific doctrine and classical sources in the chiosa to the commentary. This contains material from Landino's own courses and lec tures at the Studio between the late 1450's and the late 1470's as well as from two of his earlier philosophical dialogues in Latin, the De anima and the Dis

putationes Camaldulenses. In the latter work he had given a philosophical com

mentary on the first six books of the Aeneid, a method which he will now apply to the Comedy, as he says in the proemio. The proemio itself is a long and rather tedious eulogy of both Florence and Dante, lauding the city's beauty and fame and the poet's learning and poetic gift.

In analyzing Dante's linguistic usage Landino often resorts to para phrases in order to clarify lexical and syntactical features of the poem and shows a strong interest also in etymology. He notes the poet7 s use of neolo

gisms, Latinisms, regional dialects, Gallicisms and archaic Florentine vocables. The Comento is especially rich in the identification of references to Plato and

neoplatonic writers. In this he is obviously indebted to several of Ficino's yet unpublished translations. In several of the doctrinal chiose Landino seems too

eager to reconcile Plato with Christianity, as in his discussion of fate. At other times he does not hesitate openly to criticize Platonic teachings on such ques tions as the pre-existence of the soul and its descent into the body. Gilson does not share the views of those who would regard Landino as an unrestrained en

thusiast of Plato. In the glossing of scientific matters Landino borrows much material from the Trecento commentators, especially Benvenuto da Imola, on

astrology, meteorology and medicine, and is also dependent on him for refer ences to Albert the Greaf s scientific works. His astrological gloss on the fa

mous crux of the Veltro {Inferno 1.101) is of great interest, deriving from the Arab conjunctionist astrology of Albumasar. As far as classical references are

concerned, Landino surpasses the medieval commentators, as might be ex

pected. He cites many more Greek sources, mostly through Latin intermedi aries since his own knowledge of Greek was limited. He profits also by the recent discoveries of Greek texts, like Diodorus Siculus and Dio Chrysostom.

All in all, Gilson has provided a most useful and illuminating analysis of the reception of Dante in his native city and illustrated how he became a cul

tural icon symbolizing the superiority of Florentine culture. The author iden



Book Reviews 287

tifies two main lines of force within this reception, one deeply rooted in the

city's civic tradition, the other in the humanist movement. Dante really comes into his own in Laurentian Florence from the 1460's onwards when the hu

manistic polemic against Dante and vernacular literature in general subsides. Landino succeeds in establishing the vernacular as a language worthy of lit

erary cultivation on the same level as Latin. Gilson is expert in distinguishing the various manners of reading Dante, which are governed by different polit ical and ideological factors. At the end of the book he holds open to the reader the prospective of another afterlife of Dante in which he would be utilized as an example of a superpolitical Italian language, as envisioned by Bembo. In 1502 the Venetian humanist published an edition of the Comedy at the presses of Aldus Manutius entitled Terze rime di Dante, which by a remarkable histor ical accident was based on the manuscript (Vatican Latin 3199) which Boccac cio had previously owned and had presented to Petrarch. By giving it this new title and ornitting any commentary Bembo subtly devaluated the content and status of Dante's poem. It is no longer the divine poem of Landino, whose author's (and commentator's^orenfim'ffl was promoted in the title and whose

great learning required an erudite commentary. This was to usher in a new

chapter in the history of the reception of the Commedia. Gilson provides translations of all the Latin and Italian quotations, most

of them his own. They are accurate enough but I would quibble with some of

them, among which: "sia detto con pace de' poemi greci e latini" means simply "with all due deference to Greek and Latin poems", not the meaningless "without any protestation on behalf of Greek and Latin poems" (p. 80); nervi on p. 137 must bear the meaning "stylistic vigor", not "daring"; an excerpt from a letter of Ficino inserted in Landino's Comento is completely botched

(p. 191); the Virgilian epithet velivolum, transferred to refer to the sea, is awk

wardly translated "sail-wing" (perhaps Gilson meant to write "sail-winged"), p. 197; the Italian place name, "Tolosa", and the corresponding adjective "Tolosan" should of course be "Toulouse" and "Toulousain" in English (p. 227).

I repeat once again that this is a most useful and informative book, en riched with copious notes, select bibliography of both primary and secondary sources, and a full annotated index. It is an important contribution to Dante

scholarship.

Charles Fantazzi

Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures East Carolina University

Angelo Poliziano, Silvae, Edited and Translated by Charles Fantazzi, The I Tatti Renaissance Library 14 (Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press, 2004), XX + 215 pp.

Void, et pour la premiere fois facilement accessibles, une Edition et tra duction anglaises des poemes de la marurite du celebre philologue et poete florentin du Quattrocento, Ange Politien, sous la plume de Charles Fantazzi.

Professeur emerite a l'Universite de Windsor, et invite a l'Universite de la Caroline de l'Est, ou il anime un seminaire sur la poesie lyrique classique et



dante and renaissance florence, cambridge studies in medieval literature 56by simon a. gilson

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