Accounting for Dante : urban readers and writers in late medieval Italy /

By considering Dante primarily in the context of the larger manuscript culture of his time, Steinberg (Univ. of Chicago) delves deep into the past in order to say something entirely new about Dante and his self-conscious desire to reshape poetic tradition. Such an approach, relying on cutting-edge methods of philology, codicology, and paleography, reveals the degree to which the prevailing manuscript tradition conditioned Dante's views of fellow poets, and indeed of his own work. Instead of Dante "the timeless master poet," Steinberg emphasizes a very human Dante--a man steeped in the culture and politics of his age, adept at identifying and manipulating prevailing literary trends, and sensitive to the changing tastes of the times. Another fascinating trajectory of the book traces "a history of duecento lyric culture that takes into account the localized and socially stratified centers of textual production active in late medieval Italy." Particularly unique and exciting is chapter 2, which examines how Dante was influenced by the reception of his own early texts, especially the ways in which the framing of "Donne ch'avete intelletto d'amore" in the Vita Nova responds to the canzone "Ben aggia 1'amoroso et dolce chore." Summing Up: Recommended. Ambitious upper-division undergraduates through faculty. D. Pesta Oklahoma State University