Review by Choice Review
This anthology of critical approaches to the reading and the reception of Dante's Commedia will be a puzzling one for many, a combative one for others, and a refreshing, handy compendium for still others. Puzzling, it will be perhaps most of all, to the general reader and lower-division college student following a general liberal arts curriculum; combative is probably what it will be found to be by professors and critics who are quite determined in their separate approaches to literary exegesis. Nevertheless, this work will be seen as a handy, highly useful tool for serious students of literary history who wish to understand the variegated fortunes of the master poet's major opus. Of the 21 essays that make up the collection, the first and last are by the editor. It could be said that the first serves to present the sens for the volume while the last adds to its matiere. Progressing down through the seven centuries since the Commedia was first circulated, major representative voices from academe and from, in Mazzotta's words, "creative writers," are presented, including Guido da Pisa, Boccaccio, Varchi, Gravina, Vico, Eric Auerbach, Charles S. Singleton, Ungaretti, and J.L. Borges, among others. Although the market for this collection of essays on Dante's poem may be somewhat hard to single out, the volume will nonetheless serve as a reference model for students involved with the methodologies of literary criticism. -T. E. Vesce, Mercy College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
