The troublesome topic of Francis Petrarch’s relationship to literary predecessor Dante Alighieri is the focus of Petrarch and Dante: Anti-Dantism, Metaphysics, Tradition , the latest addition to the William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante Studies.
Co-edited by Theodore J. Cachey, Jr., Albert J. and Helen M. Ravarino Family Director of Dante and Italian Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and Zygmunt G. Baranski, Serena Professor of Italian at the University of Cambridge, Petrarch and Dante features the work of nine leading scholars of Italian medieval literature.
The culmination of a 2004 lecture series celebrating the seventh centenary of the birth of Francis Petrarch, the book examines: “Petrarch’s contentious and dismissive attitude toward the literary authority of his illustrious predecessor; the dramatic shift in theological and philosophical context that occurs from Dante to Petrarch; and their respective contributions as initiators of modern literary traditions in the vernacular,” notes the University of Notre Dame Press, publisher of the series.
The William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante Studies was founded in 1995. The series publishes works on Dante from a wide variety of disciplinary viewpoints and in diverse scholarly genres, including critical studies, commentaries, editions, translations, and conference proceedings of exceptional importance. Other volumes include Accounting for Dante: Urban Readers and Writers in Late Medieval Italy (2007), The Ancient Flame: Dante and the Poets % (2008), and %{font-style: italic}Understanding Dante (2004).
For more information about Petrarch and Dante: Anti-Dantism, Metaphysics, Tradition, go to www.undpress.nd.edu/book/P01288 .
Originally published by at newsinfo.nd.edu on June 26, 2009.