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Table of contents
PREFACE
CHAPTER I.THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER II.GUELFS AND GHIBELINES[8]
CHAPTER III.DANTE’S EARLY DAYS
CHAPTER IV.FLORENTINE AFFAIRS TILL DANTE’S EXILE
CHAPTER V.DANTE’S EXILE
CHAPTER VI.THE “COMMEDIA”
CHAPTER VII.THE MINOR WORKS
APPENDIX I.SOME HINTS TO BEGINNERS
APPENDIX II.DANTE’S USE OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE
PREFACE
This
little book is mainly compounded of papers which appeared, part in
the
Monthly Packet,
and part in the Magazine of the Home Reading Union. It will be seen,
therefore, that it is not intended for those whom Italians call
“Dantists,” but for students at an early stage of their studies.
To the former class there will be nothing in the book that is not
already familiar—except where they happen to find mistakes, from
which, in so extensive a field for blundering as Dante affords, I
cannot hope to have kept it free. In the domain of history alone
fresh facts are constantly rewarding the indefatigable research of
German and Italian scholars—a research of which only the most
highly specialised specialist can possibly keep abreast. Even since
the following pages were for the most part in print, we have had
Professor Villari’s
Two Centuries of Florentine History,
correcting in many particulars the chroniclers on whom the Dante
student has been wont to rely. This book should most emphatically be
added to those named in the appendix as essential to the study of our
author.In
connection with some of the remarks in the opening chapter, Professor
Butcher’s Essay on
The Dawn of Romanticism in Greek Poetry
should be noticed. I do not think that the accomplished author’s
view is incompatible with mine; though I admit that I had not taken
much account of the Greek writers whom we call “post-classical.”
But it is to be noted, as bearing on the question raised in the
second footnote on
p. 9,
that most or all of the writers whom he cites were either Asiatics or
nearly touched by Asiatic influences.I
have made some attempt to deal in a concise way with two subjects
which have not, I think, hitherto been handled in English books on
Dante, other than translations. One of these is the development of
the Guelf and Ghibeline struggle from a rivalry between two German
houses to a partisan warfare which rent Italy for generations. I am
quite aware that I have merely touched the surface of the subject,
which seems to me to contain in it the essence of all political
philosophy, with special features such as could only exist in a
country which, like Italy, had, after giving the law to the civilised
world, been unable to consolidate itself into a nation like the other
nations of Europe. I have, I find, even omitted to notice what seem
to have been the ruling aims of at any rate the honest partisans on
either side: unity, that of the Ghibelines; independence, that of the
Guelfs. Nor have I drawn attention to a remarkable trait in Dante’s
own character, which, so far as I know, has never been discussed—I
mean his apparent disregard of the “lower classes.” Except for
one or two similes drawn from the “villano” and his habits, and
one or two contemptuous allusions to “Monna Berta e Ser Martino”
and their like, it would seem as if for him the world consisted of
what now would be called “the upper ten thousand.” In an ordinary
politician or partisan, or even in a mere man of letters this would
not be strange; but when we reflect that Dante was a man who went
deeply into social and religious questions, that he was born less
than forty years after the death of St. Francis, and was at least
closely enough associated with Franciscans for legend to make him a
member of the order, and that most of the so-called heretical sects
of the time—Paterines, Cathari, Poor Men—started really more from
social than from religious discontent, it is certainly surprising
that his interest in the “dim, common populations” should have
been so slight.The
other object at which I have aimed is the introduction of English
students to the theories which seem to have taken possession of the
most eminent Continental Dante scholars, and of which some certainly
seem to be quite as much opposed to common sense and knowledge of
human nature as the conjectures of Troya and Balbo, for instance,
were to sound historical criticism. Here, again, I have but touched
on the more salient points; feeling sure that before long some of the
scholarship in our Universities and elsewhere, which at present
devotes itself to Greek and Latin, having reached the point of
realizing that Greek and Latin texts may be worth studying though
written outside of so-called classical periods, will presently extend
the principle to the further point of applying to mediæval
literature, which hitherto has been too much the sport of
dilettanti,
the methods that have till now been reserved for the two favoured
(and rightly favoured) languages. Unless I am much mistaken, the
finest Latin scholar will find that a close study of early Italian
will teach him “a thing or two” that he did not know before in
his own special subject; so that his labour will not be lost, even
from that point of view. Then we shall get the authoritative edition
of Dante, which I am insular enough to believe will never come from
either Germany or Italy, or from any intervening country.February,
1895.
CHAPTER I.THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
<br>The person who sets to work to write about Dante at the present day has two great difficulties to reckon with: the quantity which has already been written on the subject, and the quantity which remains to be written. The first involves the reading of an enormous mass of literature in several languages, and very various in quality; but for the comfort of the young student, it may at once, and once for all, be stated that he can pretty safely ignore everything written between 1400 and 1800. The subject of commentaries, biographies, and other helps, or would-be helps, will be treated of later on. Here we need only say that the Renaissance[2] practically stifled anything like an intelligent study of Dante for those four centuries; and it was not until a new critical spirit began to apply to it the methods which had hitherto been reserved for the Greek and Latin classics, that the study got any chance of development. How enormously it has developed during the present century needs not to be said. It may suffice to point out that the British Museum Catalogue shows editions of the Commedia at the rate of one for every year since 1800, and other works on Dante in probably five times that proportion.Now,
it has been said of the
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Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!