Dante and the Orient (review)

Reviews 229 Parergon 20.2 (2003) enables him to tame his legendary horse, Bucephalus. Alexander’s miraculous birth (son of a human, his mother, and a dragon, symbol of the god Ammon) sets the scene for his extraordinary attributes, especially his famous thirst for knowledge and his success in domination over the animal world. He is thus an overreacher, admired yet condemned for his excess by medieval writers. Salter focuses on the prose version of Alexander’s life, especially the part based on Collatio Alexandri cum Dindimo, which contrasts the Greeks’ superior use of nature through domination versus the apparently inferior view held by the Brahmans, who lived in harmony with the animal world. Although interesting in itself, this rather lengthy section (pp. 138-46) hardly serves the purpose of clarifying medieval attitudes to the animal world, and Alexander’s heroic stature is given comparatively little space in the discussion. While unconvincing in terms of coherence and links between the different sections, this study achieves its stated purpose of showing the diversity of medieval attitudes to the animal world. It also presents a useful and comprehensive survey of recent criticism on hagiography and romance accounts of animals and their association with the human world. Raluca Radulescu Centre for Medieval & Renaissance Studies Trinity College Dublin Schildgen, Brenda Deen, Dante and the Orient (Illinois Medieval Studies), Urbana/Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 2002; cloth; pp. 160; RRP US$34.95; ISBN 0252027132. A book on a subject so vast, in every sense, might suggest a compilation or summary of current scholarship. This is not Brenda Deen Schildgen’s aim, and, if her text is referred to for this purpose, this should be done with caution. Schildgen considers that all those peoples, places and cultures which can be represented as ‘the Orient’ are depicted in the Divina Commedia as counterpoint to Dante’s vision of a Christian European empire. The book is concerned almost exclusively with the Commedia, using De Monarchia for evidence of Dante’s political views. In Edward Said’s Orientalism (New York, Vintage Books, 1979) Dante forms a ‘bridge between Antiquity and Modernity’ (p. 69), his depiction of the ‘the Orient’ characteristic of a Western tradition of exoticising alterity. Schildgen 230 Reviews Parergon 20.2 (2003) agrees that Dante’s non-Catholic world is in apposition to Catholic Europe, but she argues that he constantly downplays and undercuts its potential for exoticism in order to make the East a moral mirror for the West. Each of her five chapters focuses on a different aspect of the East in the Commedia. She begins by summarising medieval geographical knowledge, including illustrations of some well-known maps. It must be emphasised that throughout the book she is not concerned to argue the case for Dante’s access to the specific contemporary or earlier material which she is using. Whether he demonstrates, through references, his familiarity with a particular text, whether that text or philosophy was common knowledge for an educated man of his time and place, or whether his silence regarding a possible source (such as Marco Polo’s Il Milione) is evidence of ignorance or deliberate rejection, are matters Schildgen rarely elucidates. The reader wishing to make these connections is referred to long bibliographical lists within the notes. Unsurprisingly, few of the Dante studies in these lists are in English, and I therefore wonder about their usefulness to Schildgen’s readership for whom everything, even quotes from Dante, appears in English translation. Surely important background material, such as the extent of Dante’s exposure to Islam (p. 15, n. 36), could have been summarised within the text. For Schildgen, Dante extends the Mappaemundi tradition which depicted the world actually encompassed by Christ’s body, constructing a simultaneously real and psycho-spiritual geography for his internalised and yet physical journey. She sees him focused on Rome and western Europe, concerned that travel which diffuses Catholic energies (such as non-European crusades and presumably Holy Land pilgrimages) should be replaced by activities that strengthen the (idealised) Empire and individual spiritual growth. Were this Dante’s stance, it would hardly be ground-breaking, criticism of overseas ventures having been aired by many lay and clerical...