Lectura Dantis. Inferno. A Canto-by-Canto Commentary (review)

Lectura Dantis. Inferno. A Canto-by-Canto Commentary. Edited by Allen Mandelbaum, Anthony Oldcorn, and Charles Ross. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. xii + 461. $45.00.

This is the first of the three volumes that will make up the California Lectura Dantis. The two companion volumes on Purgatorio and Paradiso, which will follow the same format, are said by the publisher to be forthcoming. I would like to state from the outset that, in my opinion, this excellent collection of essays stands a fine chance of becoming a classic in the field of Dante studies. First, it appeals both to scholars and to students (undergraduate as well as graduate) alike. There is no doubt that the variety of critical approaches deployed in the thirty-four essays grouped here renders this book a most stimulating reading. Encompassing all the main contemporary schools of literary criticism, the Lectura Dantis edited by Mandelbaum, Oldcorn, and Ross provides the reader with a wide-ranging spectrum of interpretations of Dante's masterpiece. Virtually every "taste" can be satisfied by this commentary, featuring as diverse stances as Sanguineti's psychoanalitic reading of Ugolino's episode and Mazzotta's by now classic analysis of Ulysses' canto. Second, the formula chosen by the editors places this volume alongside such useful and perused canto-by-canto commentaries as Robin Kirkpatrick's Dante's 'Inferno': Difficulty and Dead Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987). As such, this volume can become a valuable tool in the hands of both teachers and students, providing valuable material for in-class discussion as well as up-to-date secondary bibliography for papers. In this regard, I am glad to note that a section entitled "Bibliographical Note and Suggestions for Further Reading" has been inserted as an appendix to the book. There the reader can find a select, yet sufficiently rich bibliography, spanning from such traditional works as Franceso da Buti's Commento and Castelvetro's Sposizione a XXIX canti dell'inferno dantesco (last published in 1862 and 1886 respectively) to the most up-to-date electronic resources, including the address of various homepages for Dante studies. Third, this volume stems from the joint effort of no less than thirty-seven international scholars, mostly Americans and Italians, thus bearing witness to an open-mindedness that, unfortunately, is still far from being common in the academic world. The subsidy provided by the Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze toward the publication of this book is in keeping with this praiseworthy spirit. There is no doubt that the participation of an international panel of scholars is one of the main assets to this book, placing it above most other works of this kind. In this regard, it is worth noting that in the appendix the editors have included a list of the main Lecturae Dantis published in the last fifty years, thus providing the reader with a further valuable instrument of research.

A map illustrating the structure of Dante's Inferno (iv) immediately reveals the semi-popular intent (in the good sense of the word) of this publication. The same is true of Mandelbaum's introduction (1-8). Like the introductory pages to another recent excellent contribution to Dante studies, namely Durling's and Martinez's translation of Inferno (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), this short essay succeeds in placing the author of the Commedia in context from both a cultural and an historical point of view. This brief section itself is revealing of Mandelbaum's deep knowledge of the topic, touching skilfully as it does on the main issues without overwhelming the reader (which, in this case, is more likely to be an undergraduate student) with an excessive, maybe even discouraging wealth of information. The most stimulating feature of this first insight into Dante is Mandelbaum's tendency to regard the author of the Commedia as a human being rather than as an icon. It is precisely this attention to the genuinely human--and, as such, always...