Lectura Dantis: Purgatorio »

Allen Mandelbaum is W.R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Humanities at Wake Forest University and a National Book Award winner. He is the translator of the UC Press facing-text editions of Dante's Divine Comedy (in three volumes:
Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso), as well as the UC Press editions of the verse translations of The Odyssey of Homer and The Aeneid of Virgil. Anthony Oldcorn is Chair of Italian at Brown University. Charles Ross is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Purdue University.

This new critical volume, the second to appear in the three-volume Lectura Dantis, contains expert, focused commentary on the Purgatorio by thirty-three international scholars, each of whom presents to the nonspecialist reader one of the cantos of the transitional middle cantica of Dante's unique Christian epic. The cast of characters is as colorful as before, although this time most of them are headed for salvation. The canto-by-canto commentary allows each contributor his or her individual voice and results in a deeper, richer awareness of Dante's timeless aspirations and achievements.

Ritual and Story   Ezio Raimondi     1
The New Song and the Old   Robert Hollander     11
The Sheepfold of the Excommunicates   Robin Kirkpatrick     21
The Lute Maker   Enzo Quaglio     39
The Keys to Purgatory   Aldo Scaglione     47
Abject Italy   Maria Picchio Simonelli     56
Sordello and the Catalog of Princes   Maurizio Perugi     65
In the Valley of the Rulers   Ricardo J. Quinones     73
The Ritual Keys   Charles Ross     85
The Art of God   Hermann Gemlin     95
Gone with the Wind   Anthony Oldcorn     103
Eyes Down   Janos Kelemen     119
Among the Envious   Albert Wingell     129
The Rhetoric of Envy   Massimo Verdicchio     141
Virtual Reality   Arielle Saiber     151
A World of Darkness and Disorder   John Scott     167
On Revenge   Jo Ann Cavallo     178
Love, Free Will, and Sloth   Marilyn Migiel     191
Vectors of Human Love   Sara Sturm-Maddox     200
Hugh Capet and theAvarice of Kings   Vincent Moleta     210
Greeting Statius   Janet Levarie Smarr     222
Virgil and Statius Discourse   Christopher Kleinhenz     236
Reading Literary and Ethical Choices   Rinaldina Russell     252
Of Poetry and Politics   Lino Pertile     262
Statius's Marvelous Connection of Things   Ronald Martinez     277
The Fires of Lust and Poetry   Prue Shaw     288
At the Threshold of Freedom   Glauco Cambon     303
Watching Matilda   Victoria Kirkham     311
Dante's Processional Vision   Peter Armour     329
At the Summit of Purgatory   Rachel Jacoff     341
Dante's Repentance   Emilio Pasquini     353
The Parallel Histories   H. Wayne Storey     360
Beatrice's Prophecy, Matilda's Name, and the Pilgrim's Renewal   Dino S. Cervigni     378
Contributors     391
Index     399