This book argues that
Paradiso – Dante’s vision of Heaven – is not simply affirmative. It posits that
Paradiso compensates for disappointment rather than fulfils hopes, and where it moves into joy and vision, this also rationalises the experience of exile and the failure of all Dante’s political hopes. The book highlights and addresses a fundamental problem in reading Dante: the assumption that he writes as a Catholic Christian, which can be off-putting and induces an overly theological and partisan reading in some commentary. Accordingly, the study argues that Dante must be read now in a post-Christian modernity. It discusses Dante’s Christianity fully, and takes its details as a source of wonder and beauty which need communicating to a modern reader. Yet, the study also argues that we must read for the alterity of Dante’s world from ours.
Table of Content
1. Introduction: On Reading Paradiso: Dante’s Dualism.- 2. Chapter 1: The Inconstant Moon, Paradiso and the Feminine.- 3. Chapter 2: Mercury: Roman History.- 4. Chapter 3: Poetry and the Violence of Venus.- 5. Chapter 4: ‘Dancing in the Sun: The Trinity in Motion’ (Paradiso 10-14).- 6. Chapter 5: ‘Mars and Mutilation: Florence and the Baptist’.- 7. Chapter 6: ‘Time and Chronology in Jupiter and Saturn’ (Paradiso 18-22).- 8. Chapter 7: ‘Fixed Stars and Diasporic Times: Paradiso 22-27’.- 9. Chapter 8: ‘Dante’s Angels: Paradiso 28 and 29’.- 10. Chapter 9: ‘The Ultimate Vision: Multiple Relationships: Paradiso 30-33’.
About the author
Jeremy Tambling is Professor of English at SWPS Warsaw (University of Social Sciences and Humanities), Poland. Prior to this, he was Professor of Literature at Manchester University, UK, and Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. He has written widely on Dante, psychoanalysis, urban literary studies, and Victorian literature. Previous publications on Dante include
Dante and Difference: Writing in the Commedia (1988),
Dante: A Critical Reader (ed.1999), and
Dante in Purgatory: States of Affect (2012).
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