Dante: Poet of the Secular WorldNew York Review of Books, 2007 M01 16 - 208 pages Erich Auerbach’s Dante: Poet of the Secular World is an inspiring introduction to one of world’s greatest poets as well as a brilliantly argued and still provocative essay in the history of ideas. Here Auerbach, thought by many to be the greatest of twentieth-century scholar-critics, makes the seemingly paradoxical claim that it is in the poetry of Dante, supreme among religious poets, and above all in the stanzas of his Divine Comedy, that the secular world of the modern novel first took imaginative form. Auerbach’s study of Dante, a precursor and necessary complement to Mimesis, his magisterial overview of realism in Western literature, illuminates both the overall structure and the individual detail of Dante’s work, showing it to be an extraordinary synthesis of the sensuous and the conceptual, the particular and the universal, that redefined notions of human character and fate and opened the way into modernity. CONTENTS I. Historical Introduction; The Idea of Man in Literature II. Dante's Early Poetry III. The Subject of the "Comedy" IV. The Structure of the "Comedy" V. The Presentation VI. The Survival and Transformation of Dante's Vision of Reality Notes Index |
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actual Amore ancient apostrophe Auerbach Beatrice canzone Cavalcanti character Christ Christian Comedy conception concrete Convivio culture Dante Dante's destiny didactic Divine Comedy doctrine earth earthly epic Erich Auerbach eternal ethical European evil example experience expression feeling figures gentile GEORGES SIMENON Giraut de Bornelh Guido Cavalcanti Guinizelli heaven Hell historical human idea individual Inferno inner interpretation Italian language LEONARDO SCIASCIA living lofty lyrical man's meaning ment metaphors mimesis mind mystical myth mythical nature never Paradise passage passion PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR perfect philosophical poem poetic poetry political preserved Provençal poets Purg Purgatory rational reader reality revealed rhetorical rhyme seems sense sensuous sentence sonnet soul speak sphere spirit stil nuovo striving structure style sublime Summa theologica tercet terza rima theme things Thomist tion tradition transformed trobar clus true truth ultimate fate unity Virgil vision Vita nuova whole words youth