About this item
Highlights
- Through an historical and philological lens, this book explores passages from Dante's Commedia which reveal elements inspired byprocessions, pageants, liturgical drama, psalm singing, or dance performance.
- About the Author: Francesco Ciabattoni is Full Professor and Term Professor in Italian Literature, and Director of Global Medieval Studies Program at Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA.
- 282 Pages
- Literary Criticism, European
- Series Name: Mimesis
Description
About the Book
Dante's Commedia abounds with scenes of liturgical drama, sacred songs, and dance performance. The sacred poem represents the afterlife with great poetic force thanks to the richness of its performed theology. Dante's Performance opens a new perBook Synopsis
Through an historical and philological lens, this book explores passages from Dante's Commedia which reveal elements inspired byprocessions, pageants, liturgical drama, psalm singing, or dance performance. The sacred poem finds influence in medieval theories of the performing arts as well as actual performances which Dante would have seen in churches or town squares. Dante's Performance opens a new perspective from which to consider the Commedia: Dante expected his contemporary readers to recognize references to and echoes of psalms, sacred plays, and performative practices. Twenty-first-century readers are tasked with reconstructing a cultural framework which allows us to grasp those same textual references.
From the dramatization of the harrowing of hell in Inferno IX, to Beatrice's celebratory return on top of Mount Purgatory, to the songs of the blessed, this study connects Dante's language to coeval theoretical and practical texts about performance.
If hell is "the Middle Age's theatrum diaboli," purgatory stages a performed purification through songs and acting, while paradise offers the spectacle of blessed spirits within the heavenly spheres as an aid to human understanding (Par. IV 28-39).
About the Author
Francesco Ciabattoni is Full Professor and Term Professor in Italian Literature, and Director of Global Medieval Studies Program at Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA.