Dante's Lyric Poetry : Poems of Youth and of the 'Vita Nuova'

The first comprehensive English translation and commentary on Dante’s early verse to be published in almost fifty years, Dante’s Lyric Poetry includes all the poems written by the young Dante Aligheri between c. 1283 and c. 1292. Essays by Teodolinda Barolini guide the reader through the new verse translations by Richard Lansing, illuminating Dante’s transformation from a young courtly poet into the writer of the vast and visionary Commedia . Barolini’s commentary exposes Dante’s lyric poems as early articulations of many of the ideas in the Commedia , including the philosophy and psychology of desire and its role as motor of all human activity, the quest for vision and transcendence, the frustrating search for justice on earth, and the transgression of boundaries in society and poetry. A wide-ranging and intelligent examination of one of the most important poets in the Western tradition, this book will be of interest to scholars and poetry-lovers alike. Annotation The first comprehensive English translation and commentary on Dante's early verse to be published in almost fifty years, Dante's Lyric Poetry includes all the poems written by the young Dante Aligheri between c. 1283 and c. 1292. Essays by Teodolinda Barolini guide the reader through the new verse translations by Richard Lansing, illuminating Dante's transformation from a young courtly poet into the writer of the vast and visionary Commedia. Barolini's commentary exposes Dante's lyric poems as early articulations of many of the ideas in the Commedia, including the philosophy and psychology of desire and its role as motor of all human activity, the quest for vision and transcendence, the frustrating search for justice on earth, and the transgression of boundaries in society and poetry. A wide-ranging and intelligent examination of one of the most important poets in the Western tradition, this book will be of interest to scholars and poetry-lovers alike Contents 5 Dante’s Lyric Poetry: From Editorial History to Hermeneutic Future 9 Editions Cited in the Introductory Essays and Notes 37 Abbreviations 39 Note on Italian Versification 41 RIME 45 Tenzone between Dante Alighieri and Dante da Maiano 45 La tenzone del duol d’amore 51 Tenzone between Dante Alighieri and Dante da Maiano 63 Alphabetic Index of First Lines 317 Index 319