Ethics, Politics and Justice in Dante

Ethics, Politics and Justice in Dante presents new research by international scholars on the themes of ethics, politics and justice in the works of Dante Alighieri, including chapters on Dante’s modern ‘afterlife’.

Together the chapters explore how Dante’s writings engage with the contemporary culture of medieval Florence and Italy, and how and why his political and moral thought still speaks compellingly to modern readers. The collection’s contributors range across different disciplines and scholarly traditions – history, philology, classical reception, philosophy, theology – to scrutinise Dante’s Divine Comedy and his other works in Italian and Latin, offering a multi-faceted approach to the evolution of Dante’s political, ethical and legal thought throughout his writing career.

Certain chapters focus on his early philosophical Convivio and on the accomplished Latin Eclogues of his final years, while others tackle knotty themes relating to judgement, justice, rhetoric and literary ethics in his Divine Comedy, from hell to paradise. The closing chapters discuss different modalities of the public reception and use of Dante’s work in both Italy and Britain, bringing the volume’s emphasis on morality, political philosophy, and social justice into the modern age of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.

Praise for Ethics, Politics and Justice in Dante

'Excellent essays on a number of themes and specific instances related to education, law, speech, private and public moral codes, current events, and book learning in Dante’s own historical context and beyond.'
Speculum

Ethics, Politics and Justice in Dante presents new research by international scholars on the themes of ethics, politics and justice in the works of Dante Alighieri, including chapters on Dante’s modern ‘afterlife’.

Ethics, Politics and Justice in Dante presents new research by international scholars on the themes of ethics, politics and justice in the works of Dante Alighieri, including chapters on Dante’s modern ‘afterlife’.

Together the chapters explore how Dante’s writings engage with the contemporary culture of medieval Florence and Italy, and how and why his political and moral thought still speaks compellingly to modern readers. The collection’s contributors range across different disciplines and scholarly traditions – history, philology, classical reception, philosophy, theology – to scrutinize Dante’s Divine Comedy and his other works in Italian and Latin, offering a multi-faceted approach to the evolution of Dante’s political, ethical and legal thought throughout his writing career.

Certain chapters focus on his early philosophical Convivio and on the accomplished Latin Eclogues of his final years, while others tackle knotty themes relating to judgement, justice, rhetoric and literary ethics in his Divine Comedy, from hell to paradise. The closing chapters discuss different modalities of the public reception and use of Dante’s work in both Italy and Britain, bringing the volume’s emphasis on morality, political philosophy, and social justice into the modern age of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.

Praise for Ethics, Politics and Justice in Dante
'Excellent essays on a number of themes and specific instances related to education, law, speech, private and public moral codes, current events, and book learning in Dante’s own historical context and beyond.'
Speculum

'[The] two culminating chapters offer stimulating reflections on Dante’s enduring accessibility and how he can still speak to audiences today. ...The volume offers new methodological approaches to consider Dante’s depictions and understandings of ethics, politics, and justice, offering fresh readings on both popular and less widely considered passages of Dante’s poetic works.'
Bibliotheca Dantesca: Journal of Dante Studies

1. Introduction: ‘Justice in the Heart’
Giulia Gaimari and Catherine Keen
2. On Grammar and Justice: Notes onConvivio, II. xii. 1–7
Anna Pegoretti
3. A Classicizing Friar in Dante’s Florence. Servasanto da Faenza, Dante, and the Ethics of Friendship
Nicolò Maldina
4. An Ethical and Political Bestiary in the First Canto of Dante’sComedy
Giuseppe Ledda
5. Lust and the Law: Reading and Witnessing inInfernoV
Nicolò Crisafi and Elena Lombardi
6. More than an Eye for an Eye: Dante’s Sovereign Justice
Justin Steinberg
7. ‘Ritornerò profeta’: TheEpistleof St James and the Crowning of Dante’s Patience
Filippo Gianferrari
8. Ethical Distance and Political Resonance in Dante’sEclogues
Sabrina Ferrara
Two Reflections on Dante’s Political and Ethical Afterlives
9. Dante’sFortuna: an Overview of Canon Formation and National Contexts
Catherine Keen
10. Responses to Dante in the New Millennium
Claire E. Honess and Matthew Treherne