Dante's Golden Legend: Auto-Hagiography in the Divine Comedy

DANTE'S GOLDEN LEGEND examines how the DIVINE COMEDY absorbs and reimagines Dante's early attempts at life-writing, as well as how Dante appropriates and revises various biographical and hagiographical models, using them as vehicles for his own auto-hagiographical project. The COMEDY, Watt contends, presents not only Dante's encyclopedic vision of sacred history but also his own purpose and place within that history. In the COMEDY, just as Dante critiques the lives of others, both saints and sinners, he interprets his own life, and concludes that his is, indeed, the life of a saint, charged with a sacred mission. While there have been numerous analyses of specific autobiographical aspects of the COMEDY, they are fragmentary at best. This book, in contrast, considers how these moments, together with the prophecies woven through the poem, create an overarching narrative structure that reveals Dante's own hagiographical significance, addressing a surprising void in the criticism.

Author: Mary Alexandra Watt
Publisher: Mercer University Press
Published: 09/01/2021
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 9.13h x 6.06w x 1.10d
ISBN13: 9780881468083
ISBN10: 0881468088
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | Ancient and Classical
- Poetry | European | Italian