War and Peace in Dante

This volume opens with John Barnes exploring how Dante's views on and experience of war are reflected in his literary works. Joseph Canning, addressing Dante's justification of the authority of the Roman Empire, assesses the compatibility of the poet's view with established just war theory. Hannah Skoda demonstrates that, in Inferno, Dante seems to dwell on a paradigm where war produces discord, tumult, and chaos. John Barnes then suggests that the episode at the gate of the City of Dis has much in common with a siege. Stephen Milner highlights the polar opposition between the stance of the rhetorician Brunetto Latini and that of the exiled poet who had no use for rhetoric in any true rhetorical situation. Spencer Pearce, shifting the focus to inner conflict, delineates Dante's project of self-creation, finding it modeled in the experience of the souls in his Purgatory. Matthew Kempshall traces Dante's theoretical understanding of peace back to a particular reading of Aristotle and Augustine, which he shared with Remigio de' Girolami. Elena Lombardi probes Dante's engagement with various forms of peace, investigating how peace may or may not be a satisfaction of desire. Vittorio Montemaggi argues that the full boldness and complexity of Dante's presentation of peace in the Commedia is best appreciated from a theological perspective. Lastly, Pamela Williams, comparing Dante's view of Christian peace with Petrarch's, finds that it embraces both heavenly peace and an aspiration of the Church Militant. *** "War and Peace in Dante approaches two of the more ambitious and ambiguous topics relating to Dantean scholarship with intellectual depth. In addition, the contributors both admirably raise probing questions and provide a multitude of relevant interpretations. The variety of topics analyzed pertaining to war and peace, along with the choice of texts incorporated, place the work as a valuable new contribution to Dante Studies." --Forum Italicum, Vol. 51, No. 3, 2017 Fall Issue (Series: UCD Foundation for Italian Studies) [Subject: Literary Criticism, Medieval Studies, Italian Studies]