Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’, vol. iii. ed. by George Corbett, Heather Webb

Abstract

 Reviews English which demand a deeper investigation than this short book is able to offer. ere is the intriguing matter of why some elements (baby and calcio are mentioned ) seem more prone to compounding than others, suggesting the operation of an internal dynamic that is susceptible of diachronic description. Comparison with other Romance languages would be instructive in order to judge the commonality or distinctiveness of some supposed Anglicisms (in Spanish, for example, it is considered that increased use of the be passive, not mentioned here for Italian, is attributable to English). Such comparison might also illuminate the history of pseudo-Anglicisms such as recordman and the apparently independent development of Anglicisms such as andare in tilt. But this book will be instrumental in stimulating interest in these and other lines of future enquiry. Q M U  L C J. P Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’, vol. . Ed. by G C and H W. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. .  pp.£. (/ free). ISBN –––– ( ––––;  ––––). Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’ is the first series of readings of Dante Alighieri ’s Comedy which systematically follow a structure different from the traditional Lecturae Dantis: not a linear (‘horizontal’) reading of the poem, canto by canto, but a reading which runs perpendicular to the narration (‘vertical’), which passes through the three canticles of the poem at one time, grouping the samenumbered cantos of Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. e third and final volume of this series includes eleven readings, from Cantos  to  (the last essay is the only one which analyses four cantos: the s, with Canto  of Inferno). is project, published between two important anniversaries of Dante’s birth and death, is ground-breaking in setting a new way of looking at the Comedy and in providing a fruitful model for new series of the same or a similar kind. ‘Further vertical, but also [. . .] “diagonal” and “horizontal”’ readings, as wished for by the editors (p. ), have in fact already been suggested within this series. Although such a reading scheme could run the risk of forcing connections and interpretations (and indeed some threads appear stronger than others), it actually fosters original insights into single cantos and the poem as a whole. e variety of this third volume (which brings specific attention to the theological perspective), together with its internal interconnections, fully proves this potentiality. Some interesting key themes emerge among these diverse readings: imagery, numerology, corporeality, all-inclusiveness, movement and change, language and truth. Inspired by Mandelstam’s idea of the Comedy as an organic growing body, Peter Hawkins reads Cantos  following a thread of corporeality: from the hypocrites’ attention to the pilgrim’s living body, to the hollow aerial bodies of the penitent gluttons, to one of the most abstract cantos of Paradiso, which nonetheless shows for the first time the central materiality of Christ’s ‘bright Substance’ and the concrete maternal character of the Virgin Mary. We move from body to desire, as MLR, .,   related to identity and poetry, with Janet Soskice’s reading of Cantos : the is a wrong desire, the gluttons’ hunger is a form of desire, and the poets among them represent a form of ‘gluttonous’ poetry, which Dante’s sacred poem overcomes, in focusing on the only happily unending desire: faith. ‘Ardour’ is the thread in one of the strongest verticals, traced by Elena Lombardi: Cantos  feature Dante’s ‘trespassing’ alter egos, Ulysses and Adam, and his poetic father Guido Guinizzelli, cornerstones linked by particular images (flames and sea), lexical correspondences, and the interwoven themes of desire and language: wrong desire and deceitful language , good desire and true language. at ‘ardour’ is again highlighted by Piero Boitani in the pivotal Purgatorio , where Dante recognizes the ‘ancient flame’ of his love for Beatrice, who represents divine wisdom as opposed to Ulysses’ ‘flame’; fire is at the centre of a thread of water images in Cantos : from falsifiers’ thirst, through Dante’s flowing tears, to the Empyrean river. A vertical progression of concentric ‘containers’ is followed by Ronald Martinez reading Cantos : from the infernal inflamed containers of fraud and sin (among which we find again language), to the wall of fire between Purgatory and Earthly Paradise, to...