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

Teodolinda Barolini

Oct 2014 · University of Toronto Press

About this ebook

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.

About the author

Teodolinda Barolini is the Lorenzo Da Ponte Professor of Italian at Columbia University.

Richard Lansing is a Professor Emeritus of Italian Studies and Comparative Literature at Brandeis University.

Andrew Frisardi is a writer, editor, and translator who lives near Orvieto, Italy.