Dante

Chapter 2: AUTHOR’S NOTE

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About This Book

A concise, scholarly primer that situates the poet within his political and cultural milieu and summarizes his life, political activity, and long exile. It surveys the shorter vernacular poems and lyrical pieces, outlines the author’s Latin treatises and correspondence, and offers a structured reading of the three-part epic, discussing its moral, allegorical, and political dimensions in Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Chapters combine biographical narrative, textual commentary, and interpretive notes, while bibliographical appendices, diagrams, and indexes guide further study; the volume presents itself as a revision that balances allegorical readings with the poet’s symbolic national role.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I would ask the reader to take the present volume, not as a new book on Dante, but merely as a revision of the Primer which was first published in 1900. It has been as far as possible brought up to date, the chief modifications being naturally in the sections devoted to the poet’s life and Opere minori, and in the bibliographical appendix; but the work remains substantially the same. Were I now to write a new Dante Primer, after the interval of nearly a quarter of a century, I should be disposed to attach considerably less importance to the allegorical meaning of the Divina Commedia, and to emphasise, more than I have here done, the aspect of Dante as the symbol and national hero of Italy.

E. G. G.

London, July, 1923.