Università di Pisa
Dipartimento di Filologia, Letteratura e Linguistica
Corso di Laurea Magistrale in
Lingue e Letterature Moderne Euroamericane
TESI DI LAUREA
Dante in Romantic England
The Criticism of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Relatore: Prof.ssa Roberta Ferrari
Candidata: Silvia Riccardi
Correlatore: Prof. Alberto Casadei
Tutor: PD Dr. Jan Alber
Ai miei genitori, Rossana e Michele a mio fratello Alessandro a Souvik, con amore, nel ricordo di Dave
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
I DANTE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 4
I.1Geoffrey Chaucer 4
I.2 From Chaucer to Milton 10
Gower, Lydgate, Wyatt, Foxe, Jewel, Spenser, Shakespeare
I.3 John Milton 15
I.4 From Milton to the Romantics 19
Dryden, Voltaire, Rolli, Baretti, Gray, Warton, Hayley, Rogers
I.5 The Romantics: translators, painters, poets 24
Boyd, Cary, Fuseli, Flaxman, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge
II COLERIDGE
’
S CRITICISM ON DANTE 33II.1Coleridge’s knowledge of Italian and Italian literature 33
II.2 Coleridge’s study of Dante 38
II.3 Dante in Biographia Literaria 44
II.4 Coleridge’s lecturae Dantis 57
II.4.1 Lecture X – 1818 57
II.4.2 Lecture V – 1819 59
CONCLUSION 88
APPENDIX
:
ILLUSTRATIONS 101INTRODUCTION
The onset of Dantean influence on British Romanticism gave way to a most fascinating episode in the cultural history of England. It was simultaneously favored by the first translations of the Commedia and the enthusiastic reception by Romantic artists. In poetry, Dante’s sway was considerable. The Poet epitomized the experiencing
Wanderer and the autobiographical genius, the exiled rebel and the man of liberty, the Sommo Poeta who practiced his art in the vernacular. The intimate interaction of
Romantic thought and his character gave birth to a ‘Romantic Dante’ in literary imagery. Among the Great Six, Samuel Taylor Coleridge championed the Italian master in his lecturae Dantis, offering readings of valuable criticism. His outstanding example is considered a watershed in Dantean studies in England.
The present study will attempt to examine the factors that distinguished Coleridge’s approach to Dante from his contemporaries and should serve in obtaining an accurate appraisal of his pioneering role in the modern critical scene.
Firstly, the origin of Dante’s fortuna in England and its development from the medieval to the Romantic period will be traced. Attention will be confined to the three most receptive spans to Dante’s literary output, that of Geoffrey Chaucer, of John Milton, and of the Romantics, and of the centuries in between, characterized by minor events. Paget Toynbee, in his Dante in English Literature (1909), gave a detailed study on the influence of Dante from Chaucer to Cary. He traced Dantean derivations, borrowings, and adaptations, which were mostly of stylistic or poetic character. However, the influence of the Poet must also be regarded as an ‘important debt’, as T.S.
Eliot would call it. This statement concerns the way English political, religious, and ethical thought determined individual responses to Dante. Both these aspects will be taken into consideration to demonstrate the importance of the Florentine in England, with special attention to the period of Romanticism, during which it flourished the most. After providing a substantial historical and literary framework, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s criticism on Dante will be contextualized and discussed. This will consist in his relevant remarks on Dante in Biographia Literaria (1817) and his two lectures on the Italian poet.
Coleridge’s study of the Italian language and literature will be touched upon, with special focus to his study of Dante. Coleridge developed an interest in Italian during his academic visit to Germany between 1798 and 1800. After his subsequent Mediterranean sojourn between 1804 and 1806 he got acquainted with the Commedia in the original, the Italian Trecento, and Renaissance. His interests spanned poetry, philosophy and visual arts.
Coleridge’s background in Italian culture will be pivotal in determining the main impact that his experience had in shaping his own poetic thought. Cases in point are selected passages of Biographia Literaria. The work encompasses theoretical principles and practical criticism. It is considered Coleridge’s magnum opus in prose and the preeminently prominent testimony of Romanticism in England. Particular emphasis will be placed in defining the role of Dante in the same.
After more than five centuries, Coleridge imported to and restored in England an ancient tradition initiated by Boccaccio back in 1373. The character of Coleridge’s lectures on Dante, delivered in 1818 and 1819, will be examined in-depth. As they were never published, the corpus of the research relating to this point is based on the poet’s written fragments, namely letters, notes, and marginalia. Attention will be given to the
notes to the 1819 lecture, being the only source material that has survived. The following edited references are used: The Notebooks edited by Kathleen Coburn,
Collected Letters edited by Leslie Griggs, and Marginalia edited by George Whalley.
Selective information from these sources will be scrutinized in the light of Coleridge’s philosophical approach to the subject, which united Platonic Mysticism with Aristotelian Scholasticism, and Christian doctrine with German Idealism. Evidence of such preeminent thinking will be presented and examined to help discern Coleridge’s intent and infer his purpose in criticizing Dante.
The relevance of this discussion lies in the assignment of the role of Dantean critic to Coleridge among the most prominent English dantisti of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For Coleridge, Dante was not merely the hero of his time, but also the predecessor of modern literature, the connection between religion and philosophy, and the father of a universal language in poetry. Coleridge’s example demonstrates his superlative modernity and ingenuity in grasping the encyclopedic value of the Divina
I
DANTE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
I.1 Geoffrey Chaucer
Fifty-one years after Dante’s death in 1321, Geoffrey Chaucer visited Florence. There, in a stark deviation from the stern treatment the exiled poet endured during his lifetime, the literary posterity of the Florentine was now enjoying enthusiastic promotion thanks to the establishment of the lecturae Dantis by Giovanni Boccaccio1. Chaucer, who travelled to Italy on another diplomatic mission in 13782, reaffirmed familiarity with the great masters of the Italian Trecento and owned a copy of the
Divina Commedia. Evidence of his profound admiration for the Poet of Italy can be
found in his entire literary production: Dante is named six times and appears in no less than sixteen poems, whereby more than a hundred lines of the Commedia are literally translated. Hence, it is through the father of the English literary tradition that Dante arrived in England at the beginning of the fifteenth century3.
The composition that displays the most pronounced influence and imitation of the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1 The first lectura Dantis by Giovanni Boccaccio took place in Florence, at Orsanmichele Church, on October 23, 1373. These lectures were public recitals of the works of Dante Alighieri, namely the cantos of Divina Commedia. The Dantean lectures by Boccaccio were emulated by others in many different cities spanning over a hundred years.
2 Chaucer, who was an officer of the Court from 1370 to 1386, had to travel on the continent on various diplomatic missions. He visited Italy twice: the first time in 1372–3, when he went to Genoa and Florence; the second in 1378–9, when he was sent to Lombardy to treat with Bernabò Visconti, Lord of Milan, who he afterwards introduced into the Monk’s Tale.
3 Information for the present discussion on Dante in English literature is taken from: Toynbee, 1909; Kuhns, 1904; Galimberti, 1921; Farinelli, 1922; Renzulli, 1925; Friederich, 1950. See also: Toynbee, 1921; Friedrich, 1949; Wallace, 1993; Lansing, 2000; Boitani, 2011. On the history of English literature see Sanders, 1996.
Divina Commedia and, to a lesser extent, of Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid, and Boccaccio is The House of Fame (1384). There exists between the two poems a perfect
correspondence of thought and concept: both deal with the otherworldly, both are allegorical and divided into three parts, each opening with an invocation; both poets are led by a guide, who represents divine intercession, and are unable to succinctly articulate their extraordinary experience4.
The first book of The House of Fame depicts the picturesque dream of the English poet and offers the first reference to Dante’s name in English literature: Chaucer mentions the descent of Aeneas into Hell to visit the noble Anchises and tells all those who wish to know «every tourment eek in helle», that they must «rede many a rowe / On Virgile or on Claudian / Or Daunte, that hit telle can» (THOF, i. 449–50) 5.The second book describes how the journey of the poet through the House of Fame begins. Chaucer, while profoundly aghast at the first appearance of a big golden eagle, later finds comfort in the bird as it guides him through the dangerous way. His hesitance to undertake his odyssey through the unreal resembles6 Dante’s in Inferno ii, «Ma io perché venirvi? O chi ‘l concede? / Io non Enëa, io non Paulo sono» (Inf. ii. 31–32)7. In Chaucer’s verses:
I neither am Enok, ne Elye, Ne Romulus, ne Ganymede, That was y-bore up, as men rede, To hevene with dan Jupiter, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
4 For a comparison between the Divina Commedia and The House of Fame see Rambeau, 1880; Chiarini, 1902; Sypherd, 1907. See also Chiarini, 1901.
5 The reference for all quotations of Chaucer’s works is: Chaucer, 1906 and will be noted parenthetically within the text by shortened title (i.e., The House of Fame: THOF), book, and line.
6
It has been argued that here and throughout the poem there are instances of a parodical evocation of Dante (cf. Boitani, 2011: 229). David Wallace interprets it as self-parody, instead of Dante’s: Chaucer’s vehement self-protestation in emulating Dante in the above passage compels the reader to believe him (cf. Wallace, 1993: 239).
7 All citations from the Divina Commedia are taken from Alighieri, 2009 and will be noted parenthetically within the text by cantica, canto, and terzina. Original formatting and indentation are retained.
And maad the goddes boteler. (THOF, ii. 588–92)
The golden eagle stands for Virgil and Beatrice. It can speak a human language and elucidate the all the poet’s doubts; it finds its source in Purgatorio ix: «in sogno mi parea veder sospesa / un’aguglia nel ciel con penne d’oro, / con l’ali aperte e a calare intesa» (Purg. ix. 19–21). Upon reaching the slope of the mountain, the guide breaks off from Chaucer. The poetic rendition of the peak begins with «O Thought, that wroot al that I mette» (THOF, ii. 523), which is the literal translation of what Dante says before the mountain of Purgatorio: «o mente che scrivesti ciò ch’io vidi» (Inf. ii. 8). The opening of the third book presents a clear reproduction of the invocation to Apollo in the first canto of Paradiso8. The English poet, however, promises to plant a kiss on a laurel tree instead of proposing to crown himself with laurel if his poetic task achieves fruition:
O god of science and of light, Apollo, through thy grete might, This litel laste book thou gye! […]
And if, divyne vertu, thou Wilt helpe me to shewe now That in myn hede y-marked is– Lo, that is for to menen this,
The Hous of Fame for to descryve– Thou shalt see me go, as blyve, Unto the nexte laure I see, And kisse hit, for hit is thy tree;
Now entreth in my breste anoon!– (THOF, iii. 1–3; 11–9) That Chaucer was a fond scholar of Italian literature and could handle Dante’s !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
8
O buono Apollo, a l’ultimo lavoro O divina virtù, se mi ti presti fammi del tuo valor sí fatto vaso, tanto che l’ombra del beato regno
come dimandi a dar l’amato alloro venir vedra’mi al tuo diletto legno, […] e coronarmi allor di quelle foglie
meter is also demonstrated by the poetic experimentation that followed his first major, though incomplete, work. The Compleynt to His Lady (1373–4) is in fact his first attempt, as well as the first instance in English poetry, to adapt the Dantean terza rima to his native language, despite the scarcity of rhyming words available in English9. His paradigm was later on emulated, at least initially, by Thomas Wyatt, John Milton, William Hayley, and the Romantics, namely Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron.
Several passages in Anelida and Arcite (c. 1378) are of Dantean origin, especially the phrase «the poynt of remembraunce» (AAA, 211) which is the literal translation of «per la puntura de la rimembranza» (Purg. xii. 20).
In the prologue to The Parlement of Foules (1343–1400) the twilight is depicted with the well-known terzina in the opening of Inferno ii: «Lo giorno se n’andava, e l’aere bruno / toglieva li animali che sono in terra / da le fatiche loro» (Inf. ii. 1–3), «The day gan failen, and the derke night, / That reveth bestes from hir besinesse» (TPOF, 85–6). Furthermore, the anaphoric inscription «Thorgh me men goon» (TPOF, 124) on the gate of the erotic-edenic garden follows the famous «PER ME SI VA» (Inf. iii. 1), on the gates of Hell.
The play of intertextuality demonstrated in Troilus and Criseyde (1380–2), as Piero Boitani points out, is dramatic and lyrical at the same time: the prayer of Saint Bernard to the Virgin Mary becomes Troilus’ imploration to the goddesses of love to grant him the carnal pleasure of Criseyde. The whole sequence is rich in Dantean similes, such as that of fioretti in Inferno ii and that of the autumn leaves in Inferno iii10, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
9 Hir love I best, and shal, whyl I may dure, Allas, right thus is turned me the wheel, Bet than myself an hundred thousand deel, Thus am I slayn with Loves fyry dart! Than al this worldes richesse or creature. I can but love hir best, my swete fo; Now hath not Love me bestowed weel Love hath me taught no more of his art To love ther I never shal have part? But serve alwey and stinte for no wo
(CTHL, ii. 34–43). 10 Quali fioretti dal notturno gelo
chinati e chiusi, poi che ‘l sol li ‘mbianca, si drizzan tutti aperti in loro stelo,
and dominated by the idea of God as Love, who is omnipotent. The ending to the poem, in fact, is with the chorus of the wise: «Quell’uno e due e tre che sempre vive» (Par. xiv. 28), «Thow oon, and two, and three, eterne on-lyve» (TAC, 267).
In the prologue to The Legend of Good Women (1385–6), Pier della Vigna’s argument in Inferno xiii11 referring to those who sacrifice everything for love is remodeled as follows: «Envye is lavender of the court alway; / For she ne parteth, neither night ne day / Out of the hous of Caesar; thus seith Dante» (TLOGW, 358–60). Moreover, here and elsewhere12, the Stilnovistic tribute «Amor, ch’al cor gentil ratto s’apprende»13, which Dante embeds in the popular canto of Paolo and Francesca, is paraphrased as: «But pitee renneth sone in gentil herte» (TLOGW, 503). The encounter with the lovers in the circle of the lustful has been, along with Ugolino’s in the ninth circle of Hell, the most depicted and reinterpreted episode of the Divina Commedia throughout the centuries.
It is actually in The Canterbury Tales (1386–8), specifically in The Monk’s Tale, that Chaucer offers a re-contextualized paraphrase of the episode of Ugolino della Gherardesca, who, imprisoned along with his sons by Archibishop Ruggieri of Pisa and condemned to starve to death, was driven by hunger to devour his own children14. There is, however, a significant difference between the tragic greatness of the Dantean !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! tal mi fec’io di mia virtude stanca (Inf. ii. 127–130).
Come d’autunno si levan le foglie l’una appresso de l’altra, fin che ‘l ramo
vede a la terra tutte le sue spoglie (Inf. iii. 112–4). 11 La meretrice che mai da l’ospizio
di Cesare non torse li occhi putti,
morte commune e de le corti vizio (Inf. xiii. 64–6).
12 The same line is repeated in: The King’s Tale (1.903), The Merchant’s Tale (1.742), and The Squire’s Tale (1.479); cf. also The Man of Law’s Tale (1.660).
13 In Inf. v. 100, Dante introduces the concept of Gentilezza as noble-mindedness and Amore as love, according to the style of Dolce Stil Novo. The first expression is credited to Guido Guinizzelli and his poem Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore, which has been echoed and re-contextualized by Dante in «Amor, ch’al cor gentil ratto s’apprende» (Inf. v. 100). In the seventh circle of Purgatorio, Dante meets his master Guinizzelli and addresses him as «il padre mio e de li altri miei miglior che mai rime d’amore usar dolci e leggiadre» (Purg. xxvi. 97–9). Nevertheless, Dante is considered to be the most relevant exponent of this school of poetry.
Ugolino, who does not weep, «I’ non piangëa, si déntro impetrai:» (Inf. xxxiii. 49), and Chaucer’s, whose «yonge sone, that three yeer was of age, / Un-to him seyde, “fader, why do ye wepe?”» (TMT, 441–2) (cf. Galimberti, 1921: 17; Wallace, 1993: 237–8). Despite the horror in Dante’s imagery, it is in this episode that Chaucer celebrates «the grete poete of Ytaille, / That highte Dant, for he kan al devyse / Fro point to point; nat o word wol he faille» (TMT, 470–2). Among the other Tales of Canterbury, Dante is mentioned in the Wyf of Bathe’s as «the wyse poete of Florence» (TWOB, 268), whereas in the Friar’s, the summoner, having enquired of the devil the shapes he and his fellows assume, is told he will someday be consigned to a place where he can have a more meaningful discourse on that subject «than Virgyle, whyl he was on lyve, or Dant also» (TFT, 221–2). Echoes of the Commedia also resound in The Knightes’, The Man of
Lawe’s, The Prioresses’, The Squieres’, The Merchantes’ and The Second Nonne’s
tales15.
Chaucer’s compositions, according to Adolphe Rambeau, show overwhelming influence of Dante; he grasped all those elements which were in harmony with his poetical genius and reshaped them into a new form of literary creation. Steinberg states that «[m]uch as Virgil is for Dante, Dante is for Chaucer an important and useful precursor in the poetic traditions available to him» (Steinberg, 2000: 185). With the subsequent generations of English writers the name of Geoffrey Chaucer became associated with that of Dante; he was «fully qualified for the task, both as a poet and a master of metre» (Toynbee, I 1909: 2) who could, and preeminently so, write «Dante in Inglissh»16.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
15 For the correspondences between the Divina Commedia and The Canterbury Tales see Chaucer, in Toynbee, I 1909: 10–6.
16 In The Fall of Princes, John Lydgate praises the poet to have written «Dante in Inglissh», presumably with reference to The House of Fame. It is according to Skeat that the above poem corresponds to the one not mentioned by name in the following passage: «He wrot also ful many day agone, / Dante in Inglissh, hymsilff so doth expresse» (Lydgate, I 1967: 9).
I.2 From Chaucer to Milton
Gower, Lydgate, Wyatt, Foxe, Jewel, Spenser, Shakespeare
Dantean influence on the English literary scene remained largely dormant till it was revived, and strongly so, in the works of John Milton. However, the interim was dotted with lesser proponents. Minor traces can be found in John Gower’s Confessio
Amantis (1390), where the poet mentions «Danté the poete» (Gower, 1968. VII. ii.
2329) in the anecdote of a likely Petrarchan derivation17 and explains in a marginal note
that the story was told of a certain «poete de Ytalia, qui Dantes vocabatur».18 The only
passage of the same poem that resembles Dante’s depiction of Envy in Inferno xiii19
was also translated by Chaucer in the prologue to The Legend of Good Women. It seems, therefore, very doubtful that the author could have had direct knowledge of Dante, other than from a reminiscence of Chaucer’s borrowing. It is little different for John Lydgate, whose Temple of Glas and Assembly of Gods barely show the name of the Poet and the canticas titles. Three references to Dante, including the one that contains the famous «Dante in Inglissh», can be found in his major work, The Falls of
Princes (1430–8)20. The poem is a loose metrical version of a French translation of
Boccaccio’s De casibus illustrium virorum (1355–77), and has been composed at the behest of Lydgate’s patron, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester. In 1443 Lydgate presented the Divina Commedia in Italian at Oxford University, accompanied by the Latin !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
17 Petrarch’s Rerum memorandarum libri (c. 1350), Book ii.
18 Alice Galimberti argues that this very sentence might be the origin of a blunder destined to endure through generations of English authors, who would wrongly address him as Dantes, presumably in their limited knowledge of him. In original: «[I]l moral Gower, virtuosissimo e noiosissimo seguace del Chaucer, nella Confessio Amantis ripete un aneddoto […] cui appone la nota: “Nota exemplum eiusdem poete de Ytalia, qui Dantes vocabatur”, origine probabilmente dello strano abbaglio per cui una lunga serie di mediocri chiamerà il nostro poeta, de’ cui scritti evidentemente non conosce neppure il frontespizio, Dantes addirittura» (Galimberti, 1921: 24). In footnote, Galimberti lists some instances: «Così il Cooke (1601), il Burton (1621), l’Heywood (1685), senza contare le varianti in Dantte o Dawnt del Churchyard (1568), Dant di Anna Hume (1644) e simili» (Galimberti, 1921: 32n).
19 See above, note 11. 20
How Chaucer «wrote Dante in Inglissh» (see above, note 16); Dante’s «thre bokes»; how Dante appeared to Boccaccio in his study.
annotated translation in prose written by Giovanni Bertoldi da Serravalle, Bishop of Fermo in 1417. That Dante was early known to the English clergy is proved by the fact that Serravalle edited this version21 at the request of the two English bishops, Nicholas Bulwith from Bath and Wells and Robert Hallam from Salisbury, he met during the Council of Constance back in 1414–8.
With the advent of the Wars of the Roses, however, the name of Dante in English poetry was doomed to fade away for over hundred years. Paget Toynbee displays a list of sparse instances22, though the cases worth mentioning before Edmund Spenser are those of Sir Thomas Wyatt, John Foxe, and John Jewel.
According to George Puttenham, the author who introduced the Petrarchan sonnet in English poetry was directly influenced by Dante23. In his Penitential Psalms (1534– 43), Wyatt paraphrases the Sette Salmi Penitenziali, traditionally attributed to Dante24, and offers a second attempt, after that of Chaucer, of terza rima in English. It is likely that his disciple Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, borrowed the same meter from his master rather than the original source. In addition, his journey to Florence seems to be Thomas Nashe’s invention in his Unfortunate Traveller, or the Adventures of Jack
Wilton (1594), since Surrey, contrary to what Puttenham states, never really visited
Italy.
In the late sixteenth century, Dante became a source to draw upon for Protestants in their propaganda against the alleged abuses of Roman Catholicism. His religio-!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
21 In his notes, Serravalle states that Dante studied Theology in Oxford and Paris during his exile. On this debated argument see Gladstone, 1892; Hamilton, 1901.
22 See Toynbee, I 1909: 22–80.
23 «In the latter end of King Henry th’ eights raigne sprong up a new company of courtly makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyat th’ elder and Henry Earle of Surrey were the two chieftains, who having travailed into Italie, and there tasted the sweete and stately measures and stile of the Italian Poesie as novices newly crept out of the schooles of Dante Arioste and Petrarch, they greatly pollished our rude and homely maner of vulgar Poesie, from that it had bene before, and for that cause may justly be sayd the first reformers of our English meetre and stile» (Puttenham, 1869: 74).
24
The Sette Salmi Penitenziali were erroneously attributed to Dante since they appeared in the Venice 1477 edition, with the Credo di Dante and the Divina Commedia. !
political views explicated through the pages of his Commedia and Monarchia (1308– 21) found acceptance and inspire fervor among the rebels who demand secession from the Church of Rome, the same «whore of Babylon» (Jewel, IV 1850: 744) stigmatized in Purgatorio xxxii. This expression has been ascribed to Dante by John Jewel, bishop of Salisbury, in his Apology of the Church of England (1567) (cf. Toynbee, I 1909: 52n); it is nevertheless undisputed, that the «puttana sciolta»25 in case is actually the Catholic Institution. Dante Alighieri, accused of heresy by the Roman Catholics, who had his Monarchia burnt in 1329 by decree of Cardinal Bertrando del Poggetto (cf. Cerroni, 1996: 151), now had his glory revived in England by John Foxe, who had seen that work in the press of Basle in 1559. It is the same author who incorporated several passages of the Dantean treatise in his Book of Martyrs (1563), especially in regard to Dante’s anti-papal views and his opinion pertaining to the relations between the secular and the religious authority. In 1570, by an edict of Queen Elizabeth, the Book of
Martyrs, along with the Apology and The Great Bible was mandated in every church in
England as a precursor to the Reformation. Hence, every subject of The Crown could potentially have free access to Dante. Nevertheless, «[i]ntelligent Elizabethans», as David Wallace argues, «could recognize that there was much in Dante that their monarch would not approve of» (Wallace, 1993: 241).
Other than on the Protestant scene, however, Dante became a mere entry in dictionaries and manuals of literature. Several versions of Boccaccio, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso flourished instead during the Elizabethan era. The work that probably reflects the glory and the flourishing of this great literary period as well as shows a Dantean influence to a certain degree is The Faery Queen (1590–6). Although there is no
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 25
«Sicura, quasi rocca in alto monte, / seder sovr’esso una puttana sciolta / m’apparve con le ciglia intorno pronte» (Purg. xxxii. 148–50).
mention of Dante’s name in Edmund Spenser’s compositions26, it is evident that the author was acquainted with the Commedia and infused certain qualities into his work, written in emulation of Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1532). In the first place, the division of the poem borrows the Italian word canto to label the twelve songs from each of the six books. The allegorical pattern and the depiction of vices and virtues are meant to convey a moral message exhorting Christians to embrace Anglican Protestantism as the one True Church. This religious aspect of allegory in literature finds its origin in one of the main distinguishing features of the Commedia, although Spenser makes no mention of Dante in the meticulous listing of the great masters he drew inspiration from in his prefatory letter to Sir Walter Raleigh27. Besides the acknowledged origin of this type of narration and the descent into the Underworld portrayed in the first canto of The Faery
Queen, the case of Spenser’s indebtedness to Dante has been thoroughly examined in
literary criticism28. More striking resemblances between the two poems have been pointed out by Henry Francis Cary in his annotated version of the Commedia: the eyes of Spenser’s Disdain (FQ VI. vii. 42)29 and Charon’s «occhi di bragia» (Inf. iii. 109); the simile of the meeting of the two billows (FQ IV. i. 42) and the kindred simile of
Inferno vii. 22–3; the backward gait of Ignaro (FQ I. viii. 31) and that of the
soothsayers in Inferno xx. 13–5; Spenser’s iteration of the word “new”, «So new this new-born knight to battle new did rise» (FQ I. xi. 34), to be compared with Dante’s «piante novelle rinovellate di novella fronda» (Purg. xxxiii. 143–4). James Russel !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
26 Toynbee argues that the «sad Florentine» of Sonnet xiii of The Visions of Bellay (1591) is «without doubt» an allusion to Petrarch, rather than Dante. This expression is a translation of Du Bellay’s «triste Florentin», which refers to Petrarch’s canzone Standomi un giorno, solo, alla finestra, translated by Spenser in his Visions of Petrarch (cf. Toynbee, I 1909: xx).
27
«I have followed all the antique poets historicall: first Homere, […] then Virgil, […] after him Ariosto […]; and lately Tasso» (Spenser, 1589: 2).
28
Cary and Lowell, as well as Kuhns, Toynbee, and Spenser’s editors Henry John Todd and John Upton, offer a detailed analysis, occasionally contradictory, based on the analogy between the Divina Commedia and The Faery Queen. See Spenser, 1872.
29
The reference for all quotations of The Faery Queen is: Spenser, 1910 and will be noted parenthetically within the text by shortened title (FQ), book, canto, and stanza.
Lowell found further parallels between the mystic procession in the Earthly Paradise (cf. Purg. xxix; xxx) and the tenth canto of Book VI of The Faery Queen; the description of the Garden of Proserpina (FQ II. vii. 51) and the Wood of Suicides in the seventh circle of Hell (Inf. xiii). A new English version of the famous verse in Francesca da Rimini’s canto30 is provided in the translation «But love that is to a gentle brest begun» (FQ III. iii. 51). The moral exhortation in Inferno xxiv31 to pursue fame, for without it there is no human dignity, is echoed by Spenser as it follows (cf. Lowell, IV 1890: 332)32:
Whoso in pomp of proud estate, quoth she, Does swim, and bathes himself in courtly bliss, Does waste his days in dark obscurity,
And in oblivion ever buried is (FQ II. iii. 40)
«Dante is hard, and few can understand him» (Jonson, 1978: 131. III.4), complains Lady Would-be. This observation, likely originating from John Florio’s remark in the Epistle Dedicatorie33 to his Italian and English Dictionary A Worlde of
Wordes (1598), mirrors the attitude of Edmund Spenser and Ben Jonson’s
contemporaries towards the indecipherable work of the Poet34.
In spite of the remarkable effort of some critics to draw a parallel between Dante and Shakespeare35, it is indeed evident and uncontested opinion that the Commedia was
unfathomable to the Bard of Avon. There is no entry for Shakespeare in Toynbee’s !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
30 «Amor, ch’al cor gentil ratto s’apprende» (Inf. v. 100). 31 […] seggendo in piuma,
in fama non si vien, né sotto coltre; sanza la qual chi sua vita consuma, cotal vestigio in terra di sé lascia,
qual fummo in aere ed in acqua la schiuma (Inf. xxiv. 47–51). 32
For a study of Spenser and the Dantean influence on his works see Lowell, IV 1890: 265–353.
33 «Boccace is prettie hard, yet understood: Petrarch harder, but explained: Dante hardest, but commented. Some doubt if all aright» (Florio, 2013: 3).
34 In his treatise, Paget Toynbee provides a detailed overview of other authors, who have not been mentioned in the present discussion since they do not offer many relevant instances of Dantean influence. See Toynbee, I 1909: 82–119.
discussion on Dante in English Literature 36, and Kuhns speculates on the «inconclusive» analysis carried out by Wilhem König37 and the «untrustworthy character» (Kuhns, 1904: 70n; 71) of the articles published in the Blackwood’s
Magazine38, which struggle to unearth a kinship of some sort between the two milestones of medieval and modern Europe.
I.3 John Milton
Two centuries had passed since the expert of «every tourment eeke in helle» (THOF, i. 445) presented such a fruitful source of inspiration for literary England. John Milton, tenacious scholar of Italian and all-round reader of Dante, reaffirmed the intimacy initiated between Italy and England by Geoffrey Chaucer. Milton’s indebtedness to the Italian master is profound and self-evident in most of his major works39. Undeniably, there are striking dissimilarities between the Puritan and the Catholic author, but even so, the latter is a relevant precursor of anti-papism, and his instance thoroughly served Milton’s polemic against English absolutism. This is the case in his Of Reformation Touching Church Discipline in England (1641)40, where Milton offers a blank verse version of the terzina on Costantino, from Inferno xix, where the emperor is blamed for excessive donations to Pope Sylvester I41:
Ahi, Constantin, di quanto mal fu matre, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
36 Renzulli, Farinelli, and Galimberti merely offer a few, controversial instances written on Shakespeare’s account.
37 See König, 1872: 170–213. 38 See vols. 135, 137, 139.
39 Henry John Todd offers a detailed analysis based on the analogy between Dante and Milton’s literary production in Milton, 1826.
40 References to the following Milton’s works will be noted parenthetically within the text by shortened title and line: Of Reformation Touching Church Discipline in England (Milton, 1953), Lycidas (Milton, 1955), Sonnet xiii (Milton, 1955). Paradise Lost (Milton, 1955) by shortened title, book, and line. 41 Dante expounds this issue in the Monarchia: «Imperator alienare non poterat imperii dignitem, nec Ecclesia recipere», because the Church is totally «indisposita ad temporalia recipienda per praeceptum prohibitivum expressum» (Alighieri, 1965: iii, 10).
non la tua conversion, ma quella dote
che da te prese il primo ricco patre! (Purg. xix, 115–7) In English:
Ah Constantine, of how much ill was cause Not thy Conversion, but those rich demaines
That the first wealthy Pope receiv’d of thee. (ORTCDIE, 558) The author had already, in Lycidas (1637), condemned the overpowered and corrupt clergymen for mystifying the Word and thereby misleading the faithful. Along the polemic of Beatrice in Paradiso xxix42, Milton’s St. Peter argues:
The hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed,
But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw. (L, 125–6) The work itself, of elegiac nature, depicts the death and rebirth of Milton’s mate Edward King and shows his indebtedness to the canzone italiana and De vulgari
eloquentia (1303–5). The parallelism between the fate of Edward and the Dantean
Ulysses is clear, both sunk underwater, and «the day-star», which sinks as well «in the ocean bed, [a]nd yet anon repairs his drooping head» (L, 168–9), stands here for «[t]utte le stelle già de l’altro polo» Ulysses could see under the «marin suolo» (Inf. xxvii. 126– 9).
The profound admiration for Dante, as well as for Petrarch, is very clear in An
Apology for Smectymnuus (1642), where the Tuscan masters are praised as «the two
famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never write but honour of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying sublime and pure thoughts, without transgression» (Milton, 1654). Four years before, Milton had written a letter from Florence to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
42
Sì che le pecorelle, che non sanno,
Benedetto Buonmattai, stating that these authors were among those whose art he would «delight to feast on»43.
In Sonnet xiii, there is a reference to a friend of Dante, the musician of Florence Casella, encountered by the Poet in Antipurgatorio among those who neglected to repent44. Milton assures Henry Lawes, who composed the music for his Comus, as follows:
Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher Than his Casella, whom he woo’d to sing,
Met in the milder shades of Purgatory (S xiii, 12–4) That the author was acquainted with the hierarchy of the shades and the scheme of
Purgatorio is further corroborated by the qualification of the same in his later version of
«mildest» from «milder».
The Dantean Underworld, however, was depicted and organized in such a Catholic fashion that the Puritan Milton was forced to reject it in his Paradise Lost (1667). «Cowls, Hoods, and Habits […] Reliques, Beads, Indulgences, Dispenses, Pardons, Bulls» are hurled by a whirlwind in «The Paradise of Fools» (PL iii, 490–6). Milton recovers the primordial origins of humanity and weaves his work along the lines of Genesis, recounting in blank verse the Fall of Man: the exile of rebellious angels, the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen Lucifer and their eventual expulsion from the Garden of God, signifying the exile of humanity from Eden. The Commedia ends on a different note, with a homecoming, despite both Dante and Milton having to complete !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
43 «Ego certè istis utrisque linguis non extremis tantummodò labris madidus; sed siquis alius, quantum per annos licuit, poculis majoribus prolutus, possum tamen nonnunquam ad illum Dantem, et Petrarcham, aliosque vestros complusculos, libenter et cupidè comessatum ire. Nec me tam ipsae Athenae Atticae cum illo suo pellucido Ilisso, nec illa vetus Roma suâ Tiberis ripâ retinere valuerunt, quin saepe Arnum vestrum, et Faesulanos illos Colles invisere amem» (Toynbee I 1909: 124). The letter, originally written in Latin, was translated by Robert Fellowes. See Toynbee II 1909: 10.
44
It is in this canto that the first self-quote of Dante in Divina Commedia occurs. Dante solicits Casella to sing and he intones the canzone Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona, from Convivio (1304–7).
their respective works in political exile. The Miltonic poem blends Biblical and pagan patterns, introducing a heroic overtone that persists throughout, distinguishing it from its literary predecessor. In fact, it is in the figure of Satan, that the two works differs the most: the Dantean Lucifero is as awful as impotent, trapped waist-high in the icy Cocytus; there is no interaction between him and the two pilgrims, who climb his legs on their way out of Hell. There is nothing left from Lucifero’s greatness but the monstrous proportions, whereas the fallen archangel portrayed in the Paradise of Milton is powerful and gloriously proud of his magnitude: «A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time» (PL i. 253).
Despite the pronounced difference in concept and form, the kinship between
Paradise Lost and the very first work that brought Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise into the
literary scene, is nevertheless evident. There are echoes throughout the poem, like the depiction of the fall of Satan, «[h]url’d headlong flaming from th’ ethereal Skie» (PL i. 45), which is the English version of «giù dal cielo, folgoreggiando scender, da l’un lato.» (Purg. xii, 26–7). The depiction of the metamorphosis of the same into a serpent is almost literally translated from Inferno xxv45: «He would have spoke, / But hiss for hiss return’d with forked tongue / To forked tongue: for now were all transform’d» (PL, x. 517–20). Moreover, Milton extrapolates the same imagery to the other rebels, portrayed as being transformed into pestilential and dire creatures:
Alike the serpents, all as accessaries
Scorpion and Asp, and Amphisbæna dire,
Cerastes horn’d, Hydrus, and Ellops drear (PL, x. 524–5) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
45 e la lingua, ch’avëa unita e presta prima a parlar, si fende, e la forcuta ne l’altro si richiude (Inf. xxv. 133–5).
The Dantean metamorphosis follows the Ovid’s description of the transformation of Cadmus into a serpent, in Book IV: «Ille quidem vult plura loqui: sed lingua repente / In partes est fissa duas» (Ovid, 1822: 160).
In the second book, Sin acclaims Death, mirroring Dante’s words for Virgil: «Tu se’ lo mio maestro e ‘l mio autore» (Inf. i, 85), «Thou art my Father, thou my Author» (PL, ii. 864). The popular simile of the autumn leaves, used by Dante to depict the multitude of souls along the bank of Acheron46, is adopted by Milton in the first book, when the crowd of rebel angels are rallied by Satan:
His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay entranc’d Thick as autumnal Leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa (PL i. 301–3) In the same book, the inscription on the infernal portal, «LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA» (Inf. iii. 9), resounds in the description of Hell, a place «eternal Justice had prepar’d» (PL i. 70), where «hope never comes / That comes at all» (PL i. 66–7). The several cognate passages between Paradise Lost and the Divina Commedia47 have been listed by Toynbee, including those noted by Todd and Cary. Although some may be mere coincidences or, «imitazioni semi-inconscie» (Galimberti, 1921: 66), as Galimberti proposes, the two poems are deeply entwined with other. The former is indebted to the latter and vice versa: the modern reader will not approach the epic inhabitants of Inferno, such as Farinata, Ulysses, Guido da Montefeltro, and Ugolino, without having in mind the Miltonic poem and its titanic characters. David Wallace speaks of a «new sense of the singularity, the strangeness, of Dante’s poem» (Wallace, 1993: 244) Paradise Lost can often bring us to.
I.4 From Milton to the Romantics
Dryden, Voltaire, Rolli, Baretti, Gray, Warton, Hayley, Rogers
Throughout the near-two centuries between Milton and the Romantic Era, the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
46
See above, note 10.
glory of Dante in England waned once again. He had, indeed, become more popular due to Milton’s references to his allegorical poem but faded to a mere name occasionally mentioned in passing by minor authors48 up till when John Dryden took up the cause. The «polish’d page» (Dryden, 1684: i) of Dante is alluded to in Dryden’s essay prefixed to the Essay on Translated Verse (1684), written by the Earl of Roscommon. Furthermore, therein Dryden elaborates on the quality of the Italian language and exhorts the Poet as its first refiner49 and reformer50, in the prefaces to Albion and
Albanius, an Opera (1685) and Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700). The name of Dante
also appears in Dedication of the Aeneis (1697), as the one who placed Brutus «into the great Devil’s mouth» (Dryden, II 1926: 169–70). Nevertheless, the very fact that Dryden makes no mention of him among the «[t]hree poets», namely Homer, Vergil, and Shakespeare, that «in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England, did adorn»51, demonstrates his superficial interest in Dante.
Dryden was, at least, one of the last who celebrated the Italian vernacular, while French and French Classicism were going to supplant it in both the echelons of power and erudite circles for the entire eighteenth century. The image of Dante was assailed by this new trend. Most responsible for the low estimation in which he was held in France and England was the French François Marie Arouet de Voltaire. Voltaire’s «ignorant !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
48 See Toynbee, I 1909: 128–70.
49 «All who are conversant in the Italian cannot but observe that it is the softest, the sweetest, the most harmonious, not only for any modern tongue, but even beyond any of the learned. It seems indeed to have been invented for the sake of Poetry and Music; the vowels are so abounding in all words, especially in terminations of them, that, excepting some few monosyllables, the whole language ends in them. [...] This language has in a manner been refined and purified from the Gothic ever since the time of Dante, which is above four hundred years ago» (Dryden, 1685: iii).
50 «[Boccace] and Chaucer, among other things, had this in common, that they refined their mother-tongues; but with this difference, that Dante had begun to file their language, at least in verse» (Dryden, 1700: ii).
51 Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass’d, The next in majesty, in both the last: The force of Nature could no farther go;
criticism» (Toynbee, I 1909: xxxiii) of Dante Alighieri and his «bizarre poem» (Voltaire, XII 1878: 58–9) which, according to him, would never find readers (cf. Voltaire, XLI 1881: 251–2), was made clear and popularized through several passages of his works, especially the Dictionaire Philosophique (1764). How extensive was Voltaire’s actual expertise on Italian literature and, by extension, Dante, was soon brought into question by Paolo Rolli, Italian tutor to the Royal Court, in Remarks upon
M. Voltaire’s Essay on the Epick Poets of the European Nations (1728):
I have met in several Places of this new Treatise, with such wrong Notions of the Italian national Taste in Literature […] that I thought myself obliged both by the natural Duty of defending the general Learning and Taste of my Country […]. M. V. I am sure has read but three or four Italian Authors; he never was in Italy; he never perhaps conversed with any Italian of true Learning. […] Dante […] Petrarch […] Boccaccio [: a]ll three, the first, the best and the never–interrupted Standards of the Language and the Stile. M. V. shews himself very well acquainted with the Epocha of the Italian Letters, as well as with the Knowledge of our best Authors; for he thinks really that till Machiavel and Tasso there were not in Italy any as good, not to say better, Standards both in Prose and Verse. (Rolli, 1728: 2).
Rolli’s argument on Voltaire’s ignorance anticipates the more relevant defense by Giuseppe Baretti of the trecentisti and the Italian literary heritage. Baretti ridiculed Voltaire’s criticism and offered a remarkable appreciation on Dante, «il Padre della Lingua, e Poesia Toscana» (Baretti, 1753: 1), in his Dissertation Upon the Italian
Poetry (1753). In the same work, the author offers several passages from the Divina Commedia translated into prose, including the famous episode of Ugolino.
An English version of the same canto was written in blank verse by Thomas Gray52, during his early Cambridge days in 1737, while he was «learn[ing] Italian like
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
52 Aside from Alexander Pope, who merely mentions Dante in his versification of John Donne’s Satire iv, no great name before and right after Thomas Gray showed a significant interest on the Italian poet. For a list of minor traces see Toynbee, I 1909: 173–410.
any dragon»53. Gray dealt with other parts of Inferno as well as Vita nuova (1576), and showed a great interest in De vulgari eloquentia, which he quoted in Observations on
English Metre (1760–1) and Observations on the Pseudo–Rhythmus (1760–1). Gray
also visited and admired the natural and artistic beauties of Italy, often as source of creative inspiration. The garden and the Renaissance fountains of Villa d’Este in Tivoli, for instance, inspired the Alcaic Ode (1741). He composed The Gaurus (1740) and worked on the two volumes of De Principiis Cogitandi (1740–2) while living in Florence, where he refined his Italian and obtained knowledge of its greatest literature. Ten years later, Gray completed the famous Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1750). The Angelus melancholic tolls at sunset, opening the composition, «The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day» (EWIACC, 1), echo the evocative Dantean passage from
Purgatorio viii, «squilla di lontano / che paia il giorno pianger che si more» (Purg. viii.
5–6), where the souls sing the Compline; the same terzine are quoted by Gray in his note. In a deviation from Dante, who introduces the dramatic death of the day through the previous pilgrim’s passage54, Gray makes them peal at the very beginning of the
Elegy when the reader is not yet prepared to grasp the profound meaning of the Angelus.
It is in the following lines that the poet elaborates his thoughts on the mysteries of the Underworld, the same that will, to a degree, inspire Ugo Foscolo in Dei Sepolcri (1806)55.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 53
These words open Thomas Gray’s letter to his friend Richard West, in March 1737. It is likely that Gray translated the canto xxxiii of Inferno as an exercise for his Italian studies, carried out under the supervision of Hieronimo Piazza (cf. Toynbee, I 1909: 231).
54 Era già l’ora che volge il disio ai navicanti e ‘ntenerisce il core lo dí c’han detto ai dolci amici addio; e che lo novo peregrine d’amore punge, se ode squilla di lontano
che paia il giorno pianger che si more (Purg. viii. 1–6, emphasis on 5–6). 55
[…] e l’immonda accusar col luttuoso singulto I rai di che son pie le stele
alle obliate sepolture (DS, 84–6, reference edition: Foscolo, 1969). Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
Thomas Gray, as he remarks in Notes to the Progress of Poesy (1768)56, was fully aware of the role played by Dante in English poetry, and towards the end of the eighteenth century57, a renewed interest in Dante began to flourish, providing the basis for the enormous fame he would gain during Romanticism. Nevertheless, reminiscences of the defamatory Voltairean promotion could be still found in Horace Walpole’s comment on Dante being «extravagant, absurd, disgusting» (Walpole, XII 1904: 274), and in Thomas Warton’s History of English Poetry (1774–81), where he paraphrases several passages of the Commedia, condemning the «disgusting fooleries» of Inferno xvi, the «sordid» diction and imagery of the author and his «grossest improprieties» (Warton, II 1840: 210; 209; 205). Moreover, Warton quotes Voltaire’s parody of
Inferno xxvii58 stating also that «Dante thus translated would have had many more readers than at present» (Warton, II 1840: 213).
«The critical dissertations that have been written on Dante», as William Hayley states, «are almost as numerous as those to which Homer has given birth: the Italian, like Greek Bard, has been the subject of the highest panegyric, and of the grossest invective. Voltaire has spoken of him with that precipitate vivacity, which so frequently led that lively Frenchman to insult the reputation of the noblest writers» (Hayley, 1782: 172). This note appears in the third epistle of Essay on Epic Poetry (1782), where the first three cantos of Inferno are made available in English, and terza rima. During the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Of such, as wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign (EWIACC, 9–12, reference edition: Gray, 1977).
56 «Chaucer was not unacquainted with the writings of Dante or of Petrarch. The Earl of Surrey and Sir Tho. Wyatt had travelled in Italy, and formed their taste there; Spenser imitated the Italian writers; Milton improved on them». Surrey, in contrast to what Gray states, never was in Italy (cf. Toynbee, I 1909: 32; 237n).
57
Among the minor estimators of Dante during this interval, Thomas Penrose addressed Dante as «father of Italian Poetry» (Penrose, 1790: 5), elaborating on the subject in A Sketch of the Lives and Writings of Dante and Petrarch (1790). For further information see Toynbee, I 1909: 422–612. Walter Scott, on a different note, was never appealed to Dante, «too obscure and difficult» (Lockhart, V 1900: 408).
58 Monsieur de Lucifer,
Je suis un saint; voyez ma robe grise;
same year, William Rogers published his version of the Inferno.
«In the history of Dante in English literature», Toynbee asserts, «Hayley holds an important place as a pioneer» (Toynbee, I 1909: 360), since no longer version had been published in England thus far59. Up until 1782, the translations of the Divina Commedia were, in fact, restricted to individual episodes, those too the most celebrated from
Inferno60; the poem was not accessible to the British public, but for a few great scholars of Italian.
Dantean studies, however, were going to be reestablished and, for the first time in England, popularized by the flourishing Romantic phase and the consequent fascination for medieval art and literature. In parallel to early Romantic England, the same movement had taken hold in Germany after the Sturm und Drang and would be adopted in France in the years to follow. In contrast with Romantic Europe, Italian Neoclassicism differed in aesthetic ideals and attitudes but, with different purpose, its greatest exponents, namely Parini, Alfieri, Monti, and Foscolo, were simultaneously restoring the cult of the Divina Commedia.
I.5 The Romantics: translators, painters, poets
61!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 59
An earlier translation of the Commedia was written by William Huggins, and Charles Burney made a prose translation of the Inferno, but neither of these works had been published.
60
The episode of Ugolino, for instance, had already been translated in its entirety from: Jonathan Richardson (1719), Thomas Gray (1737), G.M.A. Baretti (1753), Joseph Warton (1756), Lord Carlisle (1772), Thomas Warton (1781).
61
The term ‘Romantic’ is here adopted with reference to the span of time encompassing late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, according to David Simpson’s definition of «old Romanticism» (Simpson, 2006: 403). This phase starts conventionally with the publication of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence (1789), or the Lyrical Ballads (1798) by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The Great Six, namely William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron, are considered the masters of this literary movement. With the exception of Byron, they were all «interested in some combination of nature, childhood, and the workings of their own imaginations» (Simpson, 2006: 403). The absence of social and political themes in their poetry was a reaction to the consequences of the French Revolution (1789) and the Age of Enlightenment. The most relative visualization of the Commedia took place due to the rediscovery of Dante by the Romantics; additionally, the chronologically predated work of Joshua Reynold will be treated here, as direct precedent to the Romantic artists. Information for the present discussion on Dante and British Romanticism is taken from: King, 1925; Curran, 1993; Pite, 1994; Braida, 2004; Simpson, 2006; Bindman, Hebron, O’Neil, 2007; Luzzi, 2012.
Boyd, Cary, Fuseli, Flaxman, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge
The rediscovery of Dante in England was concurrently favored by the visual arts and the ‘Englishization’ of the great poem. In 1802, the complete English translation of the Commedia was issued by the Irishman Henry Boyd. This was the first complete English version of the Dantean poem, although the text, in six-line stanzas, was more a paraphrase than a translation and, according to the Gentleman’s Magazine, would «therefore please an English, more than an Italian, reader, who compares it with the original» (Anonymous, 1785: 381)62. Boyd’s Dante, effectively, opens as follows:
When life had labor’d up her midmost stage, And, weary with her mortal pilgrimage, Stood in suspense upon the point of Prime; Far in a pathless grove I chanc’d to stray, Where scarce imagination dares display,
The gloomy scen’ry of the savage clime. (Inf. i. 1–6)63
In contrast with the original:
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita.
Ahi quanto a dir qual’era è cosa dura esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinnova la paura! (Inf. i. 1–6)
A blank verse version of the Inferno was published by Henry Francis Cary in 1804 and in contrast to Boyd’s, it followed the Dantean text to the word:
In the midway of this our mortal life, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
62 This review refers to the publication of the Inferno in 1785. Boyd will employ the same for his complete version of the Commedia, seven years later.
63
All citations from Boyd’s and Cary’s translations are taken from Boyd, 1785 and Cary, 1896 and will be noted parenthetically within the text by cantica, canto, and terzina.!
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray Gone from the path direct: and e’en to tell, It were no easy task, how savage wild The forest, how robust and rough its growth,
Which to remember only, my dismay (Inf. i. 1–6) This work was offered to the readers with the «earliest hope that it may be serviceable to the cause of Literature and the interests of Virtue», touted the Gentleman’s
Magazine, «as it will tend to facilitate the study of one of the most sublime and moral,
but certainly one of the most obscene writers in any language» (Anonymous, 1805: 551). In the years to follow, however, Cary’s Inferno was faced with a profoundly contradictory response from the critics64. In 1814 the entire version of the Commedia was released under the title The Vision of Dante Alighieri, or Hell, Purgatory and
Paradise. The indifferent attitude of the public as well as the critics, as Cary’s son
Henry reports in the Memoir of his father, left the work in «utter obscurity» (Cary, II 1847: 28) for four years. It was by virtue of the enthusiastic patronage of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in his lecturae Dantis in 1818 and 1819, that the Vision earned enormous success among the British public. The lectures marked a turning point for Dantean studies in England. In the same year, Foscolo drew attention to Cary in his review for the Edinburgh Review.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
64 In 1805, The Monthly Review, or Literary Journal complains about the scarcity of notes and the author’s choice of offering a blank verse, instead of a prose version: «His blank verse is often very harsh, and at times so obscure that we have often been obliged to have recourse to the Italian on the opposite page for the interpretation […] His Life of Dante collects together the few incidents of that Poet’s transactions which are known. He appears to have studied the original very assiduously and to understand it well. We should recommend to him to favour the public with a correct translation of the Divina Commedia in prose more with more ample notes» (Anonymous, 1805). In the same year, Cary’s friend Thomas Price foregrounds instead the qualities of the translator’s blank verse in The Critical Review as follows: «The rigid exactness with which Mr. Cary has adhered to the very words of the text and their collocation, has at times imposed a degree of restraint and hardness of construction upon his version […] Into this he was probably led by the example of Milton, whom he has in several passages as closely imitated, as Milton before him imitated Dante» (Price, 1805: 123). Also in 1808, the critique in The Monthly Review was in favor of the English translator: «In the first grand requisite of a translator, fidelity, Mr. Cary seems to have outstripped his predecessors; for it is seldom indeed that we have been able to detect him in the too common operations of adding to or subtracting from his original. When we add that his versification is generally poetical and harmonious, and that his biographical sketch and notes are expressed with brevity and neatness, we conceive that we have duly appreciated the character of his labours» (Anonymous, 1808: 438). On Cary’s translation of the Divina Commedia see Crisafulli, 2003.
On the artistic scene, it was towards the end of the eighteenth century that the most famous episodes of the Commedia, namely those of Ugolino and Paolo and Francesca, were captured on canvas and exhibited to the British public. The precursor to the so-called «Ugolino fever» (Yates, 1951: 100) that flourished in the nineteenth century is Joshua Reynolds’ Count Hugolino and his Children in the Dungeon (1774)65, the first painting based on Dante to be produced in England. The grimness born of heroic stoicism of the cannibal Count is rendered in the moment of his imprisonment; Reynolds represents Dante’s terzine so faithfully, that the events of the entire episode66, including the tragic fate of the weeping children, though not depicted, is evoked, and this makes his work profoundly disturbing. The influence exerted by Reynolds’ masterpiece on Romantic imagery was substantial. Henry Fuseli, who during his period in Rome illustrated a wide variety of dramatic scenes from the Inferno67, offered his own version in Ugolino and his Sons. Moses Haughton’s engraving, based on Fuseli’s lost drawing, was exhibited in 1806 and shows the imposing figure of Ugolino surrounded by his starving children, at a later stage in the story than Reynolds’ (image iii. Fuseli, 2000). Fuseli’s Ugolino was defended by William Blake in a letter to the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
65 See below Appendix: Illustrations, image ii (Reynolds, II 2000).
66 In picciol corso mi parieno stanchi Io non piangëa, sí dentro impetrai: lo padre e ’ figli, e con l’argute scane piangevan elli; e Anselmuccio mio mi parea lor veder fender li fianchi. disse: «Tu guardi sí, padre! che hai?». Quando fui desto innanzi la dimane, Perciò non lagrimai né rispuos’io pianger senti’ fra ‘l sonno i miei figliuoli tutto quell giorno né la notte appresso, ch’eran con meco, e dimandar del pane. infin che l’altro sol nel mondo uscío. Ben se’ crudel, se tu già non ti duoli Come un poco di raggio si fu messo pensando ciò che ‘l mio cor s’annunziava; nel doloroso carcere, e io scorsi e se non piangi, di che pianger suoli? per quattro visi il mio aspetto stesso, Già eran desti, e l’ora s’appressava ambo le man per lo dolor mi morsi; che ‘l cibo ne solëa essere addotto, ed ei, pensando ch’io ‘l fessi per voglia e per suo sogno ciascun dubitava; di manciar, di súbito levorsi
e io senti’ chiavar l’uscio di sotto e disser: «Padre, assai ci fia men doglia a l’orribile torre; ond’io guardai se tu mangi di noi: tu ne vestisti nel viso a’ mie’ figliuoi sanza far motto. queste misère carni, e tu le spoglia.»
(Inf. xxxiii, 35–63).
67 Of particular interest is Dante and Virgil on the Ice of Cocytus. Fuseli depicts the moment in which Dante and Virgil cross the ice in the ninth circle of Hell. Dante, in his «Michelangelesque monumentality» (Bindman et al, 2007: 148) steps on the traitor Bocca degli Abati (image ix. Fuseli, 2000).
editor of the Monthly Magazine68, before painting his tempera on panel on the same
canto. The watching angels and the father’s concern for his children in Count Ugolino and his Sons in Prison (image iv. Blake, 2014), characterize this scene with unique
pathos.
Besides the thirty-third canto of the Inferno, the one of Paolo and Francesca was enthusiastically adopted by both Fuseli and Blake, who illustrated the dramatic scene of the couple tossed by the whirlwind. In Fuseli’s, the couple is isolated from the others, offering an unusual version of the episode (image v. Fuseli, 2000). Blake, instead, represents a crowd of souls and Dante fainted on the ground, overcome by empathy (image vi. Blake, 2014). The scene mirrors the last terzina of the famous canto: «sí che di pietade / io venni men così com’io morisse. E caddi come corpo morto cade» (Inf. v. 140–2). The whirlwind setting was also adopted by William Young Ottley (image vii. Bindman et al, 2007). Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and Joseph Anton Koch portrayed, alternatively, the erotic moment of the kiss69. John Flaxman offered both versions70 in his illustrations to the Divina Commedia, published in England in 180771, engraved by Tommaso Piroli and combined with extracts from Boyd’s translation.
William Blake was also commissioned by William Hayley in 1800 to make a series of eighteen Heads of the Poets, including Dante’s72, and again in the mid-1820s by John Linnell to illustrate the entire Commedia. The evocative series of watercolors, meant to be engraved afterwards, were based on Cary’s translation, which he considered !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
68 «Fuseli’s Count Ugolino is a man of wonder and admiration, of resentment against man and devil, and of humiliation before God; prayer and parental affection fill the figure from head to foot» (Blake, 1906: 191).
69 See Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Gianciotto Discovers Paolo and Francesca (Bindman et al, 2007: 100); Joseph Anton Koch, Paolo and Francesca surprised by Gianciotto.
70 See The Lovers Surprised and The Lovers Punished in Büttner, 2004. Gustav Doré, who also illustrated the Commedia, offered the two versions of the lovers: Paolo kissing Francesca and The Souls of Paolo and Francesca. See Doré, 1976.
71 First published in Rome in 1793. 72
The tempera-portrait is almost life-size and framed by a green garland. In the background there is Ugolino and his children, as a reference to the poetry of Dante (image viii. Blake, 2014).
