Teacher Resources: Suggested Readings

The secondary literature on Dante is vast. This list offers suggestions on general studies and guides.

General

  • Auerbach, Erich. Dante Poet of the Secular World. New York: New York Review of Books, 2007.
  • Jacoff, R., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Dante. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, rpt. 2007.
  • Lansing, R. ed. et al. The Dante Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 2000.
  • Scott, John A. Understanding Dante. University of Notre Dame Press, 2004.

Recent Commentaries in English

  • Alighieri, Dante, The Divine Comedy, trans. Allen Mandelbaum. Notes by Peter Armour. New York: Everyman, 1995.
  • --- . The Divine Comedy: Inferno and Purgatorio. Translaton and Commentary by Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez. New York: Oxford UP, 1996, 2003).
  • --- . Inferno (Doubleday, 2000), Purgatorio (Doubleday, 2002), Paradiso (Doubleday, 2006), Translation by Jean Hollander and Robert Hollander.

Dante's Italy

  • Holmes, George. Florence, Rome and the Origins of the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).
  • Najemy, John M. A History of Florence, 1200-1575 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006).

Botticelli

  • Dreyer, Peter. "Botticelli's Series of Engravings of 1481." Print Quarterly (June 1984): 111-115.
  • Watts, Barbara Jane. Studies in Sandro Botticelli's Drawings for Dante's Inferno, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 1989.
  • Watts, Barbara Jane. "Sandro Botticelli's Illustrations for Inferno VIII and IX: Narrative Revision and the Role of Manuscript Tradition." Word and Image 2 (1995): 149-173.
  • Watts, Barbara J. "Sandro Botticelli's Drawings for Dante's Inferno: Narrative Structure, Topography, and Manuscript Design." Artibus et Historiae 16 (1995): 163-201.
  • Watts, Barbara J. "The Word Imaged: Dante's Commedia and Sandro Botticelli's San Barnaba altarpiece." Lectura Dantis 22-23 (1998): 203-245.
  • Sandro Botticelli: The Drawings for Dante's Divine Comedy. London: Royal Academy of the Arts, 2000.

Doré compiled by Aida Audeh

  • Audeh, Aida. "Images of Dante's Exile in 19th-century France." Annali d'Italianistica 20 (2002): 235-258.
  • Cole, William. "Literal Art? A New Look at Doré's Illustrations for Dante's Inferno." Word & Image 10 (April-June 1994).
  • Friederich, Werner P. Dante's Fame Abroad. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1950.
  • Gosling, Nigel. Gustave Doré. New York:Praeger, 1973.
  • Gustave Doré, 1832-1883. Strasbourg:Musée d'Art Moderne, Cabinet des Estampes, 1983.
  • Kaenel, Philippe. Rodolphe Töpfer, J.J. Grandville, Le métier d'illustrateur: Gustave Doré. Geneva:Librairie Droz, 2004.
  • Malan, Dan. Gustave Doré: A Biography. St. Louis: MCE Publishing, 1996.
  • Pitwood, Michael. Dante and the French Romantics. Geneva:Droz, 1985.
  • Roosevelt, Blanche. Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Doré. New York:Cassell, 1885.
  • Zafran, Eric., ed., Fantasy and Faith: The Art of Gustave Doré. Dahesh Museum of Art. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007.

Yates Thompson 36

  • A Sienese Codex of the Divine Comedy, ed. John Pope-Hennessy (Oxford and London: Phaidon, 1947).

Music compiled by Federico Schneider

  • Francesco Ciabattoni. Dante's Journey to Polyphony, University of Toronto Press, 2010.
  • Francesco Ciabattoni. Dante's Performance: Music, Dance, and Drama in the Commedia, De Gruyter 2024.
  • Barnes, John C. "Vestiges of the Liturgy in Dante's Verse," Dante and the Middle Ages. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1995.
  • Fassler, M., Jeffrey, P. Christian, "Liturgical Music from the Bible to the Renaissance." Sacred Sound and Social Change. Ed. L. A. Hoffman. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1992.
  • Freccero, J. "Casella's Song (Purg II, 112). Dante Poetics of Conversion". Ed. R. Jacoff Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1986. 186-194.
  • La Favia, L. M. "'...Che quivi per canti...'Dante's Programmatic Use of Psalms and Hymns in the Purgatorio." Studies in Iconography 10 (1984-86): 53-65.
  • McCracken, A. " In Omnibus Viis Tuis: Compline in the Valley of the Rulers (Purg. VII-VIII)." Dante Studies 111 (1993): 117-127.