The Young Dante

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Book Presentation
The Young Dante
Archetypes of His Early Intellectual Biography
(Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022)

by
Maria Luisa Ardizzone, NYU

The author in conversation with
Jane Tylus, Yale University

Respondent: Leonardo Chiarantini, University of Michigan

In ENGLISH

The book deals with Dante’s Florentine years, particularly those of his early intellectual formation between the ‘80s and early ‘90s of the 13^th century, and presents them as a crucible of great importance. Focusing on the Vita Nuova and two canzoni that Dante later commented on in the Convivio, the volume evaluates the continuity (and discontinuity) Dante establishes between his early work and the two poems, and identifies a few of the archetypes that the young poet takes from the ancient-medieval tradition and reshapes in order to pave the way for his own early and future work.

About the Author

Maria Luisa Ardizzone is Professor of Italian Literature at New York University. She studied medieval paleography, literature, and history at the University of Palermo, Italy and 20^th century literature at the Sorbonne in Paris. Her principal areas of interest are the Middle Ages, poetry and poetics, rhetoric, intellectual history, medieval philosophy, politics, science, and 20^th century poetry. Her publications include Reading as the Angels Read: Speculation and Politics in Dante’s Banquet (Toronto University Press, 2016); Dante: il paradigma intellettuale. Un’inventio degli anni fiorentini (Olscki, 2011); Guido Cavalcanti: The Other Middle Ages (Toronto University Press, 2002); Ezra Pound, Machine Art and Other Writings: The Lost Thought of the Italian Years (Duke University Press, 1996); and Ezra Pound e la scienza. Scritti inediti o rari (Scheiwiller, 1987), among others.