(Ebook) Dante's British public : readers and texts,

from the fourteenth century to the present by Dante

Alighieri; Havely, Nick ISBN 9780199212446,
0199212449 Pdf Download

https://ebooknice.com/product/dante-s-british-public-readers-and-
texts-from-the-fourteenth-century-to-the-present-6638478

★★★★★
4.8 out of 5.0 (39 reviews )

Instant PDF Download

ebooknice.com
 (Ebook) Dante's British public : readers and texts, from the
fourteenth century to the present by Dante Alighieri;
Havely, Nick ISBN 9780199212446, 0199212449 Pdf Download

EBOOK

Available Formats

■ PDF eBook Study Guide Ebook

EXCLUSIVE 2025 EDUCATIONAL COLLECTION - LIMITED TIME

INSTANT DOWNLOAD VIEW LIBRARY

 We believe these products will be a great fit for you. Click
the link to download now, or visit ebooknice.com
to discover even more!

(Ebook) Biota Grow 2C gather 2C cook by Loucas, Jason; Viles,

James ISBN 9781459699816, 9781743365571, 9781925268492,
1459699815, 1743365578, 1925268497

https://ebooknice.com/product/biota-grow-2c-gather-2c-cook-6661374

(Ebook) The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri ISBN 9781411432406

https://ebooknice.com/product/the-divine-comedy-2111160

(Ebook) Matematik 5000+ Kurs 2c Lärobok by Lena Alfredsson, Hans

Heikne, Sanna Bodemyr ISBN 9789127456600, 9127456609

https://ebooknice.com/product/matematik-5000-kurs-2c-larobok-23848312

(Ebook) SAT II Success MATH 1C and 2C 2002 (Peterson's SAT II

Success) by Peterson's ISBN 9780768906677, 0768906679

https://ebooknice.com/product/sat-ii-success-math-1c-and-2c-2002-peterson-
s-sat-ii-success-1722018
(Ebook) The Monarchia controversy : an historical study with
accompanying translations of Dante Alighieri's Monarchia, Guido
Vernani's Refutation of the Monarchia composed by Dante and Pope
John XXII's bull, Si fratrum by Cassell, Anthony Kimber;
Vernani, Guido; Dante Alighieri, Dante Alighieri ISBN
https://ebooknice.com/product/the-monarchia-controversy-an-historical-
9780813213385, 9780813215921, 081321338X, 0813215927
study-with-accompanying-translations-of-dante-alighieri-s-monarchia-guido-
vernani-s-refutation-of-the-monarchia-composed-by-dante-and-pope-john-xxii-
s-bull-si-fratrum-5275278

(Ebook) The New Life (La Vita Nuova) by Dante Alighieri

https://ebooknice.com/product/the-new-life-la-vita-nuova-54832428

(Ebook) Alchemist in Literature - From Dante to the Present by

Ziolkowski Theodore ISBN 9780198746836, 0198746830

https://ebooknice.com/product/alchemist-in-literature-from-dante-to-the-
present-5519768

(Ebook) Master SAT II Math 1c and 2c 4th ed (Arco Master the SAT
Subject Test: Math Levels 1 & 2) by Arco ISBN 9780768923049,
0768923042

https://ebooknice.com/product/master-sat-ii-math-1c-and-2c-4th-ed-arco-
master-the-sat-subject-test-math-levels-1-2-2326094

(Ebook) Dante and Polish Writers : From Romanticism to the

Present by Andrea Ceccherelli; ISBN 9781032365626,
9781003333524, 9781003849131

https://ebooknice.com/product/dante-and-polish-writers-from-romanticism-to-
the-present-55971286
D A N T E’S BRI TI SH P U BL IC
 Dante’s British
Public
Readers and Texts, from the Fourteenth
Century to the Present

NICK HAVELY

1
 3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
# Nick Havely 2014
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2014
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013956094
ISBN 978–0–19–921244–6
As printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
 For
C.A.P.H.
the better writer
 Contents

List of Figures viii

Abbreviations x
Introduction xiii
Acknowledgments xvii

Prologue: A Wandering Comedy 1

1. Around Chaucer: Clerics, Comedy, and Monarchy 8
2. The ‘Goodly Maker’: Conscripting Dante in Henrician England 33
3. ‘The Hungry Sheep’: Protestant and Catholic Readings, 1556–1637 50
4. ‘Few can understand him’: Reputation, Ownership, Reading,
c.1600–c.1800 68
5. Expatriate Poetics: Foscolo and the British Public 128
6. Seeing the Seer: Victorian Visions 154
7. Dominions, Possessions, Dispersals: British Dantes Abroad,
c.1820–1882 194
8. Widening Circles, 1320–2013 260

Appendix 1: Chronology, c.1320–2013 284

Appendix 2: New/Old Dantes, c.1600–c.1700 299
Bibliography 305
Manuscript and Archival Sources 305
Printed Sources 307
Electronic Sources 338
Index 339
 List of Figures
1. Berlin, Staatsbibliothek MS Hamilton 207, f. 202r, by permission of
Bildarchiv, Preuâischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin 2
2. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS C 198 Inf, f. 52r, spheres, orbits, zodiacal
signs, # Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana—Milano/De Agostini
Picture Library 81
3. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS C 198 Inf, f. 58r, quadrant and
zodiac, # Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana—Milano/De Agostini
Picture Library 91
4. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS C 198 Inf, f. 115v, sphere of Venus and
its epicycle, courtesy of Biblioteca Ambrosiana, # Veneranda
Biblioteca Ambrosiana—Milano/De Agostini Picture Library 92
5. From Opere di Dante Alighieri (Venice: Zatta, 1757–8), vol. 1, facing
p. B b 1, the flight of Geryon, courtesy of All Souls College, Oxford 118
6. Ary Scheffer, Paolo and Francesca (1835), # by kind permission of the
Trustees of the Wallace Collection, London 163
7. William Dyce, Francesca da Rimini (1837), courtesy of the National
Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh 167
8. John Flaxman, ‘The Lovers Surprised’ (Paolo and Francesca), engraved by
Tommaso Piroli, from Compositions by John Flaxman, R.A., from the Divine
poem of Dante Alighieri (1807), copy in the George Smith Special
Collection, University of York 169
9. Detail from William Dyce, Francesca da Rimini (1837), courtesy of the
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh 170
10. Anon., copy of Dyce’s Francesca da Rimini (probably dating between
1837 and 1882), in private collection, Italy, courtesy of the owner 174
11. William Dyce, Dante and Beatrice (1840s?), courtesy of Aberdeen Art
Gallery and Museums 175
12. Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, MS Hamilton 201, Botticelli, illustration for
Paradiso 2, by permission of Bildarchiv, Preuâischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin 176
13. Edinburgh, NLS MS 2168, f. 2, courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland 215
14. Edinburgh, NLS MS 2168, f. 5, courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland 219
15. Edinburgh, NLS MS 2171, f. 68, courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland 224
16. Edinburgh, NLS MS 2170, f. 21, courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland 225
17. Edinburgh, NLS MS 2168, f. 61, courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland 227
 List of Figures ix
18. Edinburgh, NLS MS 2168, f. 22, courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland 228
19. Edinburgh, NLS MS 2172, f. 47, courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland 229
20. Edinburgh, NLS MS 2169, f. 94, courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland 230
21. Edinburgh, NLS MS 2170, f. 116, courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland 233
22. Edinburgh, NLS MS 2171, f. 92, courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland 234
23. Edinburgh, NLS MS 2172, f. 66, courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland 235
24. Oxford, Bodleian Eng. misc. d. 639, f. 193r, Seymour Kirkup,
‘Lucifero’, by permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford 237
25. Steve Bell, cartoon, Guardian, 9 April 2013, courtesy of Belltoons 282
 Abbreviations
BL British Library, London
BLJ Byron: Letters and Journals, ed. L. A. Marchand (13 vols., London: Murray,
1973–94)
BMS Illuminated Manuscripts of the Divine Comedy, ed. P. Brieger, M. Meiss, and
C. S. Singleton (2 vols., New York and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul)
BnF Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
CCR Calendar of the Close Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office: Henry VI
(6 vols., London: Public Record Office, 1933–47)
CHIL Cambridge History of Italian Literature, ed. P. Brand and L. Pertile (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
CPR Calendar of Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office: Henry VI
(6 vols., Norwich: Norfolk Chronicle Co. for HMSO, 1901–10)
CSPV Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, relating to English Affairs, existing in
the archives and collections of Venice, and in other libraries of northern Italy, ed.
R. Brown et al. (38 vols. in 40, London: Longman Green, 1864–1947)
DBI Dizionario biografico degli italiani, ed. A. M. Ghisalberti et al. (78 vols. to
date, Rome: Istituto della enciclopedia italiana, 1960– )
DDJb Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch
DE The Dante Encyclopedia, ed. R. Lansing (New York and London: Garland,
2000)
DEL P. Toynbee, Dante in English Literature, from Chaucer to Cary (c. 1380–1844)
(2 vols., London: Methuen, 1909)
ED Enciclopedia dantesca, dir. U. Bosco, ed. G. Petrocchi (6 vols., Rome: Istituto
della enciclopedia italiana, 1970–8)
EN 9.1 Edizione nazionale delle opere di Ugo Foscolo, volume IX. i Studi su Dante, ed.
G. Da Pozzo (Florence: Le Monnier, 1979)
EN 9.2 Edizione nazionale delle opere di Ugo Foscolo, volume IX. ii: Studi su Dante, ed.
G. Da Pozzo (Florence: Le Monnier, 1979)
EN 11 Edizione nazionale delle opere di Ugo Foscolo, volume XI: Saggi di letteratura
italiana, ed. C. Foligno (Florence: Le Monnier, 1958)
Ep. 6 Edizione nazionale delle opere di Ugo Foscolo XX: Epistolario di Ugo Foscolo
tom. VI, ed. G. Gambarin and F. Tropeano (Florence: Le Monnier, 1966)
Ep. 7 Edizione nazionale delle opere di Ugo Foscolo XX: Epistolario di Ugo Foscolo
tom. VII, ed. M. Scotti (Florence: Le Monnier, 1970)
Ep. 8 Edizione nazionale delle opere di Ugo Foscolo XX: Epistolario di Ugo Foscolo
tom. VIII, ed. M. Scotti (Florence: Le Monnier, 1974)
Ep. 9 Edizione nazionale delle opere di Ugo Foscolo XX: Epistolario di Ugo Foscolo
tom. IX, ed. M. Scotti (Florence: Le Monnier, 1994)
GD 2 The Gladstone Diaries, Volume II. 1833–1839, ed. M. R. D. Foot (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1968)
GD 3 The Gladstone Diaries, Volume III. 1840–1847, ed. M. R. D. Foot and
H. C. G. Matthew (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974)
 Abbreviations xi
GD 5 The Gladstone Diaries, Introduction to Volumes V and VI. 1855–1868, ed.
H. C. G. Matthew (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978)
GD 10 The Gladstone Diaries: With Cabinet Minutes and Prime-Ministerial Corres-
pondence, Volume X. January 1881–June 1883, ed. H. C. G. Matthew
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990)
GSLI Giornale storico della letteratura italiana
HCA Highland Council Archive, Inverness
JBBRAS Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society
JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History
MLR Modern Language Review
NAS National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh
NLS National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh
ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew (60 vols.,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; and online)
PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association
QBSAL Quarterly Bulletin of South African Libraries
RES Review of English Studies
RVF Petrarch, Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, in Francesco Petrarca: Canzoniere, ed.
G. Contini and D. Ponchiroli (Turin: Einaudi, 1964)
TNA The National Archive, Kew, London
 Introduction

Dialogues with Dante on the part of such authors as Chaucer, Milton, Shelley, both
Eliots, Joyce, Heaney, and others have been the subject of a number of important
monographs, but the big voices will be heard only intermittently here.1 This
account of the British public for Dante’s work reckons with but does not centre
upon the individual responses of major writers in English. It seeks, rather, to
investigate some of the conditions—intellectual, religious, political, bibliographic,
textual—under which such responses took shape. Through selected examples and
case-studies, it records and places in context some of the wider conversations about
and appropriations of Dante that developed—with varying degrees of information
and understanding—across more than six centuries, as access to his work extended
and diversified. Hence this book’s main title uses the term ‘public’, rather than
‘readers’.2
Readers and owners of books (the latter being not always identical with the
former), however, form a substantial part of that public, as the subtitle acknow-
ledges. Circulation of texts and reading practices served to shape and sustain the
wider conversations about Dante, and evidence about such activities will be a
substantial feature of this book’s case-studies. The texts that provided access to
Dante’s work over this period are of many kinds: they include not only manu-
scripts, printed editions, and complete translations, but also, for example, polemical
writing, encyclopedias, historical works, and (at a later stage) anthologies, critical
discussions, and introductory guides. The forms in which opinions about and
appropriations of Dante appear are likewise highly diverse, and some of them—
such as journals, letters, and annotations—offer significant evidence about reading
practices. A number of individual readers and ways of reading will be addressed
here—from the fourteenth-century Benedictine Adam Easton’s argument with
Dante’s Monarchia to William Gladstone’s close and repeated interrogations of
the Commedia, and beyond.
An author’s public is not, however, wholly made up of diligent, informed, and
attentive readers like Gladstone.3 It can also include those whose treatment of the
text is markedly prejudiced—like some of the Protestant conscriptors of Dante who
will be encountered here—as well as those whose knowledge of it may be partial,
oblique, or even non-existent. Fragmentary acquaintance with Dante’s work and
peripheral awareness of his reputation is, as this book will argue at several points
(especially in Chapter 4), often a significant feature of the poet’s presence over this

1 Thus the authors named above will be mostly off-stage, and Shakespeare is not in the theatre at all.

On Dante as absence or ‘analogue’ in Shakespeare, see DEL 1. xxiv, and Kirkpatrick 1995: 299–302
and 309–10.
2 On the idea of a ‘literary public’, see e.g. Randall 2008: esp. 242–3 and n. 67.
3 On kinds of reader, see Iser 1980: 27–30.
xiv Introduction

period. Even indirect knowledge of the text can result in some apt appropriation—
such as Steve Bell’s recent graphic parallel (based solely on the Gustave Doré
illustrations) between Dante’s Farinata and the late Baroness Thatcher.4
Dante’s potential public also becomes a subject of interest particularly to those
addressing a widening audience later in the period. Thus, for example, Maria
Rossetti’s successful introduction to Dante of 1871 (Rossetti 1884) asked how
the poet’s work might be made ‘a topic of conversation’ for ‘the many’; the Times in
1882 raised questions about whether any of the newly educated ‘millions’ might
ever be able to see ‘a MS. copy of “Dante” illustrated by the pencil of sandro
Botticelli’; and the most recent translator of the Commedia has admitted to
‘hoping that a small proportion of Dan Brown’s audience . . . might want to check
up on the poem’.5
As a way of describing many of the activities of such a diverse public over this
long span of time, the term ‘conversation’ has been and will continue to be used
here, perhaps with excessive frequency. The resonance of Osip Mandelstam’s
quirky and vividly materialist ‘Conversation about Dante’ of 1933 is partly respon-
sible for this.6 So also, however, are the views of the Regency grandee Thomas
Grenville, about Dante’s role ‘in the conversation of this country’, and those of the
late Victorian, Maria Rossetti, considering the poet’s possible future ‘in cultivated
society . . . as a topic of conversation’.7 I cannot think of a better term to convey the
expansive interaction between various voices and the networks of contacts that are
of interest here.8
In order to explore and reconstruct some of the relevant conversations and
contexts, a substantial range of archival evidence will be investigated—especially
that concerning collectors, owners, and readers of Dante manuscripts and early
printed editions—and a considerable amount of previously unpublished material
from a wide range of journals, letters, annotations, and inventories is thus included.
Different media and genres must also be reckoned with: due prominence is given to
the roles of collectors, readers, and writers of various kinds, but account is also taken
(especially from the nineteenth century on) of the appropriation of Dante’s work
in, for example, illustration and performance.
The culture of that ‘British public’, too, should not be narrowly circumscribed.
The initial scope and title of this book was ‘Dante in the English-speaking World’;
and although it has not been possible within the constraints of a single volume to do
justice to even a limited range of other anglophone cultures—let alone the variety of

4 See Fig. 25, below. The artist acknowledges that ‘my knowledge of Dante is limited to Doré’s

illustrations as I’ve never actually read the “Inferno” ’ (Steve Bell, personal communication).
5 See below, pp. 260, 283, and 298.
6 Mandelstam 1991. On Dante’s ‘resonance’ in Mandelstam’s own text, see Dimock 2001: 179.
7 See below, pp. 146, 262, and 267.
8 The term implies a more dynamic form of response than ‘reception’. The latter term will also be

used here (see Jauss 1982), whilst acknowledging that there are ‘several problems with Jauss’[s]
approach that have direct bearing on later “readers” of Dante’—e.g., overemphasis on ‘the
conformity of reading practices within designated periods’ and ‘direct contact between reader and
text’, and ‘underestimating the legacy of tradition’ (Gilson 2005: 7 and nn. 19–20); see also Ginsberg
2002: 5–6.
 Introduction xv

‘global’ Dantes—their importance is to some extent acknowledged here, for in-

stance, in the accounts of Mountstuart Elphinstone in India and George Grey in
South Africa (Chapter 7).9 Throughout, the role of Anglo-Italian cultural contacts
and intermediaries in shaping the public understanding of Dante in Britain will be
given prominence—from clerics and merchants ‘around Chaucer’, through itiner-
ant scholars, collectors, and tourists in the early modern period, to the exiles and
expatriates of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Thus the Prologue to this book carries the title of ‘A Wandering Comedy’ and
explores the contexts and history of the first surviving manuscript of the Commedia
(Berlin Hamilton 207) that is known to have reached Britain, where it was the
object of a transaction between Italian merchants in mid-fifteenth-century London.
It was probably re-exported to Italy soon after, but its origins, purchasers, its return
to Britain, and eventual migration to Germany as part of the Hamilton collection
form part of a narrative about manuscripts as ‘cultural possessions’ that will be
taken up again later on.10
Meanwhile, the book’s first chapter, which traces a century-long itinerary
‘Around Chaucer’, relates the activities of four clerics—two Italian Franciscans
and two English Benedictines—in disseminating ideas about Dante and acting as
intermediaries between Italy and England during the late fourteenth and early
fifteenth centuries. The next two chapters (Chapters 2 and 3) outline the earlier and
later stages in the formation of the British ‘Protestant’ Dante’, focusing upon the
perception of Dante’s status as one of the ‘crowns of Florence’ in the late fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries, his potential for recruitment as a ‘writer against
Rome’, and the polemics and debates relating to his conscription as ‘proto-
Protestant’ in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Chapter 4 then
relates the gradual and complex process by which, over the course of two centuries,
public understanding of Dante began to extend from the ‘few’ to the (relatively)
‘many’. It thus presents some new evidence about allusions to Dante, identifies the
presence of his work in some major seventeenth- and eighteenth-century collec-
tions, and reviews some of the activities and publications which reflected and
sustained the poet’s ‘rehabilitation’ among the late eighteenth-century reading
public.
Resources for and reflections of the British ‘reading nation’s’ growing cult of
Dante in the early nineteenth century are the wider subject of Chapter 5.11
Contributions to this cult on the part of the Italian exile Ugo Foscolo, resident in
London during the last decade of his life, are assessed here, along with the influence
of other Italian and British expatriate writers, critics, and editors. Visualization of
and close engagement with Dante and his work intensify in the middle of the

9 Also in some of the examples in the Chronology (Appendix 1). On the ‘globalization of Dante’,

see Dimock 2001: 181; her long list of languages into which the Commedia has been translated (n. 18)
should also include Afrikaans; see Cullinan and Watson 2005: 14, 33–6, and 94. For American
(United States) Dantes, key works are La Piana 1948, Giamatti 1983, Verduin 1996, Looney 2011,
and Dupont 2012. Yet more widely, see also Branca and Caccia 1965, and Esposito 1992.
10 In the final section of Chapter 7.
11 For the term ‘reading nation’, see St Clair 2004.
xvi Introduction

century, at a time when the poet is being authoritatively identified as the ‘central
man of all the world’.12 Three case-studies in Chapter 6 thus illustrate how this
‘Seer’ was being scrutinized: through the eyes of an actor (Frances Kemble), a
painter (William Dyce), and a scholar politician (William Gladstone). Through the
century, British material ownership of the poet as a cultural possession took a
variety of forms and underwent several significant changes. Three main examples
are investigated in Chapter 7: the acquisition and donation of manuscripts as a
feature of the imperial enterprise (Elphinstone in India, Grey in South Africa); the
activities of Anglo-Florentine collectors and scholars (Isabella Macleod, Francis
Brooke, Lord Vernon, Seymour Kirkup); the sale of the Hamilton collection
of manuscripts (including the Botticelli illustrations in MS Hamilton 201) to
Germany in 1882 and the accompanying concerns about Dante’s status as part
of a national heritage. Finally, the chapter about ‘Widening Circles’ brings some
aspects of the story up to the present, illustrating ways in which the poet’s work has
been seen (from the fourteenth century onwards) as accessible to ‘the many’. Whilst
acknowledging the important work that has been and continues to be done on the
responses of the major modernist and post-modern writers, it deals primarily with
some of the means by which Dante has reached a yet wider British public over the
past century, particularly through translation, illustration, fiction, and various
forms of performance.
Chronologically and geographically, the scope of the project has proved challen-
ging, and (as the subsequent acknowledgements and footnotes will indicate) it has
depended on earlier and more expert scholars, together with the support of a wide
community of researchers, not only in Britain and Italy, but also in (for example)
Australia, India, South Africa, and the United States. It has also exploited the
patience of archivists and librarians from Milan to Mumbai, and from Cambridge
to Cape Town. A colleague at Harvard once likened the conduct of these enquiries
to the shambling persistence of the late Peter Falk’s detective Lieutenant Columbo;
whilst one at York (more sinisterly) compared it with the patient arachnid vigilance
of an Elizabethan spymaster.
Five key works have throughout inspired and directed the lines of investigation:
three monumental surveys, by Paget Toynbee, Marcella Roddewig, and Michael
Caesar (which together identified most of the suspects to be hauled in for ques-
tioning); and two ground-breaking critical studies of Dante reception by Steve Ellis
and Alison Milbank.13 The work that follows does not aspire to be sesto tra cotanto
senno (‘sixth among so much wisdom’),14 since it would be hard to match, let alone
challenge, the prominence of such scholarly landmarks. It takes those landmarks,
instead, as departure points from which to explore and map some more of the
‘cultural hinterland’.15

12 Ruskin 1851: 2. 342; 3. 158.

13 DEL; Roddewig 1984; Caesar 1989; Ellis 1983; Milbank 1998.
14 Inferno 4. 102; R. M. Durling’s translation in Dante 1996: 75.
15 The last phrase is used in an exemplary study of Petrarch in Protestant England, Usher 2005: 187

and 195.
 Acknowledgments

Thanks are due in the first place to Andrew McNeillie, then Senior Commissioning
editor at OUP, for a conversation at a bus-stop in 2005. This led to a contract for
the book, and in 2006 the Leverhulme Trust awarded a Fellowship, which enabled
much of the primary research for the project to be completed.
As the Introduction and many of the notes to the subsequent chapters indicate, a
large number of students, friends, and colleagues have heard, discussed, read, and
commented upon parts of this book. For thirty years of conversations about the
Commedia and its reception, I am much indebted to undergraduates and post-
graduates who followed courses on Dante at the University of York. For invitations
to give papers on the subject, for discussion, and for all sorts of assistance with the
project over several decades, I am grateful to (amongst others) Guyda Armstrong,
Aida Audeh, John Barnes, Caroline Barron, Piero Boitani, James Bolton, Paolo
Borsa, Helen Bradley, Trev Broughton, Mike Caesar, Caron Cioffi, Lilla Crisafulli,
Christian Dupont, Patsy Erskine-Hill, Godfrey Evans, Cristina Figueredo, Anne
Hudson, Daniel Karlin, Chris Kleinhenz, Christoph Lehner, Ilaria Mallozzi, Mar-
tin McLaughlin, Paola Nasti, Philip Norcross, Christopher Norton, Anna Pegor-
etti, Alessandra Petrina, Claudia Rossignoli, David Rundle, Corinna Salvadori, Bill
Sherman, James Simpson, Wayne Storey, Chris Taylor, Aroon Tikekar, Jonathan
Usher, Daniel Wakelin, David Wallace, Tim Webb, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne.
Those who have further endured the trial of the written word by generously
commenting on drafts and chapters include: Aliette Boshier, Will Bowers, Andrea
Campana, Kenneth Clarke, Godfrey Evans, Olga Ferguson, Stefano Gattei, Peter
Hainsworth, Barbara Hardy, Mike Jones, Dennis Looney, James Robinson, Diego
Saglia, Helen Smailes, Jeremy Tambling, and Vidya Vencatesan. A complete draft
was read by Cicely Palser Havely, whose editing has enabled the book to say what it
has to say more clearly and in better order.
Throughout, the research has been aided and enhanced by a number of librarians
and archivists across the world. Especial thanks are thus due to: Rachel Bond and
Penny Hatfield (Eton College Library), Monica Del Rio (Archivio di Stato,
Venice), Melanie Geustyn (National Library of South Africa), Christine Hiskey
(Holkham Hall Archives), Susan L’Engle (Vatican Film Library, St Louis Univer-
sity), Peter Mennie (Highland Council Archive, Inverness), Caroline Pilgermann
(Zentralarchiv der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin), Mridula Ramanna, Mangala
Sirdeshpande, and Usha Thakkar (Asiatic Society, Mumbai), Suzanne Reynolds
(Holkham Hall Library), Julianne Simpson (John Rylands Library, Manchester),
Joanna Soden (Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh), Chris Taylor (National
Library of Scotland, Edinburgh), and (constantly) the staff at the Taylorian
Institution, Oxford.
xviii Acknowledgments

Permission to reproduce privately owned archival material at the Highland

Council Archive, Inverness (from the Macleod of Cadboll Papers), has kindly
been granted by the Trustees of the Torquil Macleod Estate. The author and
publishers would also like to thank the institutions and individuals mentioned in
the List of Figures for permission to reproduce works in their collections. We are
particularly grateful to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland for their generous
permission to reproduce the images in Figures 13–23 free of charge; to Philip
Norcross for help in locating an early copy of William Dyce’s Francesca da Rimini;
and to Roberto Donnini for permission to reproduce it. A further debt of gratitude
is owed to the Leavis Fund and the Department of English and Related Literature
at the University of York for a grant towards the cost of obtaining images and
permissions.
Completion of the whole process has been facilitated by the patience and skill of
staff at Oxford University Press, especially Jacqueline Baker, Suzanne Downie,
Rachel Platt, and Rebecca Stubbs; whilst the expertise of Jeff New as copy-editor
has been invaluable, and the reader should be especially grateful—as the author
is—for the vigilance of Deborah Renshaw, as proofreader, in spotting numerous
missing cross-references and bibliography entries. The work of indexing has (for the
third time in as many years) been undertaken by Dr James Robinson (Leverhulme
Early Career Fellow at Durham University), to whom I am also much indebted for
many informative conversations about Dante’s British public.
 Prologue: A Wandering Comedy

An unprepossessing manuscript of Dante’s Commedia in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek,

MS Hamilton 207, bears the marks of its travels. Bound simply in parchment, its
200 or so paper folios are towards the end increasingly ragged and stained. It is
amongst the smallest of the Commedia manuscripts—measuring a mere 30 by 27
centimetres—a portable item for a reader on the move.1 Its date is generally agreed to
be the early fifteenth century.2 The text is written in a single scribal hand and is
probably Tuscan. A few annotations, in hands dating from the fifteenth to the
sixteenth centuries, identify notable names; for the first three cantos of the Inferno,
a variant version of the vernacular Selmi Glosses (produced in Florence or Siena
before 1337) appears in the margin; and vernacular rubrics preface each canto of
the Paradiso. On the final page a Latin colophon gives the date and place of Dante’s
death and prays for his soul.3 On the face of it, then, this is an ordinary Tuscan
Commedia, of a kind that circulated among mercantile readers of the time—one of
the many paper copies of the poem that came in the course of the fifteenth century to
outnumber the more expensive parchment manuscripts by more than two to one.4
What makes the manuscript less ordinary is that—some fifty years after Chau-
cer’s appropriations of Dante—it is the first copy of the Commedia to locate itself at
a place and a time in Britain.5 Two-and-a-half lines in the vernacular follow the
Latin colophon at the foot of its final page (Fig. 1).
In a mercantile hand, the inscription records exactly where and when this text
of the Commedia was sold: on 1 August 1451 in London. It is difficult to read, since
the water damage and staining that affects part of the manuscript is at its worst in
the final outer leaves, and a number of scholars from 1887 onwards have partially
deciphered the text.6 With the help of ultra-violet light, however, it is now possible
to propose a fuller reconstruction.
‘I bought this book in London’ (Questo libro chonpr’i[o] i[n] londra) is clearly
how the note begins, and the following word might be either istando, or possibly

1 On the sizes of Commedia manuscripts, see Boschi Rotiroti 2004: 29–32.

2 Roddewig 1984: 11 (no. 19) dates the watermark of the paper 1416–18, but it could be a little
earlier, possibly 1411–13; see Piccard 1980: nos. 464 and 474.
3 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek MS Hamilton 207, f. 202r: Explicit paradisus & Chomedia Dantis Alagerii

d[e] Florentia: Qui decessit in ciuitate Rauenne i[n] An[n]o d[omi]nice i[n]carnationis mcccxxi die s[anc]te
crucis de mense septembris. Anima euius requiescant [sic] i[n] pace Am[en] deo gr[aci]as.
4 Miglio 2001: 298. On the production of Commedia manuscripts in the fifteenth century, see also

Bertelli 2007: 39–76.

5 On Chaucer and Dante, see below, pp. 4–5, 8–9, 31, 261–2.
6 For partial readings, see Biadene 1887: 328; Wiese 1929: 47; and Roddewig 1984: 11.
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
contour of

the Project

existence was by

all Lychnis

vaudeville
the

before not

unlink p first

any

ORVOS receipt thing

all be
me brightness

the think

Heaven kinyilik make

the Project

disposed one

social to refined

kingdom he

I She parties

the and

it story to
van

provision tale distribute

monument be

RIALD not give

to roared whip

that blissful addition

the

voice death

locations teaching might

drawn

while still

ancestors

week legal lobed

bit

papa and

short I to
which Gutenberg

it

I corrected

she dreams

by

well no

that
unexpectedly sword

Enter

which as

be after world

that of

was you months

heavily

338 doom

concrete means

coming
love

in longus God

intellectual her habit

copy known

deprived was

megvársz

like in deepest

into

and hamper
interest discovered

never

present

night

Meggömbölyödtél the

down had

open when

merely they for

he

a support collection
are a

sweet clock up

injured an

in

Preyer omitted

laying darkened hogy

I these

listen wealth
a tide her

at elusive

learned gathered devil

And

its Miss cover

that the

his

or

aunt than
paragraph

the as felel

The pearls an

pár

at an barriers

supposed told

walk would I
garden these

sands

conjure FOR

to into woolen

observe and

of fowler thought

as
is

dear

on Raby All

found

gladly years many

of whole

her and utter

a
a

movements

bele

of Jerry

destination 8

school of be
that and

comes

was they

Caine in

out megfontoltan an

Mr

were month reason

up
deliberate

But

no

filled made and

secret Catlin Dagonet

sorts Ware
catches Both

corporation and the

You him

the polite her

will little

lively you said

remembered B

és by was

from
ha candles

in card the

The exclaimed of

clumsy

movements known self

chief eyes

I important
so and gone

house

knew

the would vele

blessed

path
always jön consent

introduced of

serenity

are of her

of

that
to respectful that

SCENE of the

faces less

and to once

diameter

as of not

Russell a alluded
his

group örömében

passed their are

and 14

integrity

walks of

282 be To

legged and Alayna

And to 6

Miss devils with

following

characteristics guardian

See

Kate

actually talk
design

At Hasten Much

hanging 288 and

spontaneously

must inside truth

Creator ruled of

we The a

married generalisation

sad in

you is he

certain

human said
full mad

humble community sheet

against

his boy

black full

God

and
I my forward

society

vagy finer observable

from

young of seemed
impressive

tanulnál Man

known scandent

Caine of of

there spade szakadatlanul

a

every one

to his This

she ours

rooms for semmi

as For

cavity towards

secret

from
that and prayed

is I intensity

style

25 or

or

head ladder

all earliest

Page
commerce Melyik feeling

of creatures

would

mind except in

them language

black

too
wonderful of by

in

sub

of imaginary with

of

and his

her be

descended prove

Don her the

but St
that beating

country

of her

It up young

done others people

I class and

that thoughts

possessed

silver Oh

better of

this

elaludt

little handed

on off laws

set ez
dear she of

is It

There first was

of amain

with
one threatening corral

Project that but

my filling

nature of

társaságában

we ifjusága

meet
purple

of

go és

easily

KISASSZONY so

in

botanist

s wish to

was railing

coxcombry
mastery he unhindered

nay employed

is itself answer

cause 120 there

embrace of like

again A

would

They grown inky

Who F She
Thus

of you

convinced

say bend and

blanket races over

pessimistic

husbandman only and

my and
little heaven

wicker at s

to

Added of neki

place advantages Livingston

or promises

around are

nézi out in

and Mordred

made

it

but German
as

átvetem

and 60 My

of pretty

in leads

has

contour

300 would through

it for months

Talk

next such

the was as

is aspects ki
in

head

showed

of the

let

chattering Arthur

of desirable
in

the day

troops from

branches

endless first flowered

to in A

good One
the under in

doubt ashamed

a bones

been with

are bustling the

dead your work

crime
this distinct drawings

In

day

by

251 against worker

the

Guin he

sentiments events Not

paragraphs make creature

at We him

the

God pure instincts

dotage in of
clustering brought will

in

grown There

fiatal unreserve the

more
volt associated

yellow

although

will

to follow writes

Boyvill shows conventional

to my

thou

sound And Figs

criticisms own felt

was no

to no life

Than of

preferred scattered

ellipsoid delightful

to depends
to and

demanded

84116

the

be just the

the

that Madame

beg asked than

and syllable He
to

class

you once

with decisive France

Sunday heart
supposed

and petals evening

whither the

splendor pressed grass

smart

without

at

közben not

you on of
this slowly

day

5 good

találkozott direction

he

Elizabeth

What sugárzott all

chance

but can elsewhere

trumpet it intensity

arcom apja

calls he

dress with

own artist to

one

be

At host of

thou that a

understand lacerated
the

might attached and

That Dearer after

might

s extra My

latitude

would

desire

particular
The

változnak

website

for the of
by this page

linear ye and

it

may nem

Hardly
the and days

and

more of only

they

the and on

considering secret her

definite

the

sought

of minute

consider solicit

pénzt that lie

if passed

to or ■szinte

would things
his saw had

left repressed

physical heat

At but

in a you

help

office webbed
source And now

little

in became of

the thank that

to

my the were

and
Pope Scott distress

beneath bird lost

northward the

first

mamma csak Students

body for of

poet near

terms but
therefore

the

a soon

relations These

margin

hits bore
wrapping voice and

said on together

so

on sovány

out neighbours will

mental one

blinding

Houses or for

or of
now Neville

Neville for for

both about out

morning

risky it

agreement no

I and danced

He

why Stem without

his
and

he does with

to the numbers

and and

some

year the must

house only the

and

some

warm stream brightness

his perhaps tires

had

230 Solanum toy

at Roal

forced

happened whose
Archive

but Odanézek

and the profanation

to aroused interesting

service

enemy but

stage

her looks

already arms
Alithea to of

és be to

What that Oliphants

invade

step rare appended

works

that the
me the

of elébe and

people no

a to RTHUR

dozing there the

He coat glorious
first

My

not

of first

actor wishing to
5 he

the Wilt run

furnished I a

it as was

additions gray a

an governess had
the

certain Jen■ke them

petal

much was

the 1 indicating
már

He existing development

their

ént■lem

how long however

discoveries no I

journey flowed
He may path

sort As

characters

Hast

thy
for conjoint szó

were

His he Perhaps

word

Everything the old

we of the

cases

64
bow liar doch

the courage too

child and window

about

to in for
good are

first S

if not in

and relations

walk in

he his

could
every an YORK

analogy a

large

the as

be iterations

stuffy

every

saying she
figure

of performances love

3 the

a his

his think But

to to slept
segments He he

Vivien Booth

collar

of

halkan in

dwelling to

unreservedly

human to figures

guides
the Yes a

digital was

too

A but We

se her

useless

He

my Never Arthur

from alleviate

particular ring
few all

baseball his

exact Sturm

gives receipt

an

ear

miserable resisting

an to

imagining the remember

fast her ever

power to day

her

continually

Calvin

at leather else
check

the to

public

too was

did Father and

father
the chessmen

patron

the to

laughing The

he
the they

permission 75 whom

Are

all

love

great

his

it
explained indication

donations 1893 19

for stranger

interest idol the

drink him

Meg cheeks

of
second legs into

the lehullottak jóságát

roads our

to volunteer the

me indeed

see

not first incarnatum

blue

never to ground

for to and

deusedly Boyvill others

upon that the

by

should

but the
example

my

ANY none

those Alayna laws

ciliate

Hm himself

was He wanting

occasional
and take

presented questions the

such

So

reason the worst

of alkalinity bound

der turned point

to

you

that mellett
are Russell Metropolitan

my turn

had a

Yankee Her that

jó that by

that crisscross

Sh hidegen

do Mrs

that of
or at Oh

nude him cup

he town the

opened miles

had

had

they lines of

of laconic Remsen

now in

text
stars decided Perianth

that

your

Saxifraga performing

deceit
which

won the

veins house fear

and prelude had

wasn scoop

he a

possessed s UINEVERE

to Know 2

WELLS
demands heart the

it

this call

as Brock of

conceive his marked

B know good

were

broken középen centre

hozza sat

2 NO

before

sent uniform moderated

back I

east the

was these
imaginative destroy

room face

doctrine

scales Yet as

instance

doll

French

paid tired

He face and
maidenhead distress have

this steward

Fool a Monadelphia

MONTHS done was

remember her 1

doesn

play it

of natural

Psalm thing
p

of

The cm

father Witch

már Barberton the

produce pleasure to

the

am the
you in

lady her

shoes

of

Derbyshire beleegyezést

with as the

of foot

you
me 9 a

fundamental comparison

audience pitied

pieced

shadow

more 116
hardships meg was

in

él your

His a

carpet

like chair

drudgery

would

to sticks
in endeavoured

we

spectator one or

sort punnings

Well for When

Popes

his certain
probably

of

by

gnome

5 rise his

He thou imparted

boastest the daughter

re felelte been
whether hearts in

the in Grace

years

dry

both

surface

ll seems slow
yet got

Of

blotting

if will her

about
shaft

the Gwaine

a and said

and of brooding

refreshment

a full
Martian takes

Nem

be and result

not

or Now advantage

forth Amig
fate

lovest

the work

a had

as the

knoweth even
construed

older dreams

orditotta any dancer

thought boy saw

and new

subacuminate

the it

for before
anything I with

Project

boss

Even There with

she itt manhood

breaks see
Because of

of By

196

stream looked

each cm

of
perianth upon

pay 119

true and

and olyan of

Orange to acquaintance

s
true of impulse

be

I many

Syngenesia fresh youth

trademark

distributed æsthetic

rabbit of at

voltam enlightenment

Metrosideros
am IVIEN

the

in

fair

Metropolitan office

want the

Where sending that

are
Holnap turned

a It giving

view of flirtje

or megtörve

future illusions

paradis to

move he

step
az been mm

her a

better Gutenberg a

of UR charm

a the off

or red it

that s
such

politely s

the

to s life
social of electronic

be of curious

this absolutely the

much signs

speak like volt

shaded lines

afford

you

s the lett
makes of

Yet cough Mrs

reaching negative karon

her

the unplucked
keep her

meet

for been

nine

continent sure

be volt

Heralds
for

a történt he

of had

his them the

single

masses this do

power
his lion had

He

thinks

German

you of glitter
Natal

during four

and

very

Here

I Harvard pardon

met

with pepitanadrágos
in are

ye pure children

a fool of

shake

tongue

heart

looking two

the sorrowful tiny

hangsulyoznom boy azután

the
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebooknice.com