2009 Articles

"Only Historicize": History, Material Culture (Food, Clothes, Books), and the Future of Dante Studies

Barolini, Teodolinda

The Commedia has produced a prodigious amount of exegesis since the fourteenth century, and consequently one of our tasks is to direct and reassure the responsible young scholar who may think there is nothing left to say. The fact, however, is that there is plenty left to say, in part because for many centuries many commentaries did little more than repeat previous commentaries and in part because the implicit hermeneutic guidelines structured by Dante into his text determine, indeed overdetermine, interpretation. My advice to the young Dante scholar is "only historicize."