"A towering figure in world literature, Dante wrote his great epic poem Commedia in the early fourteenth century. The work gained universal acclaim and came to be known as La Divina Commedia, or The Divine Comedy. Giuseppe Mazzotta brings Dante and his masterpiece to life in this exploration of the man, his cultural milieu, and his endlessly fascinating works. Based on Mazzotta's highly popular Yale course, this book offers a critical reading of The...

In a masterly synthesis of historical and literary analysis, Giuseppe Mazzotta shows how medieval knowledge systems - the cycle of the liberal arts, ethics, politics, and theology - interacted with poetry and elevated the Divine Comedy to a central position in shaping all other forms of discursive knowledge. To trace the circle of Dante's intellectual concerns, Mazzotta examines the structure and aims of medieval encyclopedias especially in the twelfth...