Beschrijving
The Life and Times of Dante
Portraits of Greatness
Dante Alighieri, (1265-1321)
A magnificent history of the life and times of Dante Alighieri, once known as the father of Italian poetry; including colored photos of the Art of that period.
Illustrated hard cover book containing color and black and white images.
Pictorial dust jacket over pictorial cloth.
Dante Alighieri, creator of the Divine Comedy, is even today, after 600 years, Italy’s most celebrated poet. He was born into a turbulent Florence in 1265, found himself married at the age of twelve, and, like all the youth of his day, was soon taking part in the bitter political struggles of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, the two power blocs which periodically tore the heart out of the medieval city.
In Dante’s lifetime the old order was losing its sway. Aristocrats by birth were being supplanted by the moneyed merchant class, and among Dante and his companions there flowered a new poetry, rejecting the
long-held values of the Middle Ages and using, for the first time, the spoken language in preference to medieval Latin.
In this book we follow the poet’s develoment against the background of his own time. We see the familiar landmarks of his youth, his friendships with the wild Donati and the austere Cavalcanti, and follow his
remarkable love for Beatrice, the pale Florentine who became Dante’s obsession and inspiration, and who was later to guide the poet-narrator through Paradise in the third part of the Divine Comedy.
As Dante’s life unfolds, through early success and later the cruel banishment from his beloved Florence, we see the poet storing away the memories and poetic visions which he is to recall in the Divine Comedy. For this monumental work is at once an allegory, charting Dante’s own passage from sin and error to a state of grace, and a political and social history of the Italy in which he lived.
More than 130 illustrations — over 60 of them in full colour — have been selected from a vast range of contemporary and later sources. They include paintings, drawings, manuscripts and engravings, which together with the lively text present a living biography of the great poet and his age.
Zie voor verdere TOELICHTING ook de ACHTERZIJDE van het boek !
| General Editor: Text by: Translator: |
Enzo Orlandi Maria Luisa Rizzatti Salvator Attanasio |
| ISBNrs: | – – no – – |
