Bard College literature scholar Luzzi posits that Dante was \u201can intensely experimental writer,\u201d one reason that centuries later James Joyce would take so many cues from him. Dante was experimental, Luzzi continues, first because he did not write his Divine Comedy in Latin\u2014a choice that limited his audience, since all literate Europeans would know Latin but almost certainly not the Tuscan dialect of Italian. Tuscan, in turn, and particularly the Tuscan spoken in Florence, provided Dante with a vigorous language that \u201ccould capture the intimate rhythms, cadences, and meanings of everyday speech and, by extension, the resonances and experiences of daily life.\u201d Despite Dante\u2019s enthusiasm for the language and ways of Florence, the city banished him in 1302, which, though infuriating, convinced Dante that he was on a mission from God to write a sacred poem that would explain the workings of heaven, purgatory, and hell. It took time for that word to spread; as Luzzi notes, \u201cby the end of the 1300s, about eight hundred manuscripts of the Commedia were in circulation.\u201d The introduction of movable type and translations into other languages made it a world classic, if long after Dante\u2019s own lifetime. Perhaps ironically, Luzzi notes, one particularly close reader of Dante\u2019s text was a \u201czealous Spanish cleric\u201d working under the auspices of the Inquisition, who diligently crossed out passages that placed wayward popes and priests in hell and condemned \u201ca Vatican that \u2018fornicates\u2019 with kings.\u201d Perhaps it\u2019s a sign of divine approval that the censor\u2019s strikethroughs have faded away and Dante\u2019s original text shines through.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bard College literature scholar Luzzi posits that Dante was \u201can intensely experimental writer,\u201d one reason that centuries later James Joyce would take so many cues from him. Dante was experimental, Luzzi continues, first because he did not write his Divine Comedy in Latin\u2014a choice that limited his audience, since all literate Europeans would know Latin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}