The real scandal of Dante’s Beatrice

https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/t/0/_/oupblog/~https://blog.oup.com/2021/09/the-real-scandal-of-dantes-beatrice/2021 sees the 700th anniversary of the death of poet Dante Alighieri. To mark this, we asked authors of some of our new publishing on Dante to write for the OUPblog.For over 700 years, Dante’s description of his first encounter with Beatrice has scandalized readers. Medieval commentators debate Dante’s possible blasphemy in glorifying a mortal woman. Counter-reformation editors censor...

Arrested Not at Home But in the Street

"M. immediately decided that nobody was more important than Dante, and regarded him as an inseparable companion ever afterward—even twice taking him to prison with him. Anticipating his arrest—as I have already said, everybody we knew did this as a matter of course—M. obtained an edition of the Divine Comedy in small format and always had it with him in his pocket, just in case he was arrested not at home but in the street."  "M." is Osip Mandelstam, as his widow Nadezhda refers to him in ...

Stored in the Body - and other TLS clips - 11 Jun 2021 Print Edition