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Dante and the Medieval Other World First edition CUP 1990, reprinted 2007. Dante and the Medieval Other World remains the standard text on the subject of the relationship between Dante's Divine Comedy and earlier, popular representations of the afterlife. Blurb A major study of the Divine Comedy, this book offers an original perspective on Dante’s representation of the afterlife. Dr Morgan departs from the conventional critical emphasis on Dante’s place in relation to the learned tradition of such representations by undertaking a thorough examination of the poem in the context of popular beliefs. Her principal sources are thus not the highly literary texts (such as Virgil’s Aeneid or Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae) which have become a familiar context for the poem, but rather the visions of the other world found in popular writings, painting and sculpture from the centuries leading up to its composition. The view of Dante which emerges from this investigation calls for a radical revision of modern critical opinion concerning the nature of his originality. The book will be of interest to non-specialists as well as to scholars of Dante, since it offers a clear preliminary account of the other world tradition, supported by appendices giving a chronology of its principal representations and summaries of the major texts. Fully illustrated throughout, it integrates with the literary and theological aspects of Dante’s heritage the important but hitherto neglected dimension of art history. The new paperback edition can be ordered from Amazon, or direct from me at a discounted price of £20. I still have a few hardback editions left as well, for £25. To contact me click on the swans below. The Last Judgment and the Harrowing of Hell, from Wenhaston, Suffolk; S M Novella, Florence; Camposanto, Pisa.
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