Title: Dante's volume from alpha to omega /
Authors: Moudarres, Christiana Purdy,; Chiodo, Carol,; Yale University
Year: 2021
Subjects: Dante Alighieri, Criticism and interpretation Congresses.; Divina commedia (Dante Alighieri)
Abstract: Dante's Volume from Alpha to Omega' brings together essays written by internationally recognized scholars to explore the poet's encyclopedic impulse in light of our own frenzied information age. This comprehensive collection of essays, coedited by Carol Chiodo and Christiana Purdy Moudarres, examines how Dante's spiritual quest is powered by an encyclopedic one, which has for more than seven centuries drawn a readership as diverse as the knowledge his work contains. The essays investigate both the intellectual and spiritual pleasures that Dante's 'Commedia' affords, underscoring how, through the sheer breadth of its knowledge, the poem demands collective and collaborative inquiry. Rather than isolating the poetic or theological strands of the 'Commedia', the book acts as a bridge across disciplines, braiding together the well-worn strands of poetry and theology with those of philosophy, the sciences, and the arts. The wide range of entries within Dante's poetic 'summa' yield multiple opportunities to reflect on their points of intersection, and the urgency of the convergence of the poem's aesthetic, intellectual, and affective aims.