Dante and Governance.
BARNES, JOHN C.
Dante and Governance, ed. John Woodhouse (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1997). xii + 179 pp. ISBN 0-19-815911-0. 30.00 [pounds sterling].
If this title suggests a focus on ideas rather than on poetic form,
three of the nine essays which follow the editor's introduction
seem to have migrated from another book. Piero Boitani's almost
unimpeachable reading of Purgatorio XVI is most interesting for its
perceptive attention to questions of structure and style while evading
issues inherent in what Dante says. Martin McLaughlin extends our
awareness of Dante's stylistic debt to Pier della Vigna in Inferno
XIII and elsewhere, not least in the political letters. Peter
Hainsworth, although casting light on the underlying Platonic nexus, in
Dante's mind, of the good, the beautiful, and the true, is
primarily concerned with an aesthetic problem -- how Beatrice's
political speech in Paradiso xxx may be viewed as part of a unified
canto.
Peter Armour offers, with generous contextualization, an
invigorating analysis of Dante's theory of popular sovereignty and
establishes the compatibility of comunale freedom (of an ideal popolo)
with imperial rule. Richard Cooper elegantly surveys Dante's
references to France and French culture, advocating a number of
distinctions as keys to resolving apparent inconsistencies in some of
the poet's judgements. Valerio Lucchesi, mindful of theological
texts and of thirteenth-century Florence's social history, usefully
explores the contrast between Farinata and Cavalcante as exempla of `the
variable origin of disbelief' (p. 101) -- praesumptio or
desperatio. Claire Honess elucidates Dante's ethical conception of
citizenship and cogently argues that, in the poet's view, while a
woman's place is in the home, her role in fostering domestic
well-being is an essential prerequisite of civic well-being. John Took,
with admirable profundity and precision, scrutinizes Dante's
understanding of justice, of the relationship between human and divine
justice, and of the connection between justice and love.
George Holmes's purpose is to adjust the development of
Dante's thinking about the papacy: he suggests that Paradiso IV and
XIX alter the doctrine advanced in Monarchia I, and observes that
Paradiso is discrepant from Monarchia III's `total demolition of
papal secular power and property' (p. 48). The argument hinges on a
dating of Monarchia (1312-14) that has been out of favour in recent
decades, and evidendy on a conviction that Dante's aim in Paradiso
`was to correct his earlier errors': every `section' of
Paradiso amends one of Dante's other works except cantos X-XIV,
`which deal with the mendicant orders'; in these `Dante shows no
interest elsewhere except in Il fiore', where `the mendicant orders
had been lampooned' (pp. 56-7). Ergo, Dante was the author of the
anonymous Fiore, the conclusion being described (p. 48) as
`compelling'. I find the view of Paradiso underpinning these
deductions distinctly arbitrary, though Pardiso undeniably embodies some
element of palinode, and there is merit in the opinion that the final
cantica makes the Commedia a more balanced poem (as, for example, in
canto xx's emphasis on predestination, a counterweight to
Purgatorio XVI'S emphasis on free will).
Overall, the theme of Dante and governance (of the soul as well as
of the state) is richly illuminated by this volume, while every essay in
it either deepens our insight or provokes our thought, usually both. The
book is a fine tribute to its dedicatee, the late Cecil Grayson.
JOHN C. BARNES
Dublin
