Book Section
Elena Lombardi
In Praise of Detheologizing
This essay argues that Barolini’s concept and practice of detheologizing is still much needed today in Dante Studies, as the poem and the discipline continue to be under threat by the assumption that the theological and religious reading are the main (if not the sole) readings possible, and that ‘God’ proffers the answer to the tensions, the errors, the grey areas, the unknowns, the pleasures, and the resistance of the poem.
Keywords: detheologizing; philology and theology; Inferno 5
| Title |
In Praise of Detheologizing
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| Author(s) |
Elena Lombardi
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| Identifier | |
| Description |
This essay argues that Barolini’s concept and practice of detheologizing is still much needed today in Dante Studies, as the poem and the discipline continue to be under threat by the assumption that the theological and religious reading are the main (if not the sole) readings possible, and that ‘God’ proffers the answer to the tensions, the errors, the grey areas, the unknowns, the pleasures, and the resistance of the poem.
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| Is Part Of | |
| Place |
Berlin
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| Publisher |
ICI Berlin Press
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| Date |
November 4, 2025
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| Subject |
detheologizing
philology and theology
Inferno 5
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| Rights |
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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| Language |
en-GB
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| page start |
285
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| page end |
298
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| Source |
A World of Possibilities: The Legacy of The Undivine Comedy, ed. by Kristina M. Olson, Cultural Inquiry, 37 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2025), pp. 285–98
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References
- Alighieri, Dante, Vita Nuova, ed. by Michele Barbi (Florence: Società Dantesca Italiana, 1960)
- Alighieri, Dante, The Divine Comedy, trans. with commentary by Charles S. Singleton, 6 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970–75)
- Alighieri, Dante, La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata, ed. by Giorgio Petrocchi, Società Dantesca Italiana, Edizione Nazionale, 2nd rev. edn, 4 vols (Florence: Le Lettere, 1994)
- Alighieri, Dante, Vita Nuova, trans. by Mark Musa, Oxford World Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)
- Alighieri, Dante, Rime giovanili e della ‘Vita Nuova’, ed. by Teodolinda Barolini, with notes by Manuele Gragnolati (Milan: Rizzoli, 2009)
- Auerbach, Erich, ‘Farinata and Cavalcante’, in Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), pp. 174–202 <https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt3fgz26.11>
- Barolini, Teodolinda, The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) <https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400820764>
- Barolini, Teodolinda, ‘Dante and Cavalcanti (On Making Distinctions in Matters of Love): Inferno 5 in its Lyric Context’, Dante Studies, 116 (1998), pp. 31–63; repr. in Barolini, Dante and the Origins of Literary Culture (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), pp. 70–101 <https://doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9780823227037.003.0004>
- Barolini, Teodolinda, ‘Dante and Francesca da Rimini: Realpolitik, Romance, Gender’, Speculum, 75 (2000), pp. 1–28 <https://doi.org/10.2307/2887423>; repr. in Barolini, Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), pp. 304–32 <https://doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9780823227037.003.0015>
- Barolini, Teodolinda, ‘The Case of the Lost Original Ending of Dante’s Vita Nuova: More Notes Toward a Critical Philology’, Medioevo letterario d’Italia, 11 (2014), pp. 27–44; repr. in revised form in Barolini, Dante’s Multitudes: History, Philosophy, Method (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2022), pp. 287–97 <https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.21996052.20>
- Brilli, Elisa, and Giuliano Milani, Dante’s Lives: Biography and Autobiography (London: Reaktion, 2023)
- Burke, Kenneth, The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970) <https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520352025>
- Contini, Gianfranco, Letteratura Italiana delle origini (Florence: Sansoni, 1985)
- Crisafi, Nicolò, Dante’s Masterplot and Alternative Narratives in the ‘Commedia’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022) <https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192857675.001.0001>
- Eliot, T. S., ‘Dante’ [1929], in Eliot, Selected Essays (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), pp. 237–77
- Freccero, John, ‘Infernal Irony: The Gates of Hell’, in Freccero, Dante: The Poetics of Conversion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 93–109
- Gragnolati, Manuele, ‘Authorship and Performance in Dante’s Vita nova’, in Aspects of the Performative in Medieval Culture, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), pp. 123–40 <https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110222470>
- Gragnolati, Manuele, Amor che move. Linguaggio del corpo e forma del desiderio in Dante, Pasolini e Morante (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 2013)
- Gragnolati, Manuele, and Elena Lombardi, ‘Autobiografia d’autore’, Dante Studies, 136 (2018), pp. 143–60 <https://doi.org/10.1353/das.2018.0005>
- Lombardi, Elena, The Wings of the Doves: Love and Desire in Dante and Medieval Culture (Montreal: McGill Queens University Press, 2012) <https://doi.org/10.1515/9780773586949>
Cite as:
Elena Lombardi, ‘In Praise of Detheologizing’, in A World of Possibilities: The Legacy of The Undivine Comedy, ed. by Kristina M. Olson, Cultural Inquiry, 37 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2025), pp. 285-98 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-37_14>