Book Section
F. Regina Psaki
The Role of the Reader in Actualizing the Commedia
Chapter 8 of Barolini’s Undivine Comedy examines Dante’s concrete, poetic representation of his immaterial nonlinguistic paradise. Exploring Paradiso’s content and making, its author’s fashioning of self and poem within its audience, I argue that the way Dante projects the Commedia into its readers echoes this reconciliation of opposites. Mary Jo Bang’s translations exemplify the Commedia’s self-perpetuation in new generations of readers, making us soundboxes in which it resonates and persists.
Keywords: Dante; Paradiso; Undivine Comedy; reader response; translation; Bang, Mary Jo
| Title |
The Role of the Reader in Actualizing the Commedia
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| Author(s) |
F. Regina Psaki
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| Identifier | |
| Description |
Chapter 8 of Barolini’s Undivine Comedy examines Dante’s concrete, poetic representation of his immaterial nonlinguistic paradise. Exploring Paradiso’s content and making, its author’s fashioning of self and poem within its audience, I argue that the way Dante projects the Commedia into its readers echoes this reconciliation of opposites. Mary Jo Bang’s translations exemplify the Commedia’s self-perpetuation in new generations of readers, making us soundboxes in which it resonates and persists.
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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 |
Dante
Paradiso
Undivine Comedy
reader response
translation
Bang, Mary Jo
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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 |
317
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| page end |
337
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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. 317–37
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References
- Dante’s Inferno, dir. by Sean Meredith (Ricochet Releasing, 2008)
- Alighieri, Dante, The Divine Comedy, trans. by Allen Mandelbaum, 3 vols (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980–82)
- 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, Inferno, trans. by Mary Jo Bang (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2012)
- Alighieri, Dante, Purgatorio, trans. by Mary Jo Bang (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2021)
- Alighieri, Dante, Paradiso, trans. by Mary Jo Bang (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2025)
- Bang, Mary Jo, ‘A Note on the Translation’, in Dante Alighieri, Inferno, trans. by Mary Jo Bang (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2012), pp. 7–12
- Bang, Mary Jo, ‘A Note on the Translation’, in Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, trans. by Mary Jo Bang (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2021), pp. xvii–xxiv
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- Gillen, Katherine, and Kathryn Vomero Santos, ‘Shakespeare and the Politics of Tradaptation’, PMLA, 138.3 (May 2023), pp. 715–20 <https://doi.org/10.1632/S0030812923000391>
- Gogarty, Oliver St John, The Poems and Plays of Oliver St John Gogarty (Gerrards Cross, Bucks: Colin Smythe Limited, 2002)
- Halpern, Daniel, ed., Dante’s Inferno: Translations by Twenty Contemporary Poets (Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1993)
- Havely, Nick R., and Bernard O’Donoghue, eds, After Dante: Poets in Purgatory: Translations by Contemporary Poets (Todmorden: Arc Publications, 2021)
- Hawkins, Peter S., and Rachel Jacoff, eds, The Poet’s Dante (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002)
- de Rooy, Ronald, ed., Divine Comedies for the New Millennium: Recent Dante Translations in America and the Netherlands (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2003) <https://doi.org/10.1017/9789048505241>
Cite as:
F. Regina Psaki, ‘The Role of the Reader in Actualizing the Commedia’, 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. 317-37 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-37_16>