Dante's Lyric Redemption

Eros, Salvation, Vernacular Tradition

Tristan Kay

Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs

A detailed reappraisal of Dante's relationship to his vernacular lyric heritage
Addresses a number of key debates in Dante studies
Concerns cultural topics and tensions of interest to medievalists across disciplines
Engages with a wide range of British, American, and Italian scholarship
Looks beyond linguistic and national boundaries to consider Occitan as well as Italian literature

Dante's Lyric Redemption

Eros, Salvation, Vernacular Tradition

Tristan Kay

Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs

Description

Dante's Lyric Redemption offers a re-examination of two strongly interrelated aspects of the poet's work: the role and value he ascribes to earthly love and his relationship to the Romance lyric tradition of his time. It argues that an account of Dante's poetic journey that posits a stark division between earthly and divine love, and between the secular lyric poet and the Christian, does little justice to his highly distinctive and often polemical handling of these categories. The book firstly contextualizes, traces, and accounts for Dante's intriguing commitment to love poetry, from the 'minor works' to the Commedia. It highlights his attempts, especially in his masterpiece, to overcome normative oppositions in formulating a uniquely redemptive vernacular poetics, one oriented towards the eternal while rooted in his affective, and indeed erotic, past. It then examines how this matter is at stake in Dante's treatment of three important lyric predecessors: Guittone d'Arezzo, Arnaut Daniel, and Folco of Marseilles. Through a detailed reading of Dante's engagement with these poets, the book illuminates his careful departure from a dualistic model of love and conversion and shows his erotic commitment to be at the heart of his claims to pre-eminence as a vernacular author.

Dante's Lyric Redemption

Eros, Salvation, Vernacular Tradition

Tristan Kay

Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs

Dante's Lyric Redemption

Eros, Salvation, Vernacular Tradition

Tristan Kay

Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs

Author Information

Tristan Kay specializes in medieval Italian culture, with a particular focus on Dante and early lyric poetry. He graduated from the University of Leeds with a B.A. in Italian and Spanish in 2005 and remained at Leeds to complete an M.A. by Research on Dante and the troubadours in 2006. In 2010 he received his doctorate from the University of Oxford, writing a thesis on the relationship between eros, spirituality, and vernacular language in Dante. The thesis received the Society of Italian Studies Postgraduate Prize and Oxford's Senior Paget Toynbee Prize. From 2010 to 2012, he held a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Dartmouth College and since 2012 he has been Lecturer in Italian at the University of Bristol. He is an Associate Editor of the journal Italian Studies.

Dante's Lyric Redemption

Eros, Salvation, Vernacular Tradition

Tristan Kay

Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs

Reviews and Awards

"I would warmly recommend Dante's Lyric Redemption also to undergraduates who wish to enrich and complicate their view of the Middle Ages beyond that of a time of absolutes, transcendence, and self-denial." -- Nicolo Crisafi, ICI Berlin, Modern Language Review

"Specialists will find readings here to interest them, but the broader project joins a tradition of studies on Dante that have celebrated finding the unique, romanticized poetic "I" whose existence was a premise of their inquiry." --Laurence E. Hooper, Renaissance Quarterly

"...approaches in a new and original way the question of Dante's return to Beatrice in his magnum opus...poses important questions as it redefines the debate about the relationship between eros and spirituality in Dante's oeuvre, and especially in the Commedia...Kay does not accept the binary interpretation that draws a rigid line between earthly love (which, of course, is different from lust) and theology--and, hence, between Dante's so-called minor works and the Commedia...a testament to Dante's endless experimentalism through fusion of multiple seemingly mutually exclusive traditions through a careful manipulation of his sources and through novel approaches and re-interpretations of his own early works, now seen in a new key of Christian values." --Jelena Todorovic, The Medieval Review