Dante's Lyric Redemption
Eros, Salvation, Vernacular Tradition
Tristan Kay
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