Dante's Persons
An Ethics of the Transhuman
Heather Webb
Reviews and Awards
"As Girard said of all great literature, The Divine Comedy exceeds any theory about it. Dante's Persons approaches the poem in that spirit, showing yet another side of its inexhaustible riches through insightful readings of many more passages than this review has touched on, and along the way pressing further than any account I know of into its enduring value for those interested in mimetic theory." -- Curtis Gruenler, The Bulletin of the Colloquium on Violence & Religion
"Webb unobtrusively works some of the weightiest traditions of thinking about persons, as well as some of the newer knowledge from cognitive psychology and the neurosciences, into her probes of Dante's incomparable phenomenological exploration of the experience of being a person. She sounds its hardly fathomable pitfalls and seemingly impossible demands and marvelous discoveries." -- The Years Work in Critical and Cultural Theory
"The strength of this work is in its readability and comprehensiveness. Through her enjoyable prose, Webb introduces innovative ideas built on existing scholarship and drawn from multiple sources and disciplines (ranging from critical theory and theology to ethics, history, and art). ... it provides readers with a deep understanding of Dante's concept of persona and encourages further reflections about the relevance of human dignity." -- Nicolino Applauso, Speculum
"This is a sincere and heartfelt reading of the Commedia, not as a distant historical document, but as a guide for life, a guide to interpersonal relations, a guide to recognizing the personhood of the other." -- Alison Cornish, Renaissance Quarterly
"Webb is right, I think, to contend that Dante also presents what he might have called the anagogic vision of blessedness and that he anchors that vision in the face that knows itself in the love of God that it sees and shares with others...after all, there is no consequence, only simultaneity. In the end, Webb's claim that the substance of personhood is ethical seems to me a canny way to recast the function of the intellect, which is the faculty that oversees one's relation to oneself, and the will, which is the faculty that oversees one's relations with others...they are one, joined by an act that corresponds to the ardent regarding that joins the blessed in heaven, itself a reflection of the Holy Spirit, which, breathing love between them, joins the Father and the Son. For this, as for many other reasons, Dante's Persons is a valuable, mind-expanding contribution to our understanding of human and divine relations in the Comedy." --Warren Ginsberg, The Medieval Review
"Focusing on Purgatorio as the primary place in Dante's Commedia where it is possible for persona to develop-the static nature of Inferno, of necessity, affording no meaningful possibility for change or development-Webb examines how characters are presented as personae in process and how the reader is called to engage those characters. Turning in conclusion to Paradiso, Webb argues "that a number of long-standing critical habitual vocabularies and paradigms that stress overcoming or surpassing individual relationships in Dante's trajectory...are ultimately limiting if we seek to understand this new conjoined vision that Paradiso celebrates." Offering insightful and fresh readings of two pairs of characters-Franscesca and Paolo in Inferno and Statius and Virgil in Purgatorio-Dante's Persons is provocative, erudite, and best suited to advanced scholars." --D. Pesta, Choice
