Mortality and Imagination
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Book Series
Disputatio, vol. 18
- Pages: 292 p.
- Size:156 x 234 mm
- Language(s):English, Italian
- Publication Year:2010
- € 55,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-53129-8
- Hardback
- Available
- € 55,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-55806-6
- E-book
- Available
Summary
This volume provides an advanced survey of Dante studies and
offers a new, detailed, and accessible reading of his
Purgatorio, making this very rich text freshly available
to an English-speaking readership. Through analysis of a variety of
emotional states across Dante’s three major works - the
Purgatorio, Inferno, and Paradiso, and
in his minor works, such as the Rime and the
Convivio - Dante in Purgatory: States of Affect
contends that emotions are historically constructed at different
moments. The book also demonstrates that while Dante presents some
emotions as defined and distinct, he depicts others as blends of
several states of feeling, as emotions which are in process or
metamorphosis. In particular, the author examines the seven
cardinal vices (‘seven deadly sins’) amid a wider
discussion of states of affect. He argues that the emotional states
associated with these vices are different from contemporary
conceptions of affective states. He compels us to acknowledge that
there is a history of both the emotional states themselves and the
methods with which we describe them. Above all, his study shows
that there is a history of emotions which is part of the history of
a European acquisition of a subjective sense of the self. To
historicize emotion thus requires that the ‘human’
becomes increasingly defined, as the subject is ascribed further
interior qualities which must be named. Dante in Purgatory
is thus relevant not only to readers of Dante, but also to any
reader interested in thinking about emotion and affectual states
and how these can be described, and how they can be
conceptualized.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface vii
Chapter 1: On Affect 1
Chapter 2: Seven Capital Vices 13
Chapter 3: Virtues and Vices: Convivio to Purgatorio 37
Chapter 4: Purgatorio I and II 61
Chapter 5: The Art of Pride 81
Chapter 6: Envy 103
Chapter 7: Overcoming Anger 127
Chapter 8: Sloth 145
Chapter 9: On Avarice 175
Chapter 10: Greed and Gluttony 197
Chapter 11: ‘Nostro peccato fu ermafrodito’ 219
Chapter 12: Matelda: Love, Narcissism, Fragmentation 241
Bibliography 265
Index of Dante’s Works 285
Index of the Bible and Apocrypha 287
General Index 289