Reading Dante with Images

The Lectura Dantis is among the most traditional modes of studying Dante’s Commedia. This series undertakes a new approach to conducting canto by canto studies of the poem, in keeping with this tradition, while simultaneously engaging in an innovative way with the work's vast illustration history. Important Dante scholars with a diversity of methodological and conceptual backgrounds will contribute chapters focused on a canto of their choice in which they conduct a close reading of that canto while also engaging with selections of its illustrations, exploring the manners in which the images relate to the text, and even, how the images have informed their readings of the text. Such an approach has never been taken up before in a systematic fashion. The series will continue until all 100 cantos have been covered. A student or scholar of Dante will thus have, in the end, a chapter to consult on any given canto that explores its visually-oriented qualities. In direct relation to the Commedia, this series sheds new light on these cantos, on selected illustrations and illustrators, and on the poem’s ekphratic tendencies. More broadly, this series will demonstrate a wide variety of models for engaging with illustrated literature, of use to scholars working on any well-illustrated literary work. It thus fits into broader interests, in theory and/or practice, concerning the relations between images and texts that has in recent years been of noteworthy interest to art historians and literary scholars.