Dante and the Romantics [Paperback]

The British Romantic poets were among the first to realise the centrality of the Divine Comedy for the evolution of the European epic. This study explores the significance of Dante for Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats and William Blake. What was their idea of Dante? Why did they feel the need to approach his Christian epic on the afterlife? This study aims to answer these questions by focusing on the three poets' preoccupation with form and language.Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction PART ONE: (PRE)-ROMANTIC RECEPTIONS OF DANTE The Eighteenth-Century Reception: Dante and Visual Culture The Romantic Translation of the Divine Comedy : Henry Francis Cary's The Vision Dante and High Culture: The Romantic Search for the Epic PART TWO: ROMANTIC PALIMPSESTS 'L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle': Shelley on Dante and Love John Keats and Dante: Speaking the Gods' Language William Blake: The Illustrator of Dante Works Cited and Select Bibliography IndexANTONELLA BRAIDA is Lecturer in Italian at the University of Durham. She is co-editor of Image and Word: Reflections of Art and Literature from the Middle Ages to Present (2003).