Simon Gilson examines Dante's reception in Florence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when Dante was represented, commemorated and debated in a variety of ways. Paying particular attention to Dante's influence on major authors such as Boccaccio and Petrarch, Italian humanism, and civic identity and popular culture in Florence, Gilson ranges across literature, philosophy and art, languages and social groups.

Simon A. Gilson's new volume provides the first comprehensive account of the critical and editorial reception in Renaissance Italy, particularly Florence, Venice and Padua, of the work of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). Gilson investigates a range of textual frameworks and related contexts that influenced the way in which Dante's work was produced and circulated, from editing and translation to commentaries, criticism and public lectures. In so doing he overturns the received notion that Dante and his work were eclipsed during the Renaissance. Central themes of investigation include the...