This is the first English translation of Il Fiore, the late-thirteenth-century narrative poem in 232 sonnets based on the Old French Roman de la Rose, and the Detto d'Amore, a free-wheeling version of many Ovidian precepts of love in 240 rhymed couplets. The elaborate allegory of the Fiore presents the complex workings of love, understood primarily as carnal passion, in the human psyche through the use of personifications of a wide array of characters who engage in various social (and bellic) interactions. There are personifications of social stereotypes and...

Only the second volume dedicated to Dante and the Franciscans, this collection of essays offers a Franciscan reading of the Divine Comedy. Nine of the ten essays address how Dante's Comedy and his Vita Nuova were influenced by Franciscan spirituality; the tenth essay addresses the influence that Dante's Comedy had on the preaching of the Franciscan Order. More specifically, the essays in this volume are truly interdisciplinary and contribute to the understanding of how Dante understood and employed Franciscan sources in his literary production and how Bernardino of...