Dante in France. La parola del testo. XVII. 1-2. 2013

This volume of essays is born from a workshop held at the University of Leeds on 17 September 2010, at which a group of researchers met to discuss aspects of Dante's reception in France. It seems timely to take stock of the history of French responses to Dante: while the question has not received a scholarly overview for several decades, Dante's importance in French culture has by no means diminished. Six new French translations of the Commedia have been published in the last thirty years, and Dante continues to be an explicit reference point for French culture and thought in the twenty-first century. His work is not a mere museum piece, but is used to cast light on contemporary society, often in surprising and unexpected ways. The aim of this volume has to explore this history, from Dante's earliest French readers to the present day. The chapters of the book therefore follow a chronological order, beginning with the years immediately following Dante's death in 1321. As three of the twentieth-century readers of Dante discussed in this volume - Proust, Beckett and Kieslowski - demonstrate, Dante's Commedia - that most daring, surprising and experimental work - defies domestication and retains its potential to enrich and challenge French cultural and intellectual life.