Dante and the knot of body and soul

by Marianne Shapiro

Dante and the Knot of Body and Soul seeks to evaluate in just measure the material, bodily, erotic, and aesthetic aspects of the intellectual foundations of the Commedia and explore the idea of the embodied spirit and its poetic consequences in Dante's worldmaking poem. While much current scholarship has set out to recover the specific literary dimensions of Dante's enterprise by prising them away from the overriding theological concerns, this work is intended to bring the two together in an integrated vision.