Overview

Dante's Divine Comedy in Early Renaissance England compares the intellectual, emotional, and religious world of Dante in 13th-century Florence with that of a group of English intellectuals gathered around Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, uncle of the King, Henry VI. Here, Jonathan Hughes establishes that there was a Renaissance in 15th-century England, encouraged by the discovery and translations of works of Greek philosophers and developments in science and medicine; and that vernacular writers in Gloucester’s circle, such as John Lydgate and Robert Hoccleve, were of fundamental importance in exploring the meaning of the self and man’s relationship with the natural world and the classical past. However, the appearance in 15th-century England of Dante’s 'Commedia', the most popular work of the Middle Ages, served to remind writers and readers of the cost of intellectual enquiry: the loss of faith in a harmonious and beautiful world; the redemptive power of the love of a woman; and the tangible presence of an afterlife. Engagingly written and meticulously researched, this innovative study shines a new perspective on Dante scholarship as well as offering a unique anaylsis of intellectual thought and culture in 15th-century England.

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9781350146280

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A fresh and original reflection on Dante's epic and its place in the learned and literary culture of the English; not only, in fact, at the moment of their first encounter with the Divine Comedy on the border between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance but over the whole sweep of the seven centuries in which the Florentine genius has nourished the creative imagination in these islands. The ambition of Jonathan Hughes' study is driven by a deep passion for Dante and the language and imagery of his vision, which he shares with his reader in his own engaging and energetic prose. This is a must-read whether your route into Dante has been by way of Medieval Studies or the art of William Blake or the poetry of Seamus Heaney. * James G. Clark, Professor of History, University of Exeter, UK * In this impressively erudite and ambitious study, Jonathan Hughes provides a long overdue, wide ranging account of Dante's reception in England in the late 14th and 15th Centuries. Spanning the works of Chaucer, Lydgate, and the wider circle of writers and intellectuals linked to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, Hughes persuasively defines this period as an Early English Renaissance whose conflicted response to Dante's vision was mediated by Boccaccio and the later Italian humanists. In its cross-disciplinary scope, this study vividly evokes the complex network of discourses and concerns-literary, political, theological, philosophical, psychological, and scientific-within which Dante's works were productively entangled on their arrival in England. This study will no doubt become an important source for scholars interested in early responses in England to both Dante and to 15th Century Italian humanism. * Anthony Russell, Associate Professor of English; Coordinator, Italian Studies Program, University of Richmond, USA *

Author Information

Jonathan Hughes is Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, UK. He is also Guest Lecturer at the Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism, UK. His books include Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire (1988), The Religious Life of Richard III (1997) and Arthurian Myths and Alchemy: The Kingship of Edward IV (2002).

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