« Taiwan Journal of Political Science No.12Publish: 2000/06

Transforming the Secular: Poet Dante and Citizen Dante

Author: Sy-Shyan Chen

Abstract / Chinese PDF Download

This  is  a  study  about  Alighieri  Dante’s  political  thought,  and  its particular  emphasis  is  placed  upon  The  Divine  Comedy.  The  Comedy  has long been neglected as a masterpiece of political thought, mainly because of its overwhelming reputation in the history of the poetic tradition. The present study  is  an  attempt  to  reconstruct  the  intellectual  context  in  which  Dante operated, with the hope to vindicate the claim that Dante is one of the last, not  the  least,  medieval  political  theorists  who  successfully  integrated  the classical  and  the  Christian  ingredients  of  politics  on  the  eve  of  the Renaissance. Part of the efforts, in the final sections, have been laid on the exploration of how the mode of literary representation helped to dictate the level on which Dante may have achieved in self-articulating as a prophet of his time.

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