Dante Alighieri

DANTE ALIGHIERI

His Life and Works

BRONZE BUST OF DANTE
In the possession of Whitworth Wallis, Esq., Birmingham

His Life and Works

Paget Toynbee

Introduction by

Robert Hollander

Dover Publications, Inc.

Mineola, New York

Copyright

    
Introduction copyright © 2005 by Robert Hollander

    
All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

    
This Dover edition, first published in 2005, is an augmented republication of the 1910 “Revised and Considerably Enlarged” fourth edition of the work originally published by Methuen & Co. Ltd., London, in 1900. Robert Hollander has written a new Introduction specially for the Dover edition.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Toynbee, Paget Jackson, 1855–1932.

    
Dante Alighieri : his life and works / Paget Toynbee ; introduction by Robert Hollander.

    
         p. cm.

    
Originally published: London : Methuen, 1900.

    
Includes bibliographical references and index.

    
eISBN 13: 978-0-4861-46423

    
  1. Dante Alighieri, 1265–1321. 2. Authors, Italian–To 1500– Biography I. Title.

PQ 4335.T7 2005
851'.1– dc22
[B]

2005045176

Manufactured in the United States of America
Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501

Robert Hollander

I
N the first twenty years of the last century, Paget Jackson Toynbee (1855–1932) made a lasting mark on Dante studies. (His main contributions will be mentioned below.) This book, published as a short monograph in 1899 (with less detailed descriptions of the works being the most notable difference with respect to the present volume), was much revised in the fourth edition of 1910 (the third edition had already been paid the rare–at that time–compliment, for a book about Dante, of an Italian translation).

    
What distinguishes Toynbee's work is its meticulous attention to detail, bringing a gift for clear-headed analysis into play in an attempt to get the life and works “right,” since both are surrounded by uncertainty that results from the near-total absence of any corroborating record for the “facts” about Dante and his work that have come down to us. It is also distinguished by a judicious turn of mind in dealing with most of these thorny problems (some nearly inevitable, given that uncertainty).

    
We want to remember (as Toynbee himself demonstrates in his later volume
Dante in English Literature
) that, until the Romantic era, with the imposing exception of Chaucer, rarely were English poets excited to the level of imitation by Dante's great poem, as were, to name but two, Byron and Shelley. Thus Toynbee's enthusiasm is part of a second British “Dante moment,” this one centered in Oxford (where both he and Edward Moore taught) and involving literary critics more than poets. The most important of these figures was the first of them, Moore (1835–1916), one of the
great textual editors of the
Comedy
, his work used and admired even by Italian scholars, who did not hesitate to employ the texts that he edited as the new standard. In addition, and among his other contributions, were his “Studies in Dante,” collected in four volumes, useful even today. A great scholar himself, Toynbee, who collaborated with Moore on the collection of Dante's works known as “The Oxford Dante” (1924), frequently acknowledges his debt to Moore in the footnotes at the bottom of these pages. Another brilliant Dantean presence on the scene was that of Philip Wicksteed (1844–1927), a clergyman, a prolific student of economics, and a man who raised an amateur's interest in the Italian poet to the highest levels of scholarship, as is evident, for instance, in his
Dante and Aquinas
(1913). A sometime collaborator of Wicksteed was the much younger Edmund Gardner (1869–1935), whose two important book-length contributions are
Dante's Ten Heavens
(1898) and
Dante and the Mystics
(1913). These four men were the flower of this period in English Dante studies, but several other scholars also contributed to making this time extraordinary for Dante studies in Great Britain.

    
Toynbee's own other major contributions include
A Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante
(1898; second edition, Charles Singleton, 1968);
Dante in English Literature from Chaucer to Cary
(1909), an effort to gather every instance of the occurrence of references to Dante in English literature up to 1840; important articles collected in
Dante Studies and Researches
(1902) and
Dante Studies
(1921); and at that point the best critical edition of Dante's letters (1920). It is a record of accomplishment in Dante studies that is difficult to match.

    
This particular book was the first of its kind and obviously filled a need; it is a concise, straightforward presentation of Dante's life and works written for the general reader but useful for the specialist as well. One is impressed, reading through it, at how it has not become dated in a field of study in which the essential bibliography changes in major respects every quarter century. Only one present issue concerning the Dantean canon is not broached here, the question of the attribution of
Il fiore
and
Il Detto d'amore
, a question that divides its contemporary students
but was not even an issue in Toynbee's day; indeed, the first editions of Dante's complete works containing these two extended poetic exercises saw the light of day only after the First World War. Toynbee's judgments hold up remarkably well, even his hedging on the date of composition of the
Monarchia
(while leaving the question open, he decidedly prefers a date sometime between 1310 and 1313, while most contemporary students of the problem, after Pier Giorgio Ricci's intervention in his edition [1965], date it later, and no earlier than 1317). A century and more after he decided to dedicate himself to this task, forty years after Charles Singleton republished the then out-of-print text (1965), this book remains one of the best guides to someone trying to find an orientation in the world that Dante manufactured.

Hopewell, New Jersey
31 December 2004

T
HIS little book lays no claim to originality, and makes no pretence to learning or research. It is addressed rather to the so-called general reader than to the serious Dante student. The narrative is taken largely from the pages of Villani, Boccaccio, and from other similar sources. The reader will find fiction (at any rate from the critic's point of view) as well as fact in these pages, but he will, I hope, be at no loss to distinguish between the two. The legends and traditions which hang around the name of a great personality are a not unimportant element in his biography, and may sometimes serve to place him as well as, if not better than, the more sober estimates of the serious historian. I have not, therefore, thought it outside the scope of this sketch of Dante's life to include some of the anecdotes which at an early date began to be associated with his name, though certain of them demonstrably belong to a far earlier period.

    
Again, when a thing has been well said by a previous writer, I have been content to let him speak, instead of saying the same thing less well in my own words.

    
The translations for the most part are my own. I
have, however, been indebted for an occasional turn or phrase to Selfe and Wicksteed's
Selections from Villani
, and to the latter's versions of the
Early Lives of Dante
.

    
The illustrations are reproduced, by permission, from photographs by Messrs. Alinari and Messrs. Brogi of Florence.

    
May
, 1900

 

A
FOURTH edition of this book (the third edition of which has lately been translated into Italian by Professor Balsamo-Crivelli, of Turin) having been called for, I have, at the suggestion of the publishers, availed myself of the opportunity to make considerable additions to it (as well as to rectify sundry mistakes and omissions), which will, I trust, increase its value to students, without at the same time diminishing its interest for the general reader.

    
The present edition differs from its predecessors chiefly in respect of the much fuller treatment (in
Part V
) of Dante's works, of which brief analyses have now been supplied, together with information as to MSS. and critical editions, and, in the case of the
Divina Commedia
commentaries, as well as
data
, of special interest to the English reader, as to the various editions and translations of each work published in this country. Many additional
details will also be found in some of the other sections, especially in the more strictly biographical portions of the work.

    
Further, in the present edition I have made a point of supplying copious references to authorities (generally at the foot of the page), which will serve at once as an acknowledgment of my own obligations, and as a means whereby the reader may, if desired, check the information furnished in the text.

    
The bibliographical and biographical notes in the original Appendix have been considerably amplified, and four Appendices have been added. The first of these consists of a Genealogical Table of the family of Dante, with references to Dante's own allusions to members of his family. The others contain respectively, a translation of the letter of Frate Ilario to Uguccione della Faggiuola, to which renewed attention has been directed of late; extracts from some interesting letters of Seymour Kirkup to Gabriele Rossetti concerning the discovery of the Giotto portrait of Dante in the Bargello, and Kirkup's drawing from it (further information about which, supplied by Kirkup himself to the late owner of the original sketch, will be found in the body of the book); and, lastly, a Chronological List of early (cent. xiv-xvi) commentaries on the
Divina Commedia
.

    
The index, which of necessity has been entirely recast, has been made as full as possible in order to render the varied contents of the book easily accessible to the student for purposes of reference, and dates have been inserted as a convenient means of “orientation”.

    
Sundry illustrations have been added, among them
one of a fine bronze bust of Dante (supposed to be the work of a French artist at the beginning of the seventeenth century) in the possession of Mr. Whitworth Wallis, Director of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, who kindly supplied a photograph (hitherto unpublished) for the purpose of reproduction in this book.

PAGET TOYNBEE

    
20
January
, 1910

                
(the 590th anniversary of the disputation “De Aqua et Terra” at Verona)

    
In the numbering of the poems in the
Canzoniere
, and the line references in the prose works, the arrangement of the Oxford Dante has been followed.