An understanding of Dante the theologian as distinct from Dante the poet has been neglected in an appreciation of Dante's work as a whole. That is the starting-point of this vital new book. In giving theology fresh centrality, the author argues that theologians themselves should find, when they turn to Dante Alighieri, a compelling resource: whether they do so as historians of fourteenth-century Christian thought, or as interpreters of the religious issues of our own times. Expertly guiding his readers through the structure and content of the Commedia, Denys Turner reveals – in pacy and muscular prose – how Dante's aim for his masterpiece is to effect what it signifies. It is this quasi-sacramental character that renders it above all a theological treatise: whose meaning is intelligible only through poetry. Turner's Dante 'knows that both poetry and theology are necessary to the essential task and that each without the other is deficient.'
Author(s): Denys Turner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 318
City: Cambridge
Copyright_page
Dedication
Epigraph
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 Theology and Poetry
Part I Hell
2 Hell: Dante and Aquinas
3 Inferno as Anti-narrative
Part II Purgatory
4 Purgatory and Purgation
5 Hope, Memory, and the Earthly Paradise
Part III Paradise
6 Paradise and Paideia
7 Paradise and the End of Poetry
Select Bibliography
Index
