TY  - BOOK
AU  - Jason M. Baxter
PY  - 2020
CY  - Oxford, United Kingdom
PB  - Peter Lang Verlag
SN  - 9781788743969
TI  - The Infinite Beauty of the World
T2  - Dante’s Encyclopedia and the Names of God
DO  - 10.3726/b13440
UR  - https://www.peterlang.com/document/1056987
N2  - This book proposes a radically new interpretation of the Comedy’s encyclopedism by focusing on Dante’s work in light of the medieval imago mundi tradition. The work opens with a discussion of how the Florentine poet transgressed every generic boundary in his effort to gather «into one volume» a vast and varied set of creatures, places, landscapes, historical and mythological persons, weather conditions, and arts. It then goes on to show that this extraordinary encyclopedic breadth should be understood in the terms of Boethian and Augustinian spiritual exercises of envisioning the whole world in the mind’s eye, which themselves became the interpretive framework for the spiritual ends behind medieval encyclopedic texts. By bringing attention to Latin Platonism and twelfth-century authors (such as Alan of Lille, Bernard Silvestris, William of Conches, Hugh of St. Victor, and Thierry of Chatres), this book provides compelling new readings of the De vulgari eloquentia, as well as provocative insights into key figures (such as Brunetto Latini, Pier della Vigna, and Ulysses) and key passages (Purgatorio 28, Paradiso 26, and Paradiso 33).
KW  - Dante and neoplatonism, Bernard Silvestris, Alan of Lille, William of Conches, Hugh of St. Victor, Boethius and the commentary tradition, twelfth century renaissance, School of Chartres, imago mundi, encyclopedism, divine naming, cataphatic, apophatic, The Infinite Beauty of the World, Jason M. Baxter
LA  - English
ER  -