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Description
John Took provides an accessible and entirely original view of one of the most important poets and thinkers in all of Western literature, Dante Alighieri.
Dante is the poet that everyone knows of yet also knows little about. And yet he was probably the most important and powerful poet that the Western world has ever produced. There are many translations of his work in English, but of Dante himself, most people only know about his love object Beatrice, that he was exiled from Florence and that he wrote The Divine Comedy--but maybe little else.
In his Intelligent Person's Guide, Professor John Took introduces the reader to the principle themes of Dante's work: the polarities of existence, time and eternity, freedom and destiny, individuality and existence, the multiplicity of human loving. It is by self-confrontation and self-transcendence that we come to understand our human journey through hell, purgatory and on to paradise. These ostensibly somewhat complex ideas are here explained by John Took with pellucid clarity. In the course of this book we are caught up by the imaginative excitement in this study of a poetic genius which we cannot fail to be drawn into ourselves, and to find infectious.
Table of Contents
Preface: Preliminary Confession
Introduction: Dante and the Existential Point of View
Dante at the Point of Ultimate Concern
Dante: Who, What, Where and When?
Course of the Argument
1 Dante, Self and Selfhood
Love-Procession and the Love-Imperative: Preliminary Considerations in the Areas of Theology and Ethics
Patterns of Self-Relatedness: Being as Ahead of Self, as Away from Self and Alongside Self
A Phenomenology of Being
2 The Vita Nova
Preliminary Considerations: New Life and a New Book
Love and Love-Understanding: The Pilgrim Way
A Commedia a minore
3 The Convivio
Far-wandering and Friendship: The Courage of the Convivio
Feasting and Faring Well: A Guide for the Dispossessed
Problems of Perspective and a Civic Ontology
4 The Commedia
Preliminary Considerations: Spiritual Journeying and the Courage to Be
A Song of Ascents: The Commedia à la lettre
Journeying under the Aspect of Seeing (Inferno)
Journeying under the Aspect of Striving (Purgatorio)
Journeying under the Aspect of Surpassing (Paradiso)
5 The Power of the Word: Issues in the Area of Language and Literature
Being, Becoming and the Sanctity of the Word
The Triumph and the Image and a Writerly Text
Conclusion: In Conversation with Dante
Further Reading
Index of Names
Product details
| Published | Dec 15 2020 |
|---|---|
| Format | Hardback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Extent | 224 |
| ISBN | 9781472951038 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Continuum |
| Dimensions | 9 x 6 inches |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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