The Fiore in Context: Dante, France, Tuscany

The second volume in the original William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante Studies, The Fiore in Context: Dante, France, Tuscany is the record of a milestone in the study of the Fiore, and perhaps in Dante studies: the international conference on the Fiore held at St. John’s College, Cambridge, in September 1994. The conference, attended by most of the world’s leading experts on the Fiore, examined many aspects of the poem, including textual questions, its cultural context, and its relations with the Roman de la Rose and the Comedy. Above all it constituted, in the judgment of the participants themselves, the most important discussion of the poem’s attribution to Dante since Contini’s pronouncement of the question in 1965. The published proceedings reproduce both the questionnaire that framed the conference, in which each participant weighs all the principal arguments for and against attributing the Fiore to Dante, as well as the lively discussion that followed each paper.

Zygmunt G. Baranski is Albert J. and Helen M. Ravarino Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Notre Dame, Emeritus Serena Professor of Italian at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of New Hall. He is co-editor of Petrarch and Dante: Anti-Dantism, Metaphysics, Tradition.

Patrick Boyde is Emeritus Professor of Italian at St. John College in the University of Cambridge. He is the author and editor of several books on Dante, including Perception and Passion in Dante’s Comedy.