Style, Tragedy, Irony, and Death

Sponsoring Organization(s)

Dante Society of America

Organizer Name

Alison Cornish

Organizer Affiliation

Univ. of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Presider Name

Kathleen Verduin

Presider Affiliation

Hope College

Paper Title 1

Dante's Three Styles Revisited: Constructio

Presenter 1 Name

Wuming Chang

Presenter 1 Affiliation

Brown Univ.

Paper Title 2

Dante's Retrospective Illumination of Irony: The Inferno

Presenter 2 Name

James T. Chiampi

Presenter 2 Affiliation

Univ. of California-Irvine

Paper Title 3

Dantean Contradictions: "Cangrande" on Tragedy, and Satan as Both Active and Inactive

Presenter 3 Name

Henry Ansgar Kelly

Presenter 3 Affiliation

Univ. of California-Los Angeles

Paper Title 4

Studying Death with Dante: The Vita nuova and Chaucer's Book of the Duchess

Presenter 4 Name

Aparna Chaudhuri

Presenter 4 Affiliation

Harvard Univ.

Start Date

13-5-2017 3:30 PM

Session Location

Schneider 1275

Description

These four papers consider issues of style: comic, tragic, ironic, and elegiac. The Paradiso will be considered as the interpretive key to opening up the irony of the Inferno. Stylistic prescriptions regarding constructio (syntax and word order) of the De vulgari eloquentia and contemporary vernacularizations of rhetorical treatises will be traced in the Commedia. The definition of tragedy and comedy in the Epistle to Cangrande will be placed alongside the depiction of Satan. Dante's experimentation with elegy in the Vita nuova will be juxtaposed with Chaucer's first major poem, the Book of the Duchess.

Alison Cornish