Marco Santagata is Professor of Italian Literature at the University of Pisa.
Marco Santagata’s Dante: The Story of His Life deconstructs the
great poet with humor, aplomb, and deep learning. I have never read
any book which makes such complete sense of the vital continuum
between Dante the man, and the projected self of the Convivio, Vita
Nuova, and Commedia… There is much humor in Santagata’s exposure of
the violent contradictions in Dante’s character, all set against
the background of his times. If you have a tendency to muddle
Guelfs and Ghibellines, look no further than this lucid book.
*Times Literary Supplement*
Santagata…has written an impressive new biography that takes into
consideration every bit of reliable and semireliable information
available to us about Dante’s life, from his birth in Florence in
1265 to his death in Ravenna in 1321…If you are looking for the
most thorough, factually based account of Dante’s life and times to
date, Santagata is your man.
*New York Review of Books*
Reading Marco Santagata’s fascinating new biography, the reader is
soon forced to acknowledge that one of the cornerstones of Western
literature [The Divine Comedy], a poem considered sublime and
universal, is the product of vicious factionalism and packed with
local scandal…It’s the biography’s evocation of the factional world
of the time and the values sustaining it that throws light on the
great poem and helps us to read it with fresh awareness…Elegantly
translated by Richard Dixon, Santagata’s biography avoids the
quarrels among critics that sometimes dominate Dante studies.
*London Review of Books*
This biography will be most useful and enjoyable to those who
already have a familiarity with the Comedy and want a more nuanced
view of its place in Italian history…Santagata’s book is a
catalogue of contingencies, which will both introduce the reader to
the political situation of the Italian peninsula in Dante’s time
and show how that context assists us in reading the poem.
*New Criterion*
Santagata not only constructs an impressively detailed account of
Dante’s actual life but uses that account to interpret and make
sense of the Comedy…The result is a remarkably innovative probing
of his life and work.
*Times Literary Supplement*
Definitely recommended, it will make my best non-fiction of the
year list for sure.
*Marginal Revolution*
To the ranks of the best popular biographies of the great
Florentine poet Dante Alighieri…is added Marco Santagata’s Dante…
[Santagata] tells it with a fiercely learned calm and energy
throughout… As with all first-rate author biographies, the book
will propel readers straight back to Dante’s own works, which is
right where they should end up in any case.
*Open Letters Monthly*
Full of useful information and explanations of a very complicated
time, well worth reading for its bold claims and wealth of
historical evidence, this book constructs a novel, strong reading
of Dante as political actor.
*Alison Cornish, University of Michigan*
Both specialized readers and the general public will benefit from
this account of Dante Alighieri’s life as a man of letters and of
political action. A welcome addition to the catalogue of
intellectual biographies of Dante available in English.
*Simone Marchesi, Princeton University*
A superb intellectual biography of Dante.
*The Tablet*
This sumptuous volume by Marco Santagata…offers the reader a richly
documented and often gripping account of the development,
peregrinations, and shifting fortunes of the celebrated poet
Durante (Dante) Alighieri.
*Australian Book Review*
Santagata does a thorough and highly engaging job of bringing
politics and social pressures of 13th-century Florence to the page
in this very readable biography that doesn’t scrimp on scholarly
research…Even more fascinating is the way the author reveals
Dante’s intense interest in political systems, philosophy, and in
the makeup of the universe, all shown to be at the very heart of
the imposing poetic figure.
*Library Journal (starred review)*
Santagata has written a book that any reader interested in Dante
will find absorbing, richly informative and very
thought-provoking…With their well-known fondness for literary
biography, [English readers] will surely be grateful for this bold,
vigorous and invigorating account of Dante’s life and times.
*Times Higher Education*
It is lively and a pleasure to read.
*The Australian*
This substantial work incorporates all the most recent Dantean
scholarship. There is much to chew upon, since Dante lived at the
very center of his city’s political life…Santagata, thoroughly
steeped in the politics and genealogies of the period, gives the
best account I have ever read of Dante in his historical
context…You will never read an account clearer than Santagata’s.
Nor will you read a more convincing description of how Dante
changed his mind, quite fundamentally, about the political issues
which confronted him (Pope vs Emperor) and the deep religious
questions which underpin his work…This is a wonderful book. Even if
you have not read Dante you will be gripped by its account of one
of the most extraordinary figures in the history of literature, and
one of the most dramatic periods of European history. If you are a
Dantean, it will be your invaluable companion forever.
*The Spectator*
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