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Article: Dante's divine hype.(Review)
- Article from:
- The Evening Standard (London, England)
- Article date:
- August 12, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Solo Syndication Limited. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: ERIC GRIFFITHS
LIFE OF DANTE by Giovanni Boccaccio foreword by AN Wilson
LAST LETTERS OF JACOPO ORTIS by Ugo Foscolo foreword by Valerio Massimo Manfredi both translated by JG Nichols (Hesperus, pound sterling5.99 each)
DANTE did not write the Divine Comedy.
Not that anybody else - a nobleman called Pancetta who liked lads and frozen chickens, for instance - did either.
There is no such poem. Dante never called his work "divina". In the first book about the poet, which Hesperus now publishes in a new translation, Boccaccio praises it as "divina" but this is a term of endearment not a title, just as when he calls it ...