Bøker i Dante's World: Historicizing Literary Cultures of the Due and Trecento-serien

Dante put Muhammad in one of the lowest circles of Hell. At the same time, the medieval Christian poet placed several Islamic philosophers much more honorably in Limbo. Furthermore, it has long been suggested that for much of the basic framework of the Divine Comedy Dante was indebted to apocryphal traditions about a "e;night journey"e; taken by Muhammad.Dante scholars have increasingly returned to the question of Islam to explore the often surprising encounters among religious traditions that the Middle Ages afforded. This collection of essays works through what was known of the Qur'an and of Islamic philosophy and science in Dante's day and explores the bases for Dante's images of Muhammad and Ali. It further compels us to look at key instances of engagement among Muslims, Jews, and Christians.

This is the first book-length study to explore the question of poetry and genre by investigating, through an analysis of both textual and manuscript evidence, the ways in which Dante redefines the medieval theory of authorship as defined by Medieval scholars, among whom Bonaventure was the most prominent one.