Dante, Artist of Gesture

Dante, Artist of Gesture, explores the place and significance of bodily movement and gesture in Dante's works, above all in his poetic masterpiece, the Comedy. Webb investigates how gestures and postures are described and made visible throughout Dante's great poem, and demonstrates their rich implications--social, ethical and political--for the reader. Dante, Artist of Gesture is a remarkable tour de force both in the way it proposes new methodologies and tools of study for reading the gestural and in the way it offers original and powerful close readings of Dante's texts ... Elegantly written, meticulously researched and rich in methodological innovations, the book will be both an essential point of reference in Dante Studies and an indispensable mine for future work on the body, gesture, posture and affectivity in Medieval Studies and other related fields.

Auteur
Heather Webb is the Professor of Medieval Italian Literature and Culture at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Selwyn College. She received her PhD from Stanford University in 2004 and taught at The Ohio State University for eight years before coming to Cambridge. She is the author of two monographs, The Medieval Heart (2010), and Dante's Persons: An Ethics of the Transhuman (2016) and has co-edited five books, including Vertical Readings in Dante's 'Comedy' in three volumes, and the forthcoming Dante's 'Vita nova': A Collaborative Reading.

Texte du rabat

A new approach to reading Dante's La Comedia Divinia through the lens of art history. Dante, Artist of Gesture brings Dante's canonical text into conversation with the visual art of his time to suggest the importance of visual cues to the reading and interpretation of the text itself.

Résumé
A new approach to reading Dante's La Comedia Divinia through the lens of art history. Dante, Artist of Gesture brings Dante's canonical text into conversation with the visual art of his time to suggest the importance of visual cues to the reading and interpretation of the text itself.

Contenu

• Introduction

• 1: Reading Bodies in Motion

• 2: Dante as Visual Artist

• 3: Fixity and Flexibility

• 4: Modelling Gestural Virtues in Dante's Purgatorio

• 5: Asymmetrical Affections

• 6: Heavenly Proximities and Contagions

• Bibliography