DANTE
There is, perhaps, as much commentary upon Dante as upon all the rest of Italian literature put together. The most charming edition, when comment is not needed, is that of Dr. Edward Moore, 1894, where all Dante’s works are compressed into one small and exquisitely printed volume; but few students can dispense with a commentary, and it is generally advisable to read Dante in a modern Italian edition, with notes in that language. Of several excellent editions of this description, the best, perhaps, is Fraticelli’s, 1892. For profound students, Ferrazzi, Manuale Dantesco, 1865, and Poletto, Dizionario Dantesco, 1885, are indispensable. A similar and not less important work in English, by Mr. Paget Toynbee, is now in the press. Of the numerous introductions to the Divine Comedy, the following may be recommended to English readers: Scartazzini, Companion to Dante, translated by A. J. Butler, 1895; Symonds, Introduction to Dante, 1890; Maria Francesca Rossetti, A Shadow of Dante, 1884; Dean Church, Dante, 1878; and A. J. Butler, Dante, 1895. Of these, Scartazzini is the scholar and Dantophilist, Symonds and Butler are the efficient critics from the modern point of view, and Miss Rossetti and Dean Church represent Dante’s own position. Moore’s Studies in Dante, now in course of publication, and Wicksteed’s Sermons on Dante, have a wider scope than that of an introductory manual. The point of Dante’s influence on posterity has been investigated by Oelsner, Influence of Dante on Modern Thought, 1895; and his relation to his own countrymen is discussed in the third volume of Dean Plumptre’s translation of the Divine Comedy. He is treated from the neo-catholic point of view by Ozanam, Dante et la Philosophie catholique, 1845.
The best editions of Dante’s lyrical poems, including the very many falsely attributed to him, and of his Vita Nuova and other prose works, are those by Fraticelli. The best English translation of the Vita Nuova is Rossetti’s; but other translators (Martin, 1862; Norton, 1893; Boswell, 1895; and the Austrian translator Federn, 1897) have done much more for the illustration of the text. A beautiful work on Dante, sein Leben und sein Werk, sein Verhältniss zur Kunst und zur Politik, by Franz Xaver Kraus, has just been published in Berlin.