Dante's Testaments: Essays in Scriptural Imagination.(Review)

Publication: Medium Aevum

Publication Date: 22-MAR-01

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COPYRIGHT 2001 Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature

Peter S. Hawkins, Dante's Testaments: Essays in Scriptural Imagination (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), xx + 380 pp. ISBN 08047-3492-5, 35.00 [pounds sterling] (hard covers); 08047-3701-0, 11.95 [pounds sterling] (p/b).

This collection of rewritten essays aims to explore `Dante's intense engagement with the Christian Scriptures', to show how he `rewrites Scripture by reactivating it, by writing it again' (p. 15). In fact, however, only the first four chapters deal directly with Dante and the Bible whereas the remaining ten illustrate the poet's use of Virgil, Ovid,...

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