Dante's Vita Nuova and the New Testament
Hermeneutics and the Poetics of Revelation

A vivid reimagining of the Vita nuova as a revolution in poetry and a revelation of divine destiny through love.

William Franke (Author)

9781009013819, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 24 August 2023

264 pages
27 x 18 x 1.8 cm, 0.448 kg

'Professor Franke's original, tightly argued study makes a significant contribution to the reappraisal of Dante's youthful masterpiece by offering, at once, a fresh translation and a well-rounded interpretation. Dante's Vita Nuova and the New Testament is to be welcomed for its concern to present Dante's libello to an Anglophone readership, as it offers a global interpretation of the Vita nuova at the crossroad between Biblical and philosophical traditions.' Giuseppe Ledda, Università di Bologna

Modelling knowledge as revelation and theology as poetry, this powerful new reading of the Vita nuova not only challenges Dante scholars to reconsider the book's speculative emphases but also offers the general reader an accessible yet penetrating exploration of some of the Western tradition's most far-reaching ideas surrounding love and knowledge. Dante's 'little book', included in full here in an original parallel translation, captures in its first emergence the same revolutionary ferment that would later become manifest both in the larger oeuvre of this great European writer and in the literature of the entire Western canon. William Franke demonstrates how Dante's youthful poetic autobiography disrupts sectarian thinking and reconciles the seeming contraries of divine revelation and human invention, while also providing the means for understanding religious revelation in the Bible. Ultimately, this revolutionary unification of Scripture and poetry shows the intimate working of love at the source of inspired knowing.

1. Introduction: The Vita nuova as Theological Revelation through Lyrical Interpretation
2. The New Testament Model of Salvific Reminiscence
3. From Appearing and Imagining to Revealing through Interpreting: The Vita nuova's Hermeneutics of Witness
4. Phenomenology versus Hermeneutics (Debate with Harrison): Revelation as Mediation
5. History of Effect and a New Hermeneutics-Oriented Critical Paradigm
Picture Album
6. Conclusion. The Existential Grounding of Revelation in Lyric
Coda
Epilogue: Dream Epistemology and Religious Revelation in Dante's Vita nuova
Appendix: Italian Text and English Translation of the Vita nuova.

Subject Areas: Theology [HRLB], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB], Literature & literary studies [D]