Perception and Passion in Dante's Comedy

A reading of the Comedy in the context of thirteenth-century psychology and philosophy.

Patrick Boyde (Author)

9780521028554, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 2 November 2006

364 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.562 kg

"...in it we are allowed to watch an elegant and graceful explicator at work, a truly learned and inventive reader who manages--mirabile dictu!--to make Aristotle jump right off the page at you. As a review of basic Scholastic terminology and theory, as a 'handbook' of philosophical backgrounds to the Commedia, and as an example of source scholarship at its very best, this is a book that every Dantist should read." Paul Spillenger, Speculum

Patrick Boyde argues that the way in which Dante represents what he (or his fictional self) saw and felt was profoundly influenced by the thirteenth-century science of psychology. Professor Boyde offers an authoritative account of the way in which vision and the emotions were understood in Dante's lifetime, and rereads many of the most dramatic and moving episodes in the Comedy, throwing light on Dante's narrative technique. Seeing and feeling were known to be inextricably bound up with thinking and voluntary action, and were treated as special cases of motion and motive forces. Dante's treatment of perception and passion is set in the context of Aristotelian epistemology, ethics and physics. In these areas too a knowledge of Dante's philosophical ideas is shown to illuminate his poetic representation of mental processes and value judgements, and the meaning of his journey towards the source of goodness and truth.

Preface
Part I. Coming to Terms with Aristotle: 1. The prestige and unity of the Aristotelian corpus
2. Movement and change in lifeless bodies
3. Self-change: growth and reproduction in plant life
4. Self-movement: sensation and locomotion in animal life
Part II. The Operations of the Sensitive Soul in Man: 5. Perception of light and colour
6. Perception of shape, size, number movement and stillness
7. Imagining and dreaming
8. Body-language and the physiology of passion
Part III. The Operations of the Rational Soul
9. Self-direction: the powers of the mind
10. Aspects of human freedom
Part IV. Combined Operations: 11. Fear
12. Anger
13. Desire
Notes
Select bibliography
Indexes.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]