Italy's three crowns : reading Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio

Abstract

Celebrated in Italy as the 'Tre Corone' (the 'Three Crowns'), Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio have exerted an immense influence over western culture. The first part of this book looks at their impact on Italian culture up to the Renaissance. Dante especially, as author of the Divine Comedy, was incorporated into all aspects of life, from the university classroom to the pulpit, and from the workshops of book-producers to the street. Petrarch and Boccacio had to deal with Dante's legacy even as they rediscovered the texts and values of classical antiquity and forged new paths of their own. The second part concentrates on the role played by scholars and artists working in the United Kingdom, specifically some of those associated with Oxford, in reviving Dante's reputation during the last two hundred years. Dante became identified with some of the nineteenth century's most vital aesthetic and religious concerns as the Romantic movement developed; the Rossetti family was at the forefront of the dissemination of Dante within British culture. The contribution of the foremost Dante scholar of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Paget Toynbee, is also examined. The book ends with a look at the work of the contemporary artist, Tom Phillips, in which he reflects on how his own visual work fits into this centuries-old tradition of Dante illustration and scholarship.

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