Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge

In a masterly synthesis of historical and literary analysis, Giuseppe Mazzotta shows how medieval knowledge systems—the cycle of the liberal arts, ethics, politics, and theology—interacted with poetry and elevated the Divine Comedy to a central position in shaping all other forms of discursive knowledge. To trace the circle of Dante's intellectual concerns, Mazzotta examines the structure and aims of medieval encyclopedias, especially in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; the medieval cl...