Dante's Golden Legend: Auto-hagiography in the Divine Comedy

Dante's "Golden Legend" explores how the Divine Comedy incorporates and reimagines Dante's early life-writing, as well as how it appropriates and revises biographical and hagiographical models. It presents Dante's encyclopedic vision of sacred history and his own purpose and place within it, concluding that his life is a saintly mission. The book offers a comprehensive analysis of autobiographical aspects and their significance in the poem, addressing a void in criticism. It also anticipates the Petrarchan obsession with self and the humanist examination of the secular, providing a backdrop for the cultural collision of the sacred and the secular in the European Renaissance.

Format: Hardback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 30 May 2022
Publisher: Mercer University Press

Dante's Golden Legend delves into the intricate ways in which the Divine Comedy assimilates and reimagines Dante's early attempts at life-writing, including the Convivio and the Vita Nuova. It also explores how Dante appropriates and revises various biographical and hagiographical models, utilizing them as vehicles for his own auto-hagiographical project. The Comedy, according to Watt, presents not only Dante's comprehensive vision of sacred history but also his own purpose and place within that history.

Within the Comedy, Dante not only critiques the lives of others, both saints and sinners, but also interprets his own life, ultimately concluding that his is indeed the life of a saint, charged with a sacred mission. While numerous analyses of specific autobiographical aspects of the Comedy have been conducted, they often remain fragmented and incomplete.

In contrast, Dante's Golden Legend offers a comprehensive exploration of how these moments, coupled with the prophecies woven throughout the poem, create an overarching narrative structure that reveals Dante's own hagiographical significance. Furthermore, the book addresses a surprising void in the criticism by highlighting Dante's autobiographical impulse, which anticipates the Petrarchan obsession with self and the subsequent humanist examination of the value of the secular.

This study provides a valuable backdrop against which to consider the cultural collision of the sacred and the secular that characterized much of the European Renaissance project. Consequently, the book appeals not only to Dante specialists but also to scholars of Medieval and Early Modern Studies alike.

Weight: 530g
Dimension: 162 x 235 x 27 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780881468083