Dante's Vita Nuova, New Edition: A Translation and an Essay

225 Pages·1973·26.64 MB·English

by  Mark Louis

Dantets Vita Nuova:
A,. .,T. r,a..n,s. l,a..ti,o. n,. .a,.n d,. .a,n. ,E.s.,s.a,y. .,.

DANTE'S
V1111 NUOVA
A Translation and an Essay
by Mark Musa
A NE'W EDITION
Indiana University Press
Bloomington
©
Copyright I973 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
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and retrieval system, wit bout permission in writing from tbe publisber.
The Association of American University Presses Resolution on
Permissions constitutes the only exception to tbis probibition.
Publisbed in Canada by
&
Fitzhenry Whiteside Limited, Don Mills, Ontario
Library of Congress catalog card number: 72-79905
0--253-31620-0 d. 0--253-20162-4 pa.
ISBN:
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 11 12 00 99
For
Anna Granville Hatcher
who once told me that Scholarship is the
drama between the scholar's bright idea
and the seductive and implacable evidence.

CONTENTS
Preface / ix
Translator's Note / xiii
The / 3
New Life
An Essay on the / 87
Vita Nuova
I Patterns / 89
II Aspects / 106
III Growth / '34
Notes on the Essay / '75

PREFACE
,..,..,..,..,..,.. tf7',..,.. THE one of Dante's earliest
Vita Nuova,
works, is a combination of prose and poetry. There are thirty
one poems inserted into the prose text according to the follow-
ing arrangement:
I ....... XVI sonnet XXIX .......
II ....... XVII ....... XXX .......
III sonnet XVIII ....... XXXI canzone
IV XIX can zone XXXII sonnet
V ....... XX sonnet XXXIII unfinished
VI ....... XXI sonnet canzone
VII sonnet XXII sonnet XXXIV sonnet
VIII sonnet sonnet XXXV sonnet
sonnet XXIII canzone XXXVI sonnet
IX sonnet XXIV sonnet XXXVII sonnet
X sonnet XXV ....... XXXVIII sonnet
Xl ....... XXVI sonnet XXXIX sonnet
XII ballad sonnet XL sonnet
XIII sonnet XXVII reduced XLI sonnet
XIV sonnet canzone XLII .......
XV sonnet XXVIII .......
The originality of the consists not in the mixture
Vita nuova
of prose and verse (a device used by Boethius in his
Philoso
and, a century before him, by Martianus
phiae Consolatio
Capella), but in the functional relationship between the two:
it seems to be a fact that the is the first work of
Vita nuova
fiction including both prose and poetry, in which the prose
ix