|
|
This is only a preview of the paper
Click here to register and get the full text.
Existing members click here to login
|
|
|
The distorted notions of invisible things which Dante and his rival Milton have idealized, are merely the mask and the mantle in which these great poets walk through eternity enveloped and disguised. ... Dante at least appears to wish to mark the full extent of it by placing Riphaeus, whom Virgil calls justissimus unus, in Paradise, and observing a most heretical caprice in his distribution of rewards and punishments.
--Percy Shelley, A Defence of Poetry
I
The case of Dante provides an excellent opportunity to open up the question of the Western canon. In one sense, Dante is the perfect example of a canonical author. ... But in another sense Dante can be regarded as uncanonical. ... 2 Out of this interplay between the canonical and the noncanonical Dante, I hope to show that the issue of the Western canon is more complicated than either its defenders or its attackers generally present it.
Approximate Word count = 629
Approximate Pages = 2.5
(250 words per page double spaced)
|
|
|
|
|
|