Ferrante, Joan M. “Dante and Politics.” In Dante: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Amilcare A Iannucci, 181. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.

Excerpt:

Dante was involved with politics in his life and in his writing. He served in elective and appointive offices, negotiated in person, and harangued by letter; he suffered condemnation and exile from Florence for his positions, and found audiences throughout Italy and eventually the world for those positions through his prose and his poetry. American scholars, in contrast to their Italian and English colleagues, have generally been less interested in Dante’s politics than in aesthetic, literary-historical, or doctrinal aspects of his work. The political issues that dominate Dante’s writings are the role of the empire and of the church in secular government, particularly in Italy, the relations between independent city-states or separate kingdoms and the empire, the destructive roles played by France and Florence, the divisive factionalism of political parties, Black and White Guelphs, Guelphs and Ghibellines, the corruption of the papacy and the papal curia, and the ideal of Rome. Major subjects of debate are the dating of the Monarchy and its connection with Henry VII or a subsequent emperor, whether the political views expressed in the Convivio, the Monarchy, and the Comedy are consistent, what the prophecies of the Comedy signify, the extent of Dante’s imperialism and republicanism, and his attitudes towards the church and the papacy.

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