Taking a cue from T.S. Eliotโs essay on Dante, I find myself wanting to lay aside the voluminous historical-literary notes and glosses to the ๐ผ๐๐๐๐๐๐ โ and just read the latter half of the canticle ๐ข๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐ ๐ก๐๐. If I suddenly find myself in sympathy with the New Critics (who were influenced by Eliotโs essay and I. A. Richards), it is only because I feel sometimes as if the poem itself is being eclipsed by the scholarly apparatus. That being said, I believe the New Criticsโ theories are better suited to some literary works than others. It is difficult to imagine โ to cite a few examples โ Blakeโs prophetic poems, Danteโs ๐ถ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐, or Joyceโs ๐๐๐ฆ๐ ๐ ๐๐ being read well or adequately without the illuminating assistance provided by their best scholarly commentators. Frye, Raine, Freccero, Auerbach, Gilbert, Gifford, etc.
I readily acknowledge how much my recent reading of Herodotusโ ๐ป๐๐ ๐ก๐๐๐๐๐ was enriched and excited by Seth Benardeteโs unconventional and demanding commentary, which worked like a skeleton key. With Dante, I am of at least two minds: on the one hand I want to understand the ๐ถ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ as a representative work of the medieval scholastic worldview โ and for this, I need a great deal of historical, theological, and biographical information to situate the poem in its context. In fact, it is the context itself that concerns me most, from this angle. On the other hand, I want to be able to appreciate the great poem aesthetically, as a justly revered work of literature. The two approaches, while not mutually exclusive, emphasize quite different aspects of the poem.