'Dante in Ynglissh' : Chaucer and Pier della Vigna (Inferno 13 and the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women)

Author / Editor
Shoaf, R[ichard] A[llen].

Title
'Dante in Ynglissh' : Chaucer and Pier della Vigna (Inferno 13 and the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women)

Published
Dante and Modern American Criticism, a special issue of Annali d'Italianistica 8 (1990): 384-94.

Description
Explores American fascination with Dante as a way to get "some purchase on Dante," e.g., K. Taylor's contrast of "Dante with Chaucer to erect Chaucer the 'anti-Dante'." Examines the influence of Dante on LGWP and briefly on HF. Shoaf concludes that "current efforts to detheologize Dante, like current efforts to fashion a purely humanist Chaucer, are alike implicated in a resistance to judgment...(and) a revulsion from Christianity." Chaucer was a Christian of "profoundly discriminatory imagination".

Alternative Title
Dante and Modern American Criticism.

Chaucer Subjects
Legend of good Women.
House of Fame.