Dante's Lyric Redemption
Eros, Salvation, Vernacular Tradition
Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs Series

Dante's Lyric Redemption offers a re-examination of two strongly interrelated aspects of the poet's work: the role and value he ascribes to earthly love and his relationship to the Romance lyric tradition of his time. It argues that an account of Dante's poetic journey that posits a stark division between earthly and divine love, and between the secular lyric poet and the Christian auctor, does little justice to his highly distinctive and often polemical handling of these categories. The book firstly contextualizes, traces, and accounts for Dante's intriguing commitment to love poetry, from the 'minor works' to the Commedia. It highlights his attempts, especially in his masterpiece, to overcome normative oppositions in formulating a uniquely redemptive vernacular poetics, one oriented towards the eternal while rooted in his affective, and indeed erotic, past. It then examines how this matter is at stake in Dante's treatment of three important lyric predecessors: Guittone d'Arezzo, Arnaut Daniel, and Folco of Marseilles. Through a detailed reading of Dante's engagement with these poets, the book illuminates his careful departure from a dualistic model of love and conversion and shows his erotic commitment to be at the heart of his claims to pre-eminence as a vernacular author.

Tristan Kay specializes in medieval Italian culture, with a particular focus on Dante and early lyric poetry. He graduated from the University of Leeds with a BA in Italian and Spanish in 2005 and remained at Leeds to complete an MA by Research on Dante and the troubadours in 2006. In 2010 he received his doctorate from the University of Oxford, writing a thesis on the relationship between eros, spirituality and vernacular language in Dante. The thesis received the Society of Italian Studies Postgraduate Prize and Oxford's Senior Paget Toynbee Prize. From 2010 to 2012, he held a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Dartmouth College, USA, and since 2012 he has been Lecturer in Italian at the University of Bristol. He is an Associate Editor of the journal Italian Studies.