Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Dante in English focuses on Dante’s impact on the English-speaking world, giving us a substantial sampling of translation and imitation in English poetry from the Middle Ages through to the present. It does have its limitations. The long introduction is incisive but somewhat idiosyncratic, it doesn’t go into much detail with the texts in the anthology, nor very much with wider issues of reception over the centuries – but the whole volume is a very well edited and indispensable selection.
In Dante in English Griffiths and Reynolds present the influence of Dante through other artists’ work. What’s their focus?
They’re concerned with Dante’s impact on the English-speaking world, giving us a substantial sampling of translation and imitation in English poetry from the Middle Ages through to the present. It does have its limitations. The long introduction is incisive but somewhat idiosyncratic, it doesn’t go into much detail with the texts in the anthology, nor very much with wider issues of reception over the centuries – but the whole volume is a very well edited and indispensable selection.
The selection does seem to focus on the canonical writers.
Yes, there is a risk when accepting the Griffiths and Reynolds collection, excellent as it is, as the dominant model for Dante in English. The risk is that it could limit awareness of Dante’s impact mostly to white Anglo-Saxon (and Celtic) poets. Although of course they do include one Caribbean author, Derek Walcott.
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Nick Havely is an eminent scholar on Dante, English-Italian literary traditions and late medieval literature. He is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York, and is a widely published author on subjects concerning Dante and medieval writing. He is currently working on a study of Dante in the English-Speaking World from the Fourteenth Century to the Present for which he has been awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship.
