Preface

This volume is a collaborative effort, extending over a number of years. As is characteristic of collaborations, the boundaries of each partner's contribution are difficult to establish. Countless discussions and exchanges over the years have in many cases made it impossible to say that this or that idea came from one of us rather than the other. This mutual debt and blending of views has been, in fact, one of the great satisfactions of the project. The chapters that make up the book may be more clearly assigned, since although we have made many suggestions to each other, we have done the writing separately. Thus Durling is the main author of the Introduction, Chapters 1, 2, and 4, Appendices 1 and 4, and the Index; Martinez of Chapters 3, 5, and 6, and Appendices 2 and 3.

A number of people have read the manuscript, in part or in its entirety, at various stages of its evolution and have given us generous encouragement and helpful criticism. We would like to thank especially Leonard Barkan, Harry Berger, Jr., Kenneth Durling, John Freccero, Rachel Jacoff, and David Quint. Robert McMahon's detailed criticisms of an entire early version were particularly helpful. Discussion with the members of the 1988 Stanford Dante Institute helped to clarify a number of ideas. Nancy Vine Durling has read the entire manuscript in all of its avatars, has caught many mistakes, and has made numerous helpful suggestions. The University of California at Santa Cruz has been generous with sabbatical leaves. The staffs of the libraries of the University of Minnesota, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of California at Santa Cruz have been unfailingly helpful, as have the staff of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. We are grateful also to Anne Canright, Doris Kretschmer, and Rose Vekony, all of the University of California Press, for their technical expertise and their generous support.

The text of the petrose is reprinted from Le rime, edited by Gianfranco Contini (copyright 1946: Turin, Giulio Einaudi); the text of Book 2 of the De vulgari eloquentia from Opere minori, volume 2, edited by Pier

Vincenzo Mengaldo (copyright 1979: Milano-Napoli, Ricciardi); and of Vita nuova, chapter 19, from Opere minori, volume 1, part 1a, edited by Domenico De Robertis (copyright 1984: Milano-Napoli, Ricciardi), all with the generous permission of the publishers. Portions of Chapter 2 were published in Dante Studies, volume 93 (copyright the Dante Society of America); they are reprinted with the generous permission of the publisher.

The text of the Commedia is quoted from Dante Alighieri, La Divina Commedia, edited by C. H. Grandgent, revised by Charles S. Singleton (Cambridge, Mass., 1972); the text is substantially that of Petrocchi. Except as otherwise identified, translations are by the authors.