Dante's Lyric Poetry in Oxford

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) was the author of the famous Divine Comedy. Less well known today, however, are Dante's lyric poems and treatises. His lyric production comprised more than 120 poems in diverse forms (canzoni and sestine, sonnets, and ballads, written between around 1283 and 1315). He gathered 31 of his poems in his Vita Nuova (The New Life, early 1290s) and then commented on three of his canzoni in the unfinished Convivio (The Banquet, ca. 1304-1305). These works represent the first, fundamental stage of his literary career. Not only these 'minor' works made Dante well-known as a vernacular poet before he began writing the Commedia, but for two centuries they were also among the most read works in Italian literature.

The rich holdings of Oxford libraries allow us to reconstruct the main channels through which Dante's lyric production has circulated from the fourteenth century to the contemporary era. The wide variety of books in the collections belonged to a diverse set of readers throughout the whole of Europe. In Oxford we can find preserved not only unique objects, but also the legacies of scholars such as Edward Moore and Paget Toynbee who studied Dante and gathered precious manuscripts and early printed editions.

The digital exhibition Dante's Lyric Poetry in Oxford (https: //www.cabinet.ox.ac.uk/dantes-lyric-poetry-oxford), prepared by Laura Banella within the MSCA project LyrA - Lyric Authority: Editing and Rewriting Dante's Lyric Poetry (14th-16th c.), shows the 'other Dante' - the vernacular Dante outside of the Commedia - as portrayed by manuscripts, and early modern and contemporary editions preserved in Oxford. It presents to a broad public all the manuscripts (from the 14th to the 16th century) and the early printed editions (1491-1727) preserved at the Bodleian Library and at the Taylor Institution Library which contain Dante's lyric poems. A third section, dedicated to the editions of Dante's lyric poetry spanning the period from the 1820s to the 1930s, is but a selection of works from the Taylor Institution Library's vast collection of modern Dantean editions. What is more, the exhibition displays books owned by Oxonian scholars, along with materials testifying to their work as curators of Dante's oeuvre.

This catalogue accompanying the exhibition collects the entries describing each manuscript and each printed edition, along with a presentation of the selection of modern editions. Each section of the catalogue is introduced by a short educational essay.