The 'divine' comedy of education---curious German encounters with Dante

Since Bodmer's and Breitinger's quarrel with Gottsched, German encounters with Dante have been haunted by the anxiety of Bildung in its multiple facets. To this day, rather than being read for the “pleasure of the text,” his works have often been read in order to perform the daunting task of taming, appropriating, and, above all, “understanding” them. In the aftermath of Herder's dispersed remarks on Dante's universal impact on the “beautiful sciences” and the “higher sciences,” the Divina Commedia became part of the German project of Bildung. Re-producing and “remolding” (Umbilden) the Commedia and some of the minor works became part of the individual's “universal” self-formation. Even when Bildung ceased to be considered “universal,” “knowing Dante” continued to be imperative throughout the 19th and early 20 th century.;This study examines practices of Bildung through Dante, reflected in writings from Johann Jakob Bodmer to Ludwig Tieck. The leading questions are: In what way is Bildung through Dante made productive for different realms of Bilden (forming)? And: what images and motifs of Bildung are constructed in this encounter or in reflection upon it?;After locating the intersections between the German interpretation of Rousseau's perfectibilité and Dante's narrative of formation, the first chapter examines attempts at “re-molding” the narration of Ugolino from Bodmer to Boehlendorff, especially in relation to Lessing's theory of Mitleid (pity). The second chapter examines reproductions of verses from Canto V and Canto XXXII, Inferno in the context of 18th century translation theory. The focus lies on August Wilhelm Schlegel's essay “Ueber die göttliche Komödie” and his self-referential translation of Canto XXXII, Inferno. Both of these texts, I argue, inform Schleiermacher's discussion of historically reconstructive “understanding” in Methoden des Übersezens. While facilitating the reader's access to the foreign, the “understanding” gained by the translator and recreated for the reader is, I demonstrate, as destructive of the “original” as so-called “domesticating” translations.;The third and last chapter deals with ideals and nightmares of Bildung in Tieck's readings of Dante (Zerbino, Franz Sternbald, Das Alte Buch and his early poetry).