THE VICTORIAN DANTE: DANTE AND VICTORIAN LITERARY CRITICISM (ITALY)

The Victorians accorded Dante an acclaim and stature unprecedented in English literary history. To the most eminent Victorian critics, Dante was both exemplary poetic artist and touchstone by which the intellectual and aesthetic concerns most commonly identified with spirit of Victorian thought were viewed. This study defines the scope and context of critical response to Dante and shows in which ways it was particularly unique, particularly "Victorian.".;An "historical self-consciousness" is characteristic of all the works in which Dante is discussed and serves as context for other dominant themes to which Dante is related: the function of literature in society, the relation of religion to literature, and the need for a source of spiritual and moral authority. Within the context of these concerns emerges another prevalent set of ideas important in understanding the Victorian appreciation of Dante: the relationship of literature to the implications of aestheticism and of utilitarian principles. By a close reading of several essays, it is argued that Dante is used as exemplar to resist the claims of both. In their great interest in the public function of literature, Victorian critics wished to preserve the "high status" of poetry by indicating its important "substance," the possibility of its being useful and meaningful to those who undermined its authority by pointing to science as a more reliable source of knowledge and value. One way to meet this challenge was by pointing to the substance of poetry, particularly its moral content. . . . (Author's abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of author.) UMI.;The emergence of Dante as a major figure in nineteenth-century English thought is a subject worthy of study, both because of its intrinsic literary and intellectual importance and because of the reasons which may be attributed to Dante's rise from virtual obscurity in the "mind" of the eighteenth century. The Romantics signalled the importance of Dante to them by finding several points of congeniality between him and their own time and temperament. The Victorians focused their interest in a manner distinctly different from the Romantics; this interest is traced principally in Macaulay, Carlyle, Hallam, Arnold, and Pater. Their interest reveals important aspects of the Victorian ethos.