Professor Joseph Luzzi Reviews New Biography Dante: A Life for the New York Times

Dante’s biographers have their work cut out for them, writes Joseph Luzzi, professor of comparative literature, for the New York Times. Reviewing Dante: A Life, a new biography of Dante by historian and novelist Alessandro Barbero, Luzzi comments on the competing approaches to writing about the life of the mysterious poet. “The biographer must ultimately choose: Either hew to the evidence and ferret out whatever rare nugget about Dante’s life remains uncovered, or surrender to the genius of the work he called his ‘Comedìa’ and try to broker a fragile peace between literary interpretation and life writing,” Luzzi writes. Instead, Barbero takes a dual approach, which, Luzzi argues, works both in his favor and against him.

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Post Date: 01-04-2022