As I was looking for a contribution to the blog for the fortnight, I came across this article from 1905, called References to Dante in Seventeenth-Century English Literature
written by Kenneth Sills.
The author was looking to do a survey of Dante references in 17th
century literature, and starts out with a surprised tone that other than a few
specific articles (primarily on Milton), there had not yet been an effort to measure his influence.
Apparently, with the exception of Milton, 1600-1700 in Britain was thought to be free of Dante’s influence. There were ways to know Dante in the time, travel to Italy (and knowing Italian,) Chaucer, etc., but it was rare for an author to have been exposed to the Comedy.
Taking that into account, Kenneth Sills wants to answer: was there enough distribution of Dante, that authors could be referencing Dante, without having had any direct knowledge of Dante themselves? This problem comes up because in multiple works from the time there are striking resemblances in imagery and characters, but it is unlikely any of the authors would have read Dante themselves, therefore it is unlikely they are intentionally referencing the Comedy.
Interestingly Sills actually says it’s not really surprising no one new Dante at the time, due to other more popular influences.
“If one is inclined to wonder at the paucity of references to Dante, the wonder is rather at their number when one remembers that not only in England, but in France, and, to a certain extent, in Italy, Petrarch was still the master of the courtly style; the romantic epics of Ariosto and Tasso lent themselves far more readily to imitation than did the Divine Comedy; and the pastoral romance and the pastoral drama were yet so popular as to make it no marvel that the name of Alighieri should lag behind those of Sannazaro and Guarini.”
For me it is really interesting to think that Dante might be a more recent fad in academia. That the importance and the hype that surround him today, are a product of not five or six centuries but only of one or two. Granted, now that he is such an important reference in academia the Comedy will probably stay on the reading list for a very long time, just as Petrarch is still considered to be important. But then on the other hand it is also possible that Dante and his Comedy could fade into academic and literary obscurity as Ariosto and Tasso have at this point.
It is clear though, that by the beginning of the 1900’s Dante was not only appearing in literature, but also in scholarly work about literature, suggesting he had been popular again for a while. One of my favorite quotes from this article, while not necessarily important to the thesis, shows that not only had Dante entered scholarly work by the turn of the 20th century, but that authors writing about Dante were able to view Dante with skepticism.
“Of course, several poets have fallen into trances and seen hell;”
As Sill's adds off handed remarks and quips about Dante, he shows the cynicism and amusement about certain aspects of Dante’s comedy, that academics and readers experience today when they encounter a poet who professes to have traveled with Virgil through Hell and Heaven.
Another humorous point in the article was a reference found to John Ford’s Love’s Sacrifice (1633):
“O Giacopo, Petrarch was a dunce, Dante a jig-maker, Sanazzar a goose, Ariosto a puck-fist, to me! I tell thee, Giacopo, I am rapt with fury and have been for these six nights together drunk with the pure liquor of Helicon.'”
Without the context of the whole of Ford's work, the meaning of the quote is less important than the presence of Dante as a character that can be made fun of when the mood strikes.
The search for Dante’s presence in History is enlightening. It shows that Dante was important in the early 1900’s, but it also shows that at least in Britain, Dante was not important or even widely known by the literary elite, just a few centuries before that.
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