Acknowledgments

Fertile seedbeds for these reflections were seminars that I had the opportunity to offer in Frankfurt, Jerusalem, and Urbino:

* Block-Seminar: “Apophatische Theologie und ihre Wirkung auf

die neuzeitliche Philosophic” [Apophatic Theology and its Consequences in Modern Philosophy],

Goethe University of Frankfurt, Philosophy Department, Summer Semester, 2016

* Lecture-Workshop: “Dante’s Theology and Contemporary

Thought,”

International Seminar on “Dante’s Theology” sponsored by Nanovic Institute for European Studies,

Leeds Center for Dante Studies, Devers Program for Dante Studies, University of Notre Dame, at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem, June 16-22, 2013

* Summer Seminar: “Dante e la teologia negativa” [Dante and

Negative Theology],

ISSR (Istituto Superiore di Scienze Religiose),

Carlo Bo University of Urbino, August 15-19, 2011

For these motivating opportunities, I thank Wilhelm Essler; Christian Moevs, Vittorio Montemaggi, Anne Leone, and Matthew Treherne; Andrea Aguti and Pier-Giorgio Grassi.

This research project also grows out of lectures that I was privileged to give at the Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies in Chicago; at a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Institute in Florence; and at a Religion and Literature Forum at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana:

* “The Apotheosis of Self-Reflection: Dante and the Inauguration of

the Modern Era,”

Annual Dante Lecture at the Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies,

Chicago, February 27, 2016

* “Self-Reflection and the Theological Apotheosis of Lyric in the

Paradiso,”

Lecture at NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) Summer Institute:

“Dante’s Divine Comedy, poetry, philosophy, and the city of Florence,”

Florence, July 21, 2014

• * “Scripture as Theophany in Dante’s Paradiso,”
• 2006 Annual Lecture in Religion and Literature, University of Notre Dame, October 30, 2006

For invitations to give these lectures, I thank Karen Chistianson and Ted Cachy; Brenda Schildgen and Peter Hawkins; Thomas Werge, James Dougherty, and Kevin Hart. I thank all participants and publics for much fruitful exchange.

Thanks to Aaron Daniels and Christian Dupont for the invitation to present a plenary address at the “Dante Salon” within the frame of the “Psychology and the Other 2019 Conference” (reprising a 2018 MLA [Modern Language Association] national convention presentation):

* “Representing the Other: Dante, Duns Scotus, and the Crisis of

Representation in the Modern Age,” Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, October 4,2019

This piece appears in Dante and the Other, ed. Aaron B. Daniels (New York: Routledge, 2021), 51-71. My thanks for permission to adapt and reemploy.

Finally, for critical readings from which the manuscript benefited materially, I am indebted to a handful of outstanding scholars of Dante and much else: Jason Aleksander, Frank Ambrosio, Vittorio Montemaggi, Matthew Rothaus Moser, Gregory Stone, and Chance Woods.

The Divine Comedy is cited from La Divina Commedia secondo I’antica vulgata, ed. Giorgio Petrocchi, 4 vols. (Milan: Mondadori, 1966-67). Throughout the book, the Paradiso is the default text for parenthetical citations by canto and verse. Dante’s “minor” works are cited from Opere minori, 2 vols., ed. A. Frugoni and F. Brugnoli (Milan: Ricciardi, 1979-88).

All translations into English, unless otherwise attributed, are my own.

Introduction

The Theological Apotheosis of Lyric in Dante’s Paradiso