Dissent and Philosophy in the Middle Ages: Dante and His Precursors: Dante and His Precursors

Ernest L. Fortin”s subtle study of Dante”s dissent will help clear away the Anglo-American fashion of reading Dante as versified Augustine or Aquinas. Dante”s reticences and implied stances emerge vividly in Fortin”s precise pages. — Harold Bloom, Yale University

This English translation…comes as an urgent reminder of how important Dante is as a political thinker. — Diskin Clay, Duke University

Fortin presents a Dante who believes in philosophy”s autonomy from and even superiority to theology (and who conceals this knowledge). This startling, fresh, and controversial thesis opens up the way for a view of poetry that straddles the boundaries between concealment and clarity, fiction and truth. — Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale University

The first words of Fortin”s book are these: “This modest work does not pretend to be exhaustive.” When you read it you will see that there are other ways to be ambitious than by being exhaustive, namely: essential, magesterial, and path-breaking.

Ernest Fortin is the better sort of scholar: when he is unconventional and provocative (as he is when he treats Dante), he displays enviable learning, patent argumentation open for inspection, and an ingratiating pen. Marc LePain”s translation of Fortin”s elegant French is trustworthy and the additions he makes to Fortin”s original French volume add significantly to Fortin”s argument, and to our appreciation of his achievement in reopening for us the question of Dante. — Paul Seaton, associate professor of philosophy, St. Mary’s Seminary & University, Baltimore, MD.