Dante's Franciscan Way.

摘要

This dissertation examines the influence of Francis of Assisi and the medieval Franciscans on the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. By reading the Divine Comedy alongside several elements of thirteenth and fourteenth century Franciscan culture---including hagiographic texts, religious rules, vernacular and Latin verse, prose treatises, and painted frescoes---I aim to provide a critical reassessment of Dante's Franciscanism. A growing body of recent scholarship has drawn increasing attention to Dante's engagement with the medieval Franciscans. In this dissertation I seek to build on this scholarship by showing the encyclopedic, interconnected dimensions of Dante's Franciscanism, which embraces everything from the poet's vision of human life and its potential for sanctity, to politics and economics, to conversion and ecclesial reform, and finally to the connections between aesthetics, theology, and ethics.;Taking Dante's identification of Franciscan poverty as both an ignota ricchezza (unknown richness) and a ben ferace (fertile good) in Paradiso XI as my point of departure, I argue that Dante views Francis as a model of human freedom. Poverty frees Francis to view the world with new eyes. Playfully mocking established values and well-entrenched customs, Francis stands the world on its head and identifies a new, generative style of living that exerts a powerful creative stimulus on Dante's imagination.;This dissertation is composed of four chapters. Starting with Dante's life of Francis in Paradiso XI, chapter one analyzes Dante's unique portrait of Francis in light of four different strands of the fractious hagiographical tradition of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Chapter two moves from Dante's presentation of Francis as an individual to examine Dante's Franciscan analysis of political society as a whole. As the quest for wealth generates violence and destroys the unity of cities, Dante turns to Franciscan poverty and the community of the first Franciscans as an alternative societal model capable of restoring unity and peace. Chapter three takes up the question of Dante's vision of communal conversion by examining the Franciscan virtues of poverty, minoritas, and caritas. It then proceeds to show how Dante dramatizes these virtues in the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso and ultimately proposes the Franciscan Order as a model for a reformed Church of poverty and learning. Chapter four concludes this study of Dante's Franciscanism by examining the connections between theology, aesthetics, and ethics in the works of Francis, Bonaventure, and Dante. Ultimately I argue that Francis' and Dante's respective visions converge as both poets identify humility as the key virtue in the creation of art.;Francis and Dante present themselves as humble poets who wish to draw their readers into authentic participation in their journey to God. This study maps the coordinates and contours of that journey, which I call Dante's Franciscan way.