-- **IMPORTANT** --
                        COPYRIGHT NOTICE
                    -- **READ THIS FIRST** --

     The contents of this lecture (BARLOW.3) are copyright 1993 by the
University of Michigan Press, which has permitted them to reside on
equipment of the Center for Computer Analysis of Texts at the University
of Pennsylvania for access by anonymous ftp and gopher clients.  Any other
electronic reformatting is by permission from the University of Michigan
Press.  Any copying is restricted by the fair use provisions of the U.S.
Copyright Act.  IN PARTICULAR, NO CHARGE MAY BE MADE FOR ANY COPY,
ELECTRONIC OR PAPER, MADE OR DISTRIBUTED OF THIS MATERIAL WITHOUT PRIOR
CONSENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS.  NO COPY OF THIS MATERIAL MAY
BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT THIS NOTICE.
      For further information, contact the University of Michigan
Press, 839 Greene Street, P.O. Box 1104, Ann Arbor, Michigan
48106.
=================================================================

This is the third in the series of Barlow Lectures delivered at
University College London on 17-18 March 1993 by Professor Robert
Hollander of Princeton University.  The lecture texts distributed
now are only a part of the detailed presentation of argument and
evidence that will make up the printed book.  Scholarly users in
particular should be aware that only the printed book will
incorporate final revisions and corrections and the printed book
should in all cases be used as the authoritative citation of the
author's work.  Anyone who wishes to be notified when the printed
book is available should send e-mail to:
     michael_kehoe@um.cc.umich.edu 
or regular mail to Michael Kehoe, The University of Michigan Press,
839 Greene Street, P.O. Box 1104, Ann Arbor, Michigan  48106.

=================================================================

                        Robert Hollander

         The Current Debate Concerning the Authenticity
                   of the Epistle to Cangrande

(The Barlow Lectures, University College London, 17-18 March '93)
 

    (3) *Theoretical Considerations: "allegory" and "comedy"*



     While more limited and discreet questions regarding style
("how could *Dante* have compared Cangrande to the Queen of
Sheba?"), presentation of a grovelling self ("how could *Dante*
have sought patronage in so servile a way?"), language (how could
*Dante* have translated his own vernacular verses into Latin?"),
and interpretive adequacy ("how could *Dante* have written so
lamely about the opening verses of *Paradiso*?") have occupied any
number of the opposers of the authenticity of the *Epistola a
Cangrande*, the two most provoking questions raised by the text
have been and remain those concerning its generic distinctions
("how could *Dante* have so confused the nature of tragedy and
comedy?") and its insistence on a theologically based allegoresis
("how could *Dante* have made so outrageous a claim?").  Like
others (most notably Brugnoli and Baranski) who have recently
opposed the case for the authenticity of the Epistle, Henry Kelly,
in his recent book, *Tragedy and Comedy from Dante to Pseudo-Dante*
(1989), claims to be most bothered by what seem to him the strange
things it says about tragedy and comedy.  (Hall and Sowell evince
the preoccupation of the previous generation of opposers of
genuineness: the Epistle's claim for Dante's use of the allegory of
the theologians.  Pietrobono [in 1937] bridged the gap between the
two schools of objectors, spending two pages in fairly high dudgeon
against Moore's argument that the things said in section 7 are
acceptable in the context of Dante's beliefs about the theory of
allegory, before becoming greatly disturbed by the notions of
comedy advanced in section 10.  Where supporters of its
authenticity find that the remarks made in section 10 either
support or else are not in opposition to the views of Dante as
these are revealed in his poem, some opposers are driven into a
state approaching paroxysms of dyspepsia, in this half of the
century most notably Bruno Nardi.  The argument is a weak one, and
always has been.  Its logic is simple and not critically mature:
since Dante didn't believe such things about the nature of tragedy
and comedy, he could not possibly have written this section of the
Epistle.  In my view, these detractors simply fail to understand
the nature of the claims made in section 10, which are not at
significant odds with Dante's views in these matters and even, in
my opinion, are precisely congruent with them (a position well
stated by Pio Rajna over seventy years ago).

     Kelly summarizes his thesis as follows: "According to the
hypothesis I have developed in this study, an unknown student of
Dante's *Comedy* set to work sometime in the last quarter of the
fourteenth century to create an introduction to *Paradiso* that he
attributed to Dante himself.  He made use of a preexisting Accessus
to the whole *Comedy*, prefaced it with a Dedication to Cangrande,
and followed it with an Exposition of the beginning of *Paradiso*. 
The resulting Compilation we now know as the *Epistle to
Cangrande*."  (An anonymous marginator in the Princeton library has
added the following question and remark in Kelly's text at this
point: "Why only *Paradiso*? only Dante would do that."  Kelly
never offers an hypothesis that would account for the putative
forger's decision so to limit himself.)  Kelly's dating of his
"Pseudo-Dante's" effort ("sometime in the last quarter of the
fourteenth century") is immediately in difficulty when one
considers that Boccaccio's translation of a number of passages in
the *accessus* was completed before 1375, the year in which he
died.  Since the *accessus* offered by Boccaccio is unmistakably
identical in many of its statements with the Epistle, Kelly (who
downplays the extent of the identical elements) must either date
his forgery before 1375 or create another pseudo-document.  It is
not surprising that he chooses the latter course: "I consider it
very unlikely that a portion of such an astoundingly revelatory
letter by Dante could have been circulated without word of the
whole letter getting around.  Therefore, I postulate that an
earlier version of the Accessus was written before Boccaccio's time
and used by him, and that it was later taken up by the Compiler and
incorporated into his *Epistle to Cangrande*."  Now this is not
impossible.  Yet, as we shall see, several *early* commentators do
attribute the Epistle to Dante (a fact Kelly either does not know
or simply chooses to overlook).  Would it not have been simpler,
more "economical," for Kelly to have argued that the "forger" had
written before Boccaccio?  In any case, Kelly never makes the case
for the necessity of a later forgery, since he denies Boccaccio the
role of source for the document.  And how does Kelly explain the
fact that only Boccaccio's commentary gives the same examples for
the illustration of the four senses of Scripture that we find in
the *Epistola a Cangrande*, based on the 113th Psalm?  That would
indicate that the "Proto-Accessor" had them in his version of the
*accessus*, which reasonably might be expected to have influenced
the other *chiosatori*, but somehow did not, a fact that is, at the
very least, perplexing.  We are left, as we are over and over again
in Kelly's book, with his postulations.  I should note that my
monograph on this subject spends considerable time examining the
weaknesses in many of Kelly's major arguments; these will not be
addressed today.  Instead, I want to turn to the work of my friend
Zygmunt Baranski.  I hope I need not add that my strenuous
disagreement with much of what he has had to say in no way
diminishes my admiration for his work or my affection for him.  I
am not attacking him, but disagreeing with his position.

     Baranski has recently devoted a lengthy article to our
question (in *Lectura Dantis [virginiana]* spring, 1991).  While it
is mainly concerned with what he perceives to be the vast
difference between the treatise and the poem with respect to their
diverse reflections of a theory of the genres (in one of his more
enthusiastic moments he characterizes this difference as a
"fathomless abyss"), he concludes with considerations of the
supposedly diverse modes of allegory he claims to find in sections
7 and 8.  His work is well researched (only one major omission will
detain us in a moment), thoughtful, lively, and provocative. 
Precisely because it is as attractive a critical performance as it
is, it requires close attention. 

     As he warms to his argument, Baranski becomes less cautious in
his judgment that the Epistle may not be by Dante, concluding with
the following assertion: "To argue against the Epistle's Dantean
origins is --I believe-- to perform a humble service on the poet's
behalf."  Let us examine his arguments in order to test the merit
of his project.  What follow are the causes of my principal
disagreements with him.
     (1) Baranski begins by asserting that Nardi "had convincingly
refuted" Mazzoni's principal claims.  Not even Brugnoli goes that
far.  It is already clear that I strongly disagree with this
evaluation.  Nardi had indeed made some telling points against
several of Mazzoni's arguments.  What he failed to do was to
dislodge the evidence Mazzoni had given that the commentators were
better acquainted with the document than Nardi wanted to admit.  It
is also worth noting that Baranski pays little attention to Nardi's
strong support for the authenticity of the first four paragraphs of
the Epistle.

     (2) While indicating that Brugnoli both studied with Nardi and
continues to share many of his thoughts on the question, Baranski
inexplicably fails to take any notice of Giorgio Padoan's important
contribution, published in 1965, which opposes Nardi and supports
the authenticity of the Epistle, even though Padoan also considers
himself Nardi's student.  What Padoan did was to counter Nardi's
surprising miscomprehension (one shared by Brugnoli) that the
*Epistola*'s schema for the adaptation of the four theological
senses of allegory made the poem a mere, or traditional, fiction,
rather than the prophetic vision composed by Dante so passionately
believed in by Nardi.

     (3) Unsurprisingly, given his basic agreement with the thrust
of Kelly's work, Baranski holds that "it is impossible to assert
with any degree of certainty that, say, Guido da Pisa depends on
the letter rather than vice versa."  Only if one supposes that the
Epistle is not genuine may one so argue, a tactic which makes of
the matter in dispute the first tenet in one's argument.  Those who
oppose the Epistle's authenticity are the ones under the burden of
proof in this matter.  We are not dealing with a manuscript that
turned up without ascription that a modern scholar has tried to
assign to Dante, but one that surfaced in the hands of Filippo
Villani, through what paths we know not, bearing Dante's name.  If
we return to Mazzoni's dating of the *Epistola a Cangrande*
(between 1315 and 1317), then clearly Guido depends on it.  And
even Nardi, who believes the first four paragraphs genuine, only
moves their date forward to 1319.  Thus, as I have argued, if the
clearly Dantean opening is accepted as authentic, and if we find
Guido da Pisa and Jacopo della Lana referring to it and later parts
of the Epistle at least by 1328, it is probably impossible to argue
for Guido's (or anyone else's) prior composition of elements found
in the *Epistola*.  Baranski says that recent discussions have
questioned the date of the Epistle.  In recent years only Kelly's,
however, has postponed it so drastically.  And there is the
question of the validity of these discussions, which is not
addressed by Baranski.

     (4) "It is not at all clear why, given their cult of Dante and
their culture's obsession with authority" the commentators do not
cite Dante as its author.  To this observation is added the
following challenge: "I'll be especially interested to see how
supporters of the Epistle's authenticity would explain away a
version of the letter which did not bear Dante's name."  It is
possible that Baranski's challenge reflects a similar moment in
Brugnoli's introduction, discussed earlier, in which Brugnoli
reflects with bemused impatience that neither Jacopo della Lana nor
the Ottimo, if they do cite the document, feels obligated to refer
to Dante as its author, an argument confronted by Mazzoni, but
treated by Brugnoli as though it had not been and were a major
point on his side.  (In fact, the argument had already been put
forward by D'Ovidio in 1899, arguing that supporters of genuineness
could not supply "alcun trecentista che citasse l'Epistola.") 
Neither Brugnoli nor Baranski cites or discusses Jenaro-MacLennan's
substantial discussion of the way in which attributions and other
indications of person tend to slip away in later versions of
commentary material.  Nonetheless, both of these questions raised
by Baranski are important, and Mazzoni has dealt with them in what
I consider intelligent ways, admitting, even insisting, that the
*Epistola* circulated without its first four paragraphs, after
having been transcribed in that form, perhaps by someone close to
Cangrande.  (Mazzoni is now of the opinion that there was likely to
have been a copy of the exegetical portion made somewhere in the
area delimited by Bologna, Verona, and Ravenna sometime shortly
after Dante's death; this is a working hypothesis, not a fact; it
is nonetheless worth recording.)  We can, I believe, make the case,
on negative evidence, that most of the fourteenth-century
commentators who saw the text did not see it in full.  Given the
fact that so many deal with it in their *proemi*, we may speculate
that it could have been copied into at least one manuscript as the
*accessus* to the work, and thus neither clearly Dante's own nor
clearly not his own.  But that is mere speculation.  All we can say
is that it seems more than likely that the truncated form of the
Epistle (no more than sections 5-33, probably considerably less)
made its way into the hands of a number of commentators, whether or
not of all who quote from it (since some may be citing from the
texts of other commentators).  Thus the lack of any citation of
Dante as its author results from the absence of his name as author
of the Epistle, which is only found in the dedication.  There is a
second point.  As Padoan has shown, the early commentators (and
particularly Pietro Alighieri) were extremely uncomfortable with
the truth-claims made in the poem itself, which they frequently
attempted to undermine by making the text a more "ordinary" kind of
fiction ("here the author feigns that he saw..." is a typical
locution in this mode) in response to Dante's continual
representation of the state of the souls after death and his
experience of them as being veracious.  Thus the *Epistola*, with
its similar claims, is a difficult document for most of the
commentators to accept.  At the same time, the fact that it had
been cited by such as Jacopo della Lana, Guido da Pisa, and Dante's
son Pietro gave it a kind of tentative authority.  Thus it is used,
abused at times, and held at a certain distance.  It is almost
always there somewhere in the early commentaries, but its authority
is uncertain, its doctrines at times disconcerting or even
dangerous.  It has, in short, exactly the sort of liminal and
simultaneously controversial status that its sporadic treatment
would indicate.  And, finally, we should observe that in fact Guido
da Pisa *does* refer to the Epistle as being by Dante (in his
commentary to *Inferno* XV, 69: "Et hoc semper in suis licteris
ostendebat dicens: Dantes florentinus natione, non moribus"), that
Jacopo della Lana does so as well (whether or not he was following
Guido, as Jenaro-MacLennan believes, glossing the same text, when
he wrote "si si scrivea Dante da Firenze per nazione, e non per
costume," and that Paolazzi has now shown that Benvenuto is also in
this company.  He cites from the lectures given by Benvenuto da
Imola at Bologna in 1375 (the version of his commentary the
authorship of which was attributed incorrectly to Stefano Talice da
Ricaldone in the nineteenth century): The passage addresses Dante's
reasons for composing in the vernacular.  "Ratio prima est ista,
que habetur *in sua epistola*, ut faceret fructum et delectationem
pluribus gentibus, tam literatis quam illiteratis" ["The first
reason is this, as we read *in his epistle*, in order to offer
fruition and pleasure to many, whether lettered or unlettered"]. 
Paolazzi argues for the closeness of the thought of the passage to
that found in sections 10.31 and 15.39 of the Epistle, and to the
phrase "utilitatem et delectationem" in section 33.89.  To his
argument may now be added Francesco Mazzoni's notice, in a recent
conversation, of the same phrase, *fructum et delectationem*,
reflected in the opening verse of the *capitolo ternario* of the
*Commedia* by Busone da Gubbio: "Per• che sia pi£ *fructo* e pi£
*dilecto*."  In addition, the phrase, in any declined form,
"utilitate et delectatione" appears only once (strangely enough) in
the Latin commentaries currently found in the Dartmouth Dante
Project; it is used by Benvenuto in his comment on *Paradiso* II,
7-9.  This fact may lend Paolazzi's thesis some support. 

     Baranski's supporting argument is more provocative and
interesting.  If Benvenuto was so interested in having the
authority of Dante for his discussion, why did he omit the
reference in the final version of his commentary?  Henry Kelly had
already, as Baranski notes, offered a complex and interesting
discussion of Paolazzi's ascription of the reference to *Epistola*
XIII to Benvenuto.  In Kelly's view, the words *sue epistole* in
this second version of the commentary may either refer to the
letter from Petrarca *about* Dante referred to by Benvenuto in the
final version of his commentary, where this passage is reelaborated
in a discussion of *Inferno* II, or to Boccaccio's letter of "Frate
Ilaro" *about* Dante.  However, the passage in question is wholly
unambiguous: "Ratio prima est ista que habetur *in sua epistola*." 
And the following text, while perhaps not faithfully rendering
Dante's argument, is nonetheless to be taken as Benvenuto's version
of it, which turns the Epistle's description of the poem's status
as vernacular work into the commentator's understanding of the
purpose that lies behind that choice.  The simplest and most
logical inferences that we may draw are, first, that *in sua
epistola* refers to a letter *by* Dante (and not one *about* him)
and, second, that the only epistle thus indicated is the *Epistola
a Cangrande*.  If these things are true, we are still left with
Baranski's good objection.  Why did Benvenuto withdraw the citation
in his final version of his commentary?

     Paolazzi, in the understandable pleasure of discovery, has
not, it is fair to say, considered the strange practice of
Benvenuto if he is both acquainted with the *Epistola a Cangrande*
and knows it is by Dante.  If these two things are true (and I
think they may be), how do we explain the fact that his references
to the Epistle are so very few and far between?  And so faint when
they do seem to be present?  (Mazzoni, in 1955, spoke of Benvenuto
as being "at the margins of the problem.")  When we compare his
*accessus* to the *Commedia* to Boccaccio's, perhaps the most
faithful recapturing of the key elements in the Epistle of any
fourteenth-century commentator, and a text which Benvenuto knew
more closely than perhaps any other commentary, how can we account
for his nearly total distancing of himself from the document?  I
think there is a reason: Benvenuto did not approve of what the
Epistle was saying.  Boccaccio treats it as authoritative (if not
*in nomine Dantis*); Benvenuto seems to think it was by Dante, and
desires to be free from its yoke (like so many contemporary
students of the problem).  This hypothesis would account for
Benvenuto's only occasional, nearly involuntary, reference to it,
and his suppression of his single earlier reference to it as
Dantean in the final version of his exegesis.

     Last, but hardly least, Filippo Villani still more explicitly
attributes the Epistle to Dante.  Does Baranski really believe that
all this is not significant evidence?  One assumes so, given his
total silence about the two glosses to *Inferno* XV, 69, despite
the fact that he has read the texts that put forward these pieces
of evidence.  His only response is to list the bibliographical
sources of the various opinons that we have examined and to offer
a blanket denial: the claim may only safely be made for Filippo
Villani.  

     (5) The understated and "conventional" nature of many of the
claims made by the author of the Epistle strikes me rather as
arguing for Dante's authorship than against it.  See, for example,
his brief explication of the invocation at *Paradiso* I, 10-12
(section 31.87).  All he says that is of any interpretive
significance (and it is of considerable significance) is contained
in the laconic remark that the author of *Paradiso* "petit divinum
auxilium."  We remember the related text at section 18.47, the
first discussion of the invocation, where we are told that what
must be invoked by poets is "quasi divinum quoddam munus" ["almost
a certain divine gift"], a passage which allows a "pagan"
understanding to those so minded, but which is now, it is clear,
revealed to have referred exactly to the "divinum auxilium" of the
true God.  That the author of the *Epistola a Cangrande* here
speaks briefly does not indicate that he speaks without portent. 
Continuing, at section 32.88, he refuses to develop the *sententia*
of the invocation, precisely at the moment he would need to reveal
to us that "Apollo" is the Triune God, that the Holy Spirit is his
inspiration, etc.  It is typical of Dante that here, as in the
poem, he forces *us* to mouth his deep truths for him.  It is a
technique he may have learned from the Christ of the Gospels, as in
his use of the locution "tu dicis" in order to render Pilate's
unbelieving formulation of Jesus' kingship no less than truthful
(Matthew 27:11; Mark 15:2; Luke 23:3; John 18:37).

     (6) Brugnoli had previously offered the opinion that Dante
would have never called the *Commedia* "sublime" because it is
written in the low style, an opinion which fails to take into
account so many things, whether in section 10.30 or in the
*Commedia* itself (e.g., "poema sacro" [*Paradiso* XXV, 1],
"t‰odia" [*Paradiso* XXV, 73]), that reveal to us Dante's desire to
transcend the usual generic limitations of stylistic range and
register.  Further, if the *accessus* (section 10.30) holds that
tragedy speaks "elate et sublime," the exposition only confirms
what is said of comedy in the dedication: the opening verses of
*Paradiso* promise to tell things "tam ardua tam sublimia" (section
19.51).  It seems clear enough that the author of the Epistle, like
the author of the *Commedia*, wants to have things both ways.  The
apparent contradiction is not one, but a brilliant paradox: the
poem is a comedy that can attain the stylistic height and
seriousness of tragedy without being "tragic."  Precisely such an
understanding is found in the *Declaratio super profundissimam et
altissimam Comediam Dantis*, the vernacular poem in *terzine*
composed by Guido da Pisa (around 1327).  In its title and then in
the text (vv. 7 and 23) Dante's poem is referred to as "l'alta
ComedĦa."  What seems to have been easily grasped by Guido causes
considerably more difficulty in our time.  

     Baranski is another who is displeased by the Epistle's
formulation of a theory of genre.  Its equation of, and now I quote
from Baranski, "the vernacular and the 'comic' ('ad modum loquendi,
remissus est et humilis, quia locutio vulgaris in qua et muliercule
comunicant') is most bewildering, when Dante's glorification of his
native language in *De vulgari eloquentia* is remembered; to say
nothing of the uses to which he puts the *vulgaris* in the
*Commedia* itself."  I think that Baranski here is caught on the
horns of a dilemma of his own making.  Since he wants the
*Commedia* to be simultaneously "comic" (in the widest possible
terms) and "plurilingual" (his term in a number of his recent
studies), he tends to want to deny (for reasons I do not
understand) the "tragic" as one of these styles.  (To return to
Guido da Pisa's formulation, alluded to a moment ago, Baranski
somehow fails to understand that what Dante has composed may be
described as his "alta ComedĦa.")  At the same time he wants
Dante's definition of the lofty vernacular from *De vulgari
Eloquentia*, which is pronouncedly "tragic," to apply here.  This
objection contradicts Baranski's purpose as it is elsewhere
expressed.  

     In the same vein, the phrase at section 3.11, "sublimem
canticam," also seems to Baranski the work of a forger.  Why? 
Because the term (and he here disagrees with a part of Brugnoli's
argument, as do I), means not "last cantica" but "sublime cantica,"
that is, one of loftiness.  I would say that the *Paradiso* is
meant to be seen as "high" in style (if not always, essentially,
and more so than the preceding *cantiche*) and "happy" in content. 
Baranski takes "sublime" to refer only to the "tragic" style.  And
that bothers him considerably.  He cannot fathom how, in light of
his other judgments, the author of the Epistle would say that "a
comedy could actually be 'sublime.'"  We have seen him caught in
this bind before.  If, as he himself insists, the *Commedia* is
"plurilingual," will not that *plurilinguismo* include the high
style?  Reading the poem is enough to convince me that it does.  I
agree with Baranski that the poem contains many styles.  Surely the
tragic is one of them, as he himself elsewhere acknowledges.  What
is perhaps most exciting in Dante's "high style" is that it rests
so easily alongside the *sermo humilis* that is his trademark.  Let
me, aware of how many might serve, offer only two examples to
demonstrate the point.  Dante says in the *Convivio* (2.2.7; 2.4.2)
that *angeli* are only so denominated by the *volgar gente*, that,
in fact, they really should be referred to as *intelligenze*.  (His
practice in the *Commedia*, unsurprisingly, is precisely to follow
the *volgar gente*: the word *angelo* is used a total of thirty-one
times, *intelligenza*, four, and only once [*Paradiso* XXVIII, 78]
with a possible undertone of the angelic nature of the motion of
each celestial sphere.)  Such "vulgarization" is in keeping with
what is perhaps, and rightly, our central perception of Dante's
linguistic direction in the *Commedia*, from high to low.  And I
think it is right to conclude that that is what he himself wanted
to be most notable about his new creation, its ability to use the
vernacular for subjects that had hitherto been treated in "lofty"
Latin.  However, if we find him "lowering" scholastic Latin to its
vernacular equivalent, we also find him "raising" the vernacular to
*its* level, as we may conclude from such evidence as that
commented upon by Torquato Tasso, cited by Raffaele Andreoli
(1856), discussing Dante's use of a Latin negative where an Italian
would have served in *Paradiso* XXXII, 145): "quasi giudicasse le
parole latine esser piu atte ad esprimere la maesta e l'altezza de'
concetti del Paradiso" ["as though he considered Latin words more
fitting to express the majesty and loftiness of the ideas of
Paradise"].

     (7) Baranski argues that the citation of Horace in the service
of allowing a mixture of styles in a single work is not really a
very good reading of Horace, who allows only a limited mingling of
genres.  Dante, however, or the author of the Epistle, not having
had the benefit of Baranski's counsel, simply decides that he
allows as much he wants him to (Horace, he says, "licentiat
aliquando comicos ut tragedos loqui, et sic e converso" ["allows
that comic poets at times speak as tragic poets do, and vice
versa"]).  Baranski, differing from this opinion, argues that this
use of Horace was a commonplace in the exegetical tradition of the
middle ages, and thus is further proof of the passage's
"conventionality," an attribute which Baranski assumes renders the
Epistle more likely to be spurious, one supposes on the ground that
some who have argued for authenticity regard it as "revolutionary."

The Epistle, on the other hand, like the *Commedia*, is a work that
combines the old and the new.  If Baranski is right about the
conventionality of the claim made on the authority of Horace, that
is still no reason to believe it is not by Dante; if Vandelli, who
believed that Dante's citation is part of a wholly original tactic,
is right, there is every reason to believe that it is.

     (8) When Baranski turns to the question of the allegorical
exposition found in sections 7 and 8 of the Epistle, his main point
is that the discussion of theological allegory in section 7 is
followed by a description in section 8 of what is essentially "the
allegory of the poets": according to him, this description "is
rather bland and lacks any Biblical overtones."  He then turns to
Alastair Minnis's similar argument, which has it that the eighth
section of the Epistle reverts to a more usual "allegory of the
poets" in its statement of the "ethical" meaning of the text.  The
problem with the interpretation of Minnis and Baranski is, simply,
that it is almost certainly incorrect.  First, Baranski's omission
of the first part of the eighth paragraph of the *Epistola*
obscures the consecutive nature of the thought of the two connected
statements found in sections 7 and 8.  Having finished the
description of the four senses in section 7, the writer links his
next discussion to it: "Hiis visis, manifestum est quod duplex
oportet esse subiectum, circa quod currant alterni sensus."  As we
have earlier seen, Brugnoli's Italian translation of this passage
is not accurate. I do not know whether or not it may help account
for Minnis's misinterpretation.  It reads: "e chiaro che il
soggetto di un'opera, sottoposto a due diversi significati, sara
duplice"; it would better read :"e chiaro che il soggetto, circa il
quale corrano gli alterni sensi [= i vari altri sensi in ordine],
deve essere duplice" ["it is clear that the subject, around which
the other senses, one after the other, may run, must be twofold"]. 
The phrase "alterni [and not 'alii'] sensus" is a far stricter and
"theological" precision than most editors and commentators
understand.  It means the three spiritual senses, one after the
other.  The text continues by saying that the subject of the work
must be interpreted first literally, and then allegorically; that
the subject of the entire work is the state of the souls after
death (its literal sense), "nam de illo et circa illum ("statum,"
not "subiectum," as in Brugnoli's translation; the pronominal form
would be "illud" were the latter the antecedent) totius operis
versatur processus" ["for from it and around it the progress of the
entire work develops"].  The movement forward of the entire work,
its plot, or narrative, is concerned with the state of the souls
after death, if it is understood literally.  And now we join the
text where Baranski intercepts it.  And what it does is give the
allegorical interpretation of the entire work, that of the three
"alternating" non-literal senses of Scripture, allegorical, moral,
and anagogical, all subsumed, as St. Thomas authorized, in the
familiar passage from the *Summa* (1.1.10), which allows for or,
rather, insists upon the identity of the three "allegorical" senses
(allegorical, moral, anagogical) and the single threefold
(*trifariam*) "spiritual" sense, where the past lives of the damned
are seen as prefiguring their present "status post mortem," also
indicating our need to incorporate the lessons offered by their
lives and deaths into the choices in ours (for example, *Paradiso*
XXV, 32, where St. James is said to have "figured" hope.  The use
of the exegetical term *figuri* helps us understand how we are to
"read" James's life "morally," namely as a figure to be "fulfilled"
by the hope in each of us), by living their lives in ours, as it
were, either by fleeing what was vicious in their thoughts and
actions or following what was virtuous in them, and also
prefiguring their future damnation or glory under God's justice. 
Further, Minnis and Baranski are apparently, at least in this
instance, not aware of the sort of question a theologian puts to
such a text-- and the author of the Epistle, as we have seen, is
clearly speaking "theologically" in these passages.  It is
instructive to consult Thomas Aquinas, *Quodlibeta*, sixth
quaestio, reflecting issues raised in his definition of the four
senses in *Summa Theologica* 1.1.10 (the very text which is the
closest we have been able to find to Dante's self-exegesis in
section 7, as even Baranski admits.  He answers the following
objection, which is much as that of Minnis and Baranski to section
8: "The moral sense is that which pertains to the teaching of
morals.  But Holy Scripture, in a number of passages, gives moral
instruction literally.  Therefore, the moral sense cannot be
distinguished from the literal."  Here is Thomas's resolution of
the *quaestio*: "Let it be said that the moral sense [he is
referring to the third of the four theological senses] does not
refer to every sense through which morals are taught, but to that
through which instruction in morals is understood from a likeness
to certain things which have been done; for the moral sense is a
part of the spiritual sense, because the moral and literal sense is
never the same" ["quod nunquam est idem sensus moralis et
litteralis"].  As James E. Shaw reminds us, Thomas defined allegory
strictly, where others were content with far looser procedures.  In
his study of theological allegory, Dante seems to have been formed
by Thomas far more than by anyone else.  And his own distinctions
are a great deal more "strict" than some contemporary theorists
recognize.  However, that he follows Thomas's formulations does not
mean that he accepts his prescriptions (or proscriptions).  I am
grateful to Francesco Mazzoni for pointing out to me the following.

The definition of the "literal subject" of the *Commedia* in the
Epistle, section 8.24, "status animarum post mortem simpliciter
sumptus," almost certainly reflects the following proscription of
Thomas, who, in his commentary *In X libros Ethicorum ad
Nichomachum*, 3, *lectio* 14, locating fortitude's place between
boldness and fear, discusses our only normal fear of death. 
Admonishing us to concentrate on this life as we prepare for the
next, he concludes as follows: "Ea enim quae pertinent ad *statum
animarum post mortem*, non sunt visibilia nobis."  Nardi makes a
similar point to a different end.  In a previous passage in his
commentary to the *Ethics*, 1, *lectio* 9, Thomas had already
specifically denied such knowledge as Dante would be claiming if he
wrote the *Epistola*: "In this book the Philosopher speaks of the
happiness that may be possessed in this life; for the happiness of
the other life exceeds any rational investigation."  Thus, if the
non-epistolary sections of the Epistle were to have been written by
Dante, Nardi concludes, their author would have had to deny exactly
such purpose as section 8 arrogates unto itself, "per la
tomisticissima ragione che lo 'status animarum post mortem' non e
di competenza di nessuna parte e di nessun genere della filosofia,
semplicemente perche 'omnem investigationem rationis excedit'"
["for the most Thomist of reasons, namely that the state of the
souls after death is not in the competence of any part or branch of
philosophy, simpy because {quoting Thomas} 'it exceeds the limit of
any investigation of which reason is capable'"].  In both these
instances (and the text found by Mazzoni constitutes a truly
arresting detail, a far more interesting proof that Dante had
Thomas in mind here [as he was in Dante's definition of theological
allegory]), what we see reflected in the Epistle is Dante's precise
knowledge that Thomas would *not* have warranted what he was
writing.  And Nardi's argument is a strange one, since it is he who
has argued most forcefully for Dante's positioning himself as poet
of revealed truth, if anything an even stronger *prise de position*
against St. Thomas than Nardi finds in the Epistle.  My view is
that both Mazzoni and Nardi are correct in thinking that the author
of the *Epistola a Cangrande* is in polemic with Thomas; the former
sees him as citing Thomas, but is less willing than I to argue that
the procedures of his poem exactly manifest his insistence on
theological allegory; the latter argues that Dante would not have
violated Thomas's "rules" in the Epistle, but then did so (and not
a little) in the poem.  I still find Padoan's resolution of the
problem the most convincing one that we have: the Epistle and the
poem share the same givens, the same techniques, the same effects.

     The question of the adequacy of its description of the
"subject" of the poem has long troubled doubters of the Epistle's
authenticity; they have been offended that Dante's poem is referred
to in what they consider trivializing terms.  Remnants of this view
remain in some recent work.  For instance, Dronke believes that it
does not yield an interesting result to say that the subject of the
poem is the state of the souls *post mortem*, since it is in fact
"the *itinerarium mentis* of Dante Alighieri"; thus the Epistle
does not seem to him likely to be genuine.  But the subject of the
poem *is* the state of the souls after their deaths, from the
moment in which we enter Inferno proper until that in which we see
the *vita* of St. Bernard and the culminating vision of humanity as
the blessed in the rose.  And the fact is not trivial, for here is
a poem which takes as its subject the history of the future, as it
were.  Further, that there is a "second subject" is clear, if it
would have been out of order for Dante to say so.  *He* is the
second subject.  If I may be allowed to quote myself, a quarter of
a century ago I tried to put the case as follows: "The twin subject
of the poem includes what Dante does and what Dante sees"; again,
"The Letter to Can Grande is right as far as it goes, but there is
another subject matter and it involves what Dante the Pilgrim does
in the poem, while the state of the souls after death involves what
he sees."

     The above arguments offer, I hope, a sufficient answer to the
attempts of Minnis and Baranski to pull the author of the Epistle
back to the poet's side of the divide of allegory; that is not
where he has elected to be found.  One must be careful not to make
Dante more of one's kinsman than he wanted to be.  There is
absolutely no reason for which one can claim with confidence that
section 8 of the Epistle is any less "theological" than the one
with which it is inextricably bound and that precedes it, only the
desire to "detheologize" Dante, as Minnis seeks to do, or to
"undertheologize" the "false" Dante of the Epistle, Baranski's aim.

(It is amusing to note that Baranski wants the true Dante to be a
"theological" poet, and so eventually disagrees with Minnis's
evaluation of Dante's "mixed" allegoresis, a position not very
distant from Nardi's.)

          Baranski's conclusion is that "as things stand today, the
most 'economic' --to use Contini's term-- philological conclusion
is that the Epistle is forgery."  I do not think he has come close
to making good his case.  And his final gesture toward Contini has
the unintended effect of reminding us that Contini accepted at once
(in 1956) the genuineness of the *Epistola a Cangrande* as a result
of Mazzoni's research and then underlined his agreement with some
force in 1958; I do not believe he ever modified his opinion.  (See
the rejoinder to Baranski's concluding remark in Pertile's article
of 1991, citing the same term ["economical"] in Contini in support
of *his* view that the Epistle is in fact genuine.)



     This review of the recent work which would have us believe
that the *Epistola a Cangrande* is, in whole or in part, a forgery
has been undertaken in the attempt to clarify the current state of
the question.  The flawed arguments which have served to becloud
the issue, issuing from Brugnoli's edition in 1979, with its
attempt to resuscitate Nardi's objections (themselves deeply
flawed), offer some reason to believe that the *Epistola* is by
Dante.  I hope that some of the counter-arguments advanced here
have served to alert those gathered here that the single best
hypothesis remains that of Francesco Mazzoni, itself following in
the tradition of Vandelli, Moore, and others.  The text which we
know as the *Epistola a Cangrande* is exactly what its salutation
says it is, the letter to the man who is invited to become the
sponsor of a commentary which Dante almost certainly never expected
to write.  He knew he did not have to, that we would do that for
him.  I do not believe that he would have hoped to find so much
time and effort being devoted to the study of this epistle, which
he probably wrote quickly and with lodging and food as his main
aim.  While he was at it, he contrived to set down some exegetical
guidelines that can assist those who are willing to dedicate
themselves to a nuanced reading of his great poem.