Per l’edizione del commento dantesco di Baldassarre Lombardi

Between the 17th and 18th century the general attitude towards Dante’s work is deeply influenced by the ongoing antimarinist literary renewal. Just like Marino, Dante is considered obscure and unable to deal with philosophical subject-matters in depth. Moving from this viewpoint, Colombo analyzes the critical essays written by Arcadian classicists, still thoroughly based on quotations from the ‘Comedy’, and those written by Florentine scholars: Lorenzo Magalotti’s comment is the result of teamwork between Rome and Florence, while Benedetto Menzini’s prescriptive empiricism is still linked to Renaissance in attitude. Gianvincenzo Gravina outdoes the ordinary pseudo-Aristotelian interpretations of the ‘Commedia’, because several cultural influences, from Benvenuto da Imola to Galileo, from Boccaccio to Campanella, allow him to underline the symbiosis of poetry and philosophy in Dante and ascribe the obscurity of the poem to the concealment imposed by doctrine. Gravina’s study of Dante is compared with the more conventional essays written by Muratori and Crescimbeni. Scipione Maffei’s case is particularly interesting because it explains clearly the importance of Crescimbeni’s essays in influencing the way Dante was studied in Rome.