Dante & the Unorthodox

James Miller teaches a cycle of courses on Dante for the Comparative Literature and Culture program at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada. His other books include Measures of Wisdom: The Cosmic Dance in Classical and Christian Antiquity and Fluid Exchanges: Artists and Critics in the AIDS Crisis . He has also translated Andrew Pawlowskiâs play Dante on the Steps of Immortality . James Miller looks forward to a hot afterlife on the Seventh Terrace of Purgatory.

• Table of Contents for Dante & the Unorthodox: The Aesthetics of Transgression , edited by James Miller Acknowledgments Introduction: Retheologizing Dante | James Miller PART I: Trapassar Danteâs Limbo: At the Margins of Orthodoxy | Amilcare A. Iannucci Saving Virgil | Ed King Sacrificing Virgil | Mira Gerhard PART II: Trasmutar Dido Alighieri: Gender Inversion in the Francesca Episode | Carolynn Lund-Mead Fuming Accidie: The Sin of Danteâs Gurglers | John Thorp Heresy and Politics in Inferno | Guido Pugliese Original Skin: Nudity and Obscenity in Danteâs Inferno | Mark Feltham and James Miller Anti-Dante: Bataille in the Ninth Bolgia | James Miller Part III: Trasumanar Rainbow Bodies: The Erotics of Diversity in Danteâs Catholicism | James Miller Dante/ Fante : Embryology in Purgatory and Paradise | Jennifer Fraser The Cyprian Redeemed: Venereal Influence in Paradiso | Bonnie MacLachlan PART IV: Traslatar âDantescan Lightâ: Ezra and Eccentric Dante Scholars | Leon Surette Ezra Pound in the Earthly Paradise | Matthew Reynolds PART V: Tralucere Dante and Cinema: Film across a Chasm | Bart Testa âMoving Visual Thinkingâ: Dante, Brakhage, and the Works of Energeia | R. Bruce Elder Driftworks, Pulseworks, Lightworks: The Letter to Dr. Henderson | R. Bruce Elder PART VI: Trasmodar Calling Dante: An Exhibition of Sculptures, Drawings, and Installations | Andrew Pawlowski and Zbigniew Pospieszynski Curatorial Essay: Prophet of the Paragone | James Miller Calling Dante: Notes on the Artists | James Miller Calling Dante: A Portfolio of Words and Images | Andrew Pawlowski and Zbigniew Pospieszynski Calling Dante: From Dante on the Steps of Immortality | Andrew Pawlowski Notes on Contributors Index Notes on Contributors R. Bruce Elder is an internationally acclaimed filmmaker, critic, and professor of film studies in the School of Image Arts at Ryerson University in Toronto. Retrospectives of his work have been mounted by the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), Cinémathèque Québécoise (Montreal), Senzatitolo (Trento, Italy) and Anthology Film Archives (New York). He is the author of Image and Identity: Reflections on Canadian Film and Culture (1989), A Body of Vision: The Image of the Body in Recent Film and Poetry (1997), and The Films of Stan Brakhage in the American Tradition of Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and Charles Olson (1998). Mark Feltham studied Dante and Bataille with James Miller in 1996â97 and completed his PhD in English at The University of Western Ontario in 2004. He specializes in James Joyce, with particular focus on editorial theory, electronic text theory, and the history of the book. He currently teaches English and writing at Western. Jennifer Fraser completed her doctoral dissertation on Dante and Joyce at the University of Toronto in 1997. An instructor for the Literary Studies program at the University of Toronto in 2001â02, she has published articles in the James Joyce Quarterly and European Joyce Studies . Her book Rite of Passage in the Narratives of Dante and Joyce was published by the University Press of Florida in 2002. Mira Gerhard graduated with a BA in classics from Brock University in 1994. She studied Danteâs Commedia with James Miller in 1996â97 at The University of Western Ontario, from which she graduated with an MA in classics in 1998. She continued her studies of Dante, Virgil, and the classical tradition at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto in 1998â99. Amilcare A. Iannucci was director of the Canadian Academic Centre in Italy from 1981 to 1983 and chair of the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Toronto from 1984 to 1988. He is currently director of the University of Toronto Humanities Centre in University College. He is the author of Forma ed evento nella âDivina Commediaâ (1984) and of numerous articles on subjects ranging from Petrarch to Marshall McLuhan. Cofounder of the journal Quaderni dâitalianistica , he is also the editor of Dante e la âbella scolaâ della poesia: autorità e sfida poetica (1993), Dante: Contemporary Perspectives (1997), and Dante, Cinema, and Television (2004). An associate editor of The Dante Encyclopedia (2000), he has also produced an educational video series on The Divine Comedy . Ed King earned his honorary TS (a transgressive T-Shirt bearing the glowering face of the Poet) after completing all three courses in James Millerâs 1995â96 Dante cycle. He went on to graduate from The University of Western Ontario with a BA in political science and comparative literature in 1998 and an MA in political science in 1999. His Masterâs thesis was on economic rhetoric in Machiavelliâs The Prince . In 2004 he graduated with a PhD in political science from the University of California at Berkeley and joined the faculty in the Department of Political Science at Concordia University in Montreal. His main research interests include economic rhetoric and the effect of the imagination on political choices. Carolynn Lund-Mead is a Toronto-based independent scholar whose publications include âNotes on Androgyny and the Commediaâ in Lectura Dantis (1992) and âDante and Androgynyâ in Dante: Contemporary Perspectives (1997). Her doctoral dissertation on the relationship of fathers and sons in Virgil, Dante, and Milton reflects her strong interest in intertexuality, as does her present research for a project on Danteâs biblical allusions in collaboration with Amilcare A. Iannucci. Bonnie MacLachlan is an associate professor in the Department of Classical Studies at The University of Western Ontario. She is co-editor of Harmonia Mundi: Music and Philosophy in Ancient Greece (1991) and author of The Age of Grace: Charis in Early Greek Poetry (1993). Her articles include âSacred Prostitution and Aphroditeâ (1992), âPersonal Poetryâ (1997), âThe Ungendering of Aphroditeâ (2002), and âThe Mindful Museâ (2002). Her main research interests include ancient Greek and Roman religion, women in antiquity, ancient music, and the lyric poets Alcaeus, Sappho, Ibycus, Anacreon, and Corinna. James Miller is Faculty of Arts Professor at the University of Western Ontario and founding director of the Pride Library (www.uwo.ca/pridelib). He is the author of Measures of Wisdom: The Cosmic Dance in Classical and Christian Antiquity (1986) and the editor of Fluid Exchanges: Artists and Critics in the AIDS Crisis (1992). His cycle of Dante courses for the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures provides undergraduates with the rare opportunity to study the entire Dantean corpus over a period of two years. His next project is a study of gay readings/readers of the Commedia from Oscar Wilde to Derek Jarman. Andrew Pawlowski (MD 1963; MD 1979) established himself in private practice as a dermatologist in Toronto and joined the University of Toronto Medical Faculty in 1983. After teaching himself how to sculpt, he served as the president of the Sculptors Society of Canada from 1992 to 1994. Besides numerous articles in medical journals, his publications include studies of the Polish-Canadian art scene and a cultural history of the Polish community in Toronto, The Saga of Roncesvalles (1993). Since his retirement from medical practice, he has written two novels set in the Middle Ages: Pochylony nad Åokietkiem (âLeaning over Lokietek,â published in 2004) concerning a Polish king in Danteâs time; and Zatrzymac cien Boga (âTo Stop the Shadow of God,â forthcoming) on St. Bernardâs role in the Second Crusade. Photographs of his sculptures serve as illustrations for his books. Zbigniew Pospieszynski studied painting and printmaking at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Art, graduating with an MA in 1978. After immigrating to Canada in 1987, he has been active both as an artist and as a curator in the Toronto area. In April of 2004, he mounted a successful exhibition of his work under the auspices of the Roam Contemporary Gallery in New York City. He is currently director of the Peak Gallery in Toronto. Guido Pugliese (PhD, 1974) teaches Italian literature and language at the University of Toronto at Mississauga. He has lectured on Dante, Boccaccio, Goldoni, Conti, Leopardi, Manzoni, and Verga, and has published articles on most of these authors. His scholarly interests extend to Italian theatre and questions of pedagogy. He has edited the previously unpublished correspondence of Pietro Ercole Gherardi to Muratori (1982) and a collection of papers entitled Perspectives on the Nineteenth Century Italian Novel (1989). Matthew Reynolds is The Times Lecturer in English at Oxford University and a Fellow of St. Anneâs College. His book on Victorian poetry, The Realms of Verse , was published by Oxford University Press in 2001. He is co-e

``Always original, often exciting, and sometimes genuinely outrageous, this smart and substantial collection of essays flamboyantly slaps the received wisdom of Dante studies in the face. Better yet, it shows a great medieval poet still speaking clearly and sharply to anyone in the twenty-first century with ears to listen.'' -- Steven Botterill, University of California, Berkeley