Dante's Christian Ethics

George Corbett is Senior Lecturer in Theology and the Arts, School of Divinity, University of St Andrews, Scotland. Prior to this, he was Junior Research Fellow of Trinity College, and Affiliated Lecturer in Italian, University of Cambridge. He is the author of Dante and Epicurus: A Dualistic Vision of Secular and Spiritual Fulfilment (2013), editor of Annunciations: Sacred Music for the Twenty-First Century (2019), and co-editor, with Heather Webb, of Vertical Readings in Dante's Comedy, Volume 1-3 (2015–17), a major reappraisal of the poem in three volumes. He received a bronze medal from the Società Dantesca Italiana in Florence on the 750th anniversary of Dante's birth in 2015.

• Part I. Ethical and Political Manifesto: 1. Dante's ethical agenda: vital nourishment; 2. Dante's political polemic: church and empire; Part II. Reframing Dante's Christian Ethics: 3. Dante's theological purgatory: earthly happiness and eternal beatitude; 4. Two traditions of Christian ethics: Aquinas and Peraldus; Part III. Penance and Dante's Purgatory: 5. The terrace of pride, and the poet as preacher; 6. The terrace of sloth, and the sin of scholars; 7. The terrace of avarice, and love of children.

'Dr George Corbett's original, tightly argued, and in various ways surprising study [makes] a distinct contribution to the reappraisal of Dante's theology, the re-examination of his intellectual formation, and the renewed investigation of the Commedia's narrative structure. Corbett's argument is buttressed by a close reading of Dante's text combined with knowledge of the main influences on it and of the secondary literature.' Robert Ombres, New Blackfriars