Dante's Testaments

Peter S. Hawkins is Professor of Religion and Literature at the Yale Divinity School. He is the author of books on ineffability, the image of the city, and American fiction, as well as editor (with Rachel Jacoff) of a forthcoming collection of essays, The Poet's Dante.

• Abbreviations; prologue; Part I. Dante and the Bible: 1. The scriptural self; 2. Old and new parchments; 3. John is with me; 4. Self-authenticating artifact; Part II. Dante and Virgil: 5. Descendit ad ingeros; 6. Dido, Beatrice and the signs of ancient love; Part III. Dante and Ovid: 7. The metamorphosis of Ovid; 8. Watching Matelda; 9. Transfiguring the text; Part IV. Dante and the Saints: 10. Divid and conquer: Augustine in the Commedia; 11. Augustine, Dante, and the dialectic of ineffability; 12. 'By gradual scale sublimed': Dante and the contemplatives: Part V. Dante and the World: 13. Crossing over: Dante and pilgrimage; 14. 'Out upon circumference': discovery in Dante; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

"Surely Hawkins's contribution . . . will stand as one of the offerings most deserving of the laurel wreath the poet himself desired. As one who has regularly led seminarians on Dante's pilgrimage for over twenty-five years, the adjectives that kept recurring as I read Dante's Testaments were: erudite, engrossing, and elegant."—Anglican Theological Review "This is a book written from deep love of Dante and an equally deep learning . . . A beautifully written book, accessible to the general reader, but fascinating and insightful for the scholar, both literary and theological."—Theological Book Review "[T]houghtful, illustrative, and beautifully written . . . Hawkins's work presents a fitting tribute to Dante's poem while unveiling its author's own lifelong passionate engagement with it."—Speculum: Journal of Medieval Studies