Massimo Cacciari is an Italian philosopher, politician, and public intellectual. He is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele in Italy. His many books include The Withholding Power: An Essay on Political Theology (translated by Edi Pucci). Alessandro Carrera is Professor of Italian Studies and World Cultures and Literatures at the University of Houston. His many books include Fellini's Eternal Rome: Paganism and Christianity in the Films of Federico Fellini. Giorgio Mobili is a poet and translator and teaches Italian and Spanish at California State University, Fresno. He is the author of Irritable Bodies and Postmodern Subjects in Pynchon, Puig, Volponi.

• Introduction: Nostalgia for the Empire, or Dante's MetapoliticsAlessandro Carrera1. Double Portrait: Saint Francis of Assisi in Dante and Giotto2. The "Sin" of Ulysses3. Dante's Divine Perception (Aesthesis Theia)4. The Concrete Ineffable: The Last Cantos of the Commedia5. Dante's Intellectual Love6. Latin and Vernacular in the De vulgari eloquentia7. On Dante's Political Theology8. A Brief Note on the German Reception of Dante9. Schelling's DanteNotesChapter SourcesIndex