Content area
Full text
Proceedings of the ALSC: II. Dante and the Western Canon
The distorted notions of invisible things which Dante and his
rival Milton have idealized, are merely the mask and the mantle
in which these great poets walk through eternity enveloped and
disguised. It is a difficult question to determine how far they
were conscious of the distinction which must have subsisted in
their minds between their own creeds and that of the people.
Dante at least appears to wish to mark the full extent of it by
placing Riphaeus, whom Virgil calls justissimus unus, in
Paradise, and observing a most heretical caprice in his
distribution of rewards and punishments.
-Percy Shelley, A Defence of Poetry
I
The case of Dante provides an excellent opportunity to open up the question of the Western canon. In one sense, Dante is the perfect example of a canonical author. His name is one of the few certain to appear on anybody's short list of the truly central authors in the Western literary tradition. But in another sense Dante can be regarded as uncanonical. In his own day he was widely suspected of being heretical in his religious views, 1 and a careful reading of his works does indeed raise serious doubts about his being the pillar of orthodoxy he is often taken to be today. 2 Out of this interplay between the canonical and the noncanonical Dante, I hope to show that the issue of the Western canon is more complicated than either its defenders or its attackers generally present it.
In discussing the issue of the canon, it is important to sort out at the beginning what we do and do not mean by the term. A canonical work may merely be a work that has been accepted into the literary canon, one that has become a touchstone in the reading and teaching of literature. But the term canonical can suggest something else, that the work is orthodox and somehow represents a central authoritative position in Western culture. The word canonical is so loaded with religious connotations that it is difficult to separate the relatively neutral first meaning of the term from the loaded second meaning. Dante is a case in point. When people refer to him...