DANTE E LA LOMBARDIA

Abstract

The essay is divided into two parts. The first deals with the presence of Lombardy in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Some characters of Lombard origin are analyzed and also the allusions to the Lombard capital, Milan. We come to the conclusion that the characters, the cities, the Lombard principalities have a lot of prominence in Dante’s work. The author sees in this region a multiplicity of civil, cultural and political experiences far superior to other Italian regions (even if Tuscany and Florence have a more relevant presence). The second part briefly investigates the fact that the renewed interest in Dante originates in the early nineteenth century in Milan, where several editions of his works are printed and comments and studies are developed. It is also important to point out that the interpretation of Dante as the first and greatest Italian writer must be framed in the Italian culture of the first decades of the nineteenth century, when romantic poetics arrived in Italy and at the same time the ideas of the Risorgimento spread, so much so that we trace in those same decades Dantesque influences also in the creative works of writers and artists from the Lombardy area.