Talk:Divine Comedy/Archives/2016

Javid Nama
Javid Nama, a Persian book by Sir Muhammad Iqbal, should be added in "Literary influence in the English-speaking world and beyond" Javid_Nama sSmilarly another Urdu book Zindagi, by Molvi Afzal Haq, was also influenced by Divine Comedy, however I am unable to find a reference for such at this moment. --Mutawassam (talk) 10:42, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20091202062524/http://www.primocircolopotenza.it:80/DivinaCommedia/Dante/caratteristiche.htm to http://www.primocircolopotenza.it/DivinaCommedia/Dante/caratteristiche.htm

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Assessment comment
Substituted at 13:31, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Title in opening sentence
I don't want to get into an edit war, but to start this article with "The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Florentine by Citizenship, Not by Morals, more commonly known as The Divine Comedy, . . ." seems to me ridiculous. The relevant sentence in the letter to Can Grande is "Libri titulus est: 'Incipit Comedia Dantis Alagherii, Florentini natione, non moribus' ("The title of the work is, 'Here begins the Comedy of Dante Alighieri, a Florentine by birth but not in character' ), and various folks—usually wanting either to point out the humorous infelicity of such a "title" or to comment on the sentence's relevance to Dante's life or to the interpretation of the Comedy—have interpreted this as a statement of the "real title" of the poem, often with little knowledge of the historical context. Dante (if one accepts his authorship of the letter) was writing in the medieval tradition of accessus ad auctores, in which the discussion of a literary work was conducted under a series of set topics—as he says earlier in the letter, "Sex igitur sunt que in principio cuiusque doctrinalis operis inquirenda sunt, videlicet subiectum, agens, forma, finis, libri titulus, et genus philosophie" —and to do so he gives an incipit as the "libri titulus", whereas elsewhere in the letter he speaks of the work as simply the "Comedia". Works were often referred to by incipits from antiquity onward (until the advent of printing, really), but that's not usually how we refer to them today. I defy anyone to find any printed encyclopedia or other scholarly work that uses The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Florentine by Citizenship, Not by Morals as its principal designation of Dante's masterpiece, and I don't think we should be doing so, either. If the matter is thought of sufficient importance (I don't think so, myself), the "libri titlus" given in the letter can be mentioned elsewhere in the article, but it shouldn't be the first thing readers encounter in the article. Deor (talk) 12:50, 12 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree. The huge title has no place in the lead. Rothorpe (talk) 00:37, 13 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I also agree. See the Encyclopaedia Britannica, etc.. I also find the six citations excessive. Rwood128 (talk) 22:43, 13 March 2015 (UTC)


 * This is almost right, but anyway the correct title everyone should refer to is not "Divine Comedy" but just "Comedy". The adjective "divine" has been added by Boccaccio, but it's not official. It's common but it's not correct, and every italian teacher or italian student should know it (and I know it, I'm italian).
 * From the first note in the italian Wikipedia page of the Comedy:
 * Dante volle designare il suo poeta come "Comedia" [...] per il fatto che in esso vi è una progressione "dal male al bene" [...] L'aggettivo Divina, attribuito a Boccaccio, si ritrova solo a partire dalle edizioni a stampa del 1555 a cura di Ludovico Dolce.
 * Which translated is:
 * Dante wanted to name his poem as "Comedy" [...] because there is a progression "from good to evil" [...] The adjective Divine, attributed to Boccaccio, can be found in the title from the edition of 1555 made by Ludovico Dolce.
 * Hope that helps. -Paolo
 * I've reverted the edit of Paolo, above, to the lead. The name used first in the lead should match the article's title (per WP:BOLDTITLE), and Divine Comedy is the title of the work used universally in modern English editions and translations. Deor (talk) 20:12, 17 May 2016 (UTC)