Dante's reception during the nineteenth and the twentieth century: a study of bibliography and diplomaties

The Romantic nineteenth century was the era of the rediscovery and of the study of Dante's Comedy. During this period, Dante was appreciated in Europe by scholars who were more expert than their Italian colleagues and in Italy it was the period of the cult of the Poet, considered, throughout the long season of the Risorgimento (1821-1921), the father of the Italian language. Taking this century as a time span this contribution traces Dante's critical receptionin the light of bibliographic and documentary sources, it analyses how these documents have been addressed and used in different periods by different Dante's scholars who have always attempted to interpret the Divine Comedy as both a means and an end. Finally, we couldn't leave out philology to rediscover both the sources and the text and to link together the long and complex history of Dante's criticism in a unique plot.