Dante and late Medieval Florence: Theology in Poetry, Practice and Society

该项目将：(a)恢复中世纪晚期意大利神学的多种经历，重点是1280年代和1290年代的佛罗伦萨；(b)考察但丁在他的《喜剧》中运用这些经历的方式。因此，该项目揭示了中世纪神学在特定的历史和地理背景下被调解和经历的方式，密切关注其多样性及其对不同公众的影响；在这样做的过程中，它将重新评估世界文学的一个基本工作的关键维度，这个工作越来越被认为不仅是欧洲文学传统的中心，而且也是一个独特的神学声音。该项目设在利兹大学的利兹但丁研究中心和华威大学的意大利语系，与北美领先的但丁研究中心，圣母大学的德弗斯项目建立了良好的联系，并受益于国际知名学者顾问委员会的多学科专业知识。它建立在协作的智力准备过程之上，这已经帮助重新定义了它的领域，并牢固地建立了项目的研究背景和问题。此外，该项目将利用佛罗伦萨图书馆中非常丰富的、未经审查的档案资源。近年来，但丁对神学的研究被视为他作品中越来越重要的一个方面；神学家们越来越重视他诗意的声音，认为他对神学辩论做出了独特的贡献。最近的学术研究表明，他不仅参与了特定的神学思想，而且他的诗歌——本身就是世界文学中最大胆的原创作品之一——借鉴并改变了神学在中世纪晚期可能遇到的许多形式。这些形式包括从学术形式的论证到不那么“博学”的宗教实践领域，如视觉艺术和礼拜仪式。然而，对但丁神学的研究倾向于将神学传统视为一套单一的思想和辩论，脱离了它可能遇到的精确形式和背景。与此同时，由于专门研究集中在但丁神学的特定方面，但丁神学的学术研究也存在着分化的危险。因此，这个项目提议将一组研究人员聚集在一起，在一个强大而成熟的国际网络的支持下，对1280年代和1290年代在佛罗伦萨经历神学的方式进行全面的理解——根据但丁自己的说法，这是他从事神学研究的时候。这个项目没有把但丁的神学兴趣主要看作是一系列思想，而是询问但丁和他同时代的人在这种特定的背景下是如何体验神学的。该项目的两个主要部分将分别考察在神学学习中心实践和接受的“高级”神学的性质，以及在这些学习环境之外的宗教实践形式的性质。该项目的两个次要部分将深化和发展前两个部分的发现，以探索神学与其社会和文化背景之间联系的特定方面：一个是研究神学家身份在喜剧和中世纪晚期佛罗伦萨的呈现方式；另一部分将考虑神学如何影响但丁和他同时代的人对社会的看法。

This project will: (a) recover the multiple experiences of theology in late-medieval Italy, focusing on Florence in the 1280s and 1290s; (b) examine the way in which Dante engages with the forms of these experiences in his Commedia. The project therefore casts light on the ways in which medieval theology was mediated and experienced within a specific historical and geographical context, paying close attention to its varieties and their effects upon different publics; in doing so, it will re-evaluate a key dimension of a fundamental work of world literature, a work which is increasingly recognised not only as being central within the European literary tradition, but also as a distinctive and unique theological voice in its own right.The project, based in the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies in the University of Leeds, and in the Department of Italian in the University of Warwick, draws on a well-established link with the leading North American centre for Dante studies, the Devers Program at the University of Notre Dame, and benefits from the multidisciplinary expertise of an advisory board of internationally pre-eminent scholars. It builds upon a process of collaborative intellectual preparation which has already helped re-define its field, and which has firmly established the project's research context and questions. The project will, moreover, draw on a very rich, underexamined body of archival resources held in Florentine libraries. Over recent years, Dante's engagement with theology has come to be seen as an increasingly important aspect of his work; and his poetic voice is increasingly prized by theologians as a singular contribution to theological debate. Recent scholarship has shown not only that he engages with particular theological ideas, but that his poetry - itself among the most daringly original in world literature - borrows and alters many of the forms in which theology would have been encountered in the late middle ages. These forms range from scholastic forms of argumentation to less "learned" realms of religious practice such as visual art and liturgy. Yet research into Dante's theology has tended to treat the theological tradition as though it were a single set of ideas and debates, divorced from the precise forms and contexts in which it would have been encountered. At the same time, there is a real danger of scholarship on Dante's theology becoming disparate, as specialised research focuses on particular aspects of Dante's theology. This project therefore proposes to bring together a team of researchers, supported by a strong and established international network, to develop a holistic understanding of the ways in which theology was experienced in Florence in the 1280s and 1290s - the time when, by Dante's own account, he was engaged in theological study. Instead of seeing Dante's theological interests as consisting primarily of a set of ideas, the project asks how theology would have been experienced by Dante and his contemporaries in this specific context. The two primary strands of the project will examine respectively the nature of "high" theology as practised and received in the centres of theological learning, and the nature of forms of religious practice outside those learned milieux. Two secondary strands of the project will deepen and develop the findings of the first two strands, to explore particular aspects of this connection between theology and its social and cultural context: one examines the way in which the identity of theologians is presented in the Commedia and in late medieval Florence; the other will consider the manner in which theology shaped how Dante and his contemporaries thought about society.