Preface
The historical shock of the attacks of September 11 might well help us appreciate more fully the ways in which Dante incorporates his experience of historical crisis within the comprehensive Christian vision of the Divine Comedy, according to the stimulating article by Ronald L. Martinez, “Dante between Hope and Despair: The Tradition of Lamentations in the Divine Comedy.” Martinez draws upon observations of the use of the text of Lamentations in the United States in the days following the attacks of September 11, and then sketches the ways in which that text has been reflected upon and experienced throughout many historical periods. These reflections prepare Martinez well to illuminate for us the particular ways in which we can understand Dante as “perhaps the foremost poet in the West of a history that is lived and understood as a contest in progress, an agon in the Greek sense, through which a providential order struggles to assert itself.” The article culminates with an account of the figure of Lady Poverty in Dante, explicating Dante’s identification of Lady Poverty with widowed Jerusalem from Lamentations prior to the joy of her union with Francis of Assisi, and leading to an insightful account of the ways in which Dante seems to have had a strong sense of identification with Francis as reflected in Dante’s poetry.
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