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Sources This answer is mainly based on Reginald Hyatte (1997), The Prophet of Islam in Old French: The Romance of Muhammad (1258) and The Book of Muhammad’s Ladder (1264), New York: Brill. This contai …

The planet Dante says that the “shoulders” of the hill “glowed” with the planet’s rays. The only celestial bodies bright enough to light up the shoulders of a hill are the Sun and the Moon. The next t …

“Him” is the sun. The line means that the “fair things” (the stars) that are “with” the sun now, are the same stars that were with the sun when the Divine Love (God) first moved them, that is, on the …

Smiles copied his anecdote about Michelangelo from Charles Colton, who wrote: That writer who aspires to immortality, should imitate the sculptor, if he would make the labours of the pen as durable a …

TL;DR: The English press censorship regime in the Tudor and Stuart periods was not based on a list of banned works, and so the question has no definite answer. In this answer I’m following Cyndia Susa …

TL;DR: Dante read a Latin translation of Al-Farghani, who summarized the work of Ptolemy. Astronomical claims in Purgatory There is a south celestial pole; the stars near it are not visible from the n …

This is an ordinary form of words in English, as well as in the other languages noted in the question, where “M or N” (with M and N numbers) means “from M to N, approximately”: or conj. 4.b. Used bet …

To read a poem like this you'll need: A comprehensive dictionary, so that you can look up words like ‘argument’, ‘will’, ‘would’, ‘fact’, ‘gan’, ‘tofore’, etc, and find out what they meant in 1600. …

I think we have to apply some skepticism to Cellini’s account of his attitude to Pantasilea. The Autobiography is replete with boasting and legend-building (consider his claim, in the episode under di …

TL;DR: Dante, following Catholic orthodoxy, admits the salvation of some virtuous pagans, but denies universal salvation. Salvation of virtuous pagans The question of the salvation of virtuous pagans …

The metaphor of silence for the absence of light recurs in Canto V: Io venni in loco d’ogni luce muto I came to a place mute of all light Dante (c. 1310). Inferno V.28. Several commentators on Infer …

I found four members of the chorus, including one (Coleridge) from whom I would have expected a more insightful response. There are few instances (notwithstanding his tremendous denunciations against …