In his introduction to Dante e Vico, József Nagy underlines the interdisciplinary spirit in which his work is written: “la letteratura e la filosofia sono inseparabili e quasi in senso deterministico e permanentemente esercitano tra di loro un’influenza mutua” (15). This statement serves as a guidepost to the crucial project that the author has undertaken in this volume. His aim is to explore whether the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can be given special status in Dantean critical reception, and if so, why (17).
This enormous undertaking involves examining some of the fundamental political ideas espoused by Giambattista Vico and how these were influenced by Dante’s own political vision (the latter drawn essentially from the Monarchia, the Convivio, and some relevant cantos of the Commedia). Throughout his work, Nagy summarizes the positions of many of the most authoritative voices on Dante over the course of several centuries, focusing on the eighteenth-century critics (including Vico himself, along with Gian Vincenzo Gravina, Vittorio Alfieri and Luigi Fossati) and the nineteenth-century critics (among these Giacomo Leop- ardi, Ugo Foscolo, and Gabriele Rossetti).
