Dante, Artist of Gesture

Gestural Dante offers, in its focus on gestures, a strikingly original perspective on Dante's poem. Skillfully organized, clearly and gracefully written, the book examines in six chapters the gesturality of the Divine Comedy in the context of visual culture of the period. It uncovers networks of gestural signification in the poem that resonate throughout the three canticles and in a synergistic relation with the iconographic, artistic and literary traditions surrounding the poem, ranging from the mosaics of the baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence, to fresco cycles by Giotto, to Botticelli's famous illustrations, as well as to Biblical and classical literary sources (especially Virgil), to lives of saints, to the influential Meditations on the Life of Christ. Gestural Dante will change the way we read and teach the poem. * Theodore J. Cachey Jr., Professor of Italian, Director of Graduate Studies in Italian *
Dante, Artist of Gesture, explores the place and significance of bodily movement and gesture in Dante's works, above all in his poetic masterpiece, the Comedy. Webb investigates how gestures and postures are described and made visible throughout Dante's great poem, and demonstrates their rich implications--social, ethical and political--for the reader. Dante, Artist of Gesture is a remarkable tour de force both in the way it proposes new methodologies and tools of study for reading the gestural and in the way it offers original and powerful close readings of Dante's texts ... Elegantly written, meticulously researched and rich in methodological innovations, the book will be both an essential point of reference in Dante Studies and an indispensable mine for future work on the body, gesture, posture and affectivity in Medieval Studies and other related fields. * Simon Gilson FBA, Agnelli-Serena Professor of Italian and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford *
In Dante, Artist of Gesture, Webb offers a visual methodology for reading the Commedia... Webb offers a useful interdisciplinary methodology for readers to interpret Dante's poetry as visual art. Highly recommended. Graduates students, researchers, faculty. * Choice *
Dante, Artist of Gesture is an invitation to explore the Comedy through a new perspective in which the reader takes an active role in Dante's journey through an affective response to the characters of the poem...Webb's book makes the kinetic sensitivity of the Middle Ages part of the contemporary experience of reading Dante's Comedy, unveiling a whole network of connections in the poem. * Rookshar Myram, PhD Candidate, University of Notre Dame, Annali d'Italianistica *