Dante's Daughter by Kimberley Heuston

Goodreads: Dante’s Daughter

Series: None

Published: 2004

Source: Library

Summary: Antonia Alighieri’s world turns upside down when the Black Guelfs invade Florence and force her family into exile.  Separated from her mother and her brothers, Antonia travels with her father, the famous poet Dante, through Italy and France.  The people she meets and the places she experiences will help her find her own place in the world and give her the courage to follow her dreams.

Review: Heuston paints a vivid picture of pre-Renaissance Italy, taking the few known facts about Antonia’s life and transforming them into a story sure to inspire readers and warm their hearts.  Though she writes about the daughter of a man who will one day be recognized as one of the world’s greatest poets, Heuston does not allow Dante—or the political forces surrounding him—to overshadow her protagonist.  Anotonia has her own life, her own needs, and her own vision.  Her navigation through adolescence and young adulthood in a male-dominated world will resonate with readers long after they close the book.

Since historians know so little about Dante’s family, Heuston had a liberal amount of poetic license with which to work while writing Dante’s Daughter.  My limited understanding of Dante suggests, however, that Heuston stayed remarkably true to those facts even while she used them to make assumptions about the way in which events may have unfolded.  Thus, Heuston utilizes speculations about an unhappy marriage between Dante and his wife Gemma (in part due to his poetry about another woman—Beatrice) to create a fully three-dimensional woman who feels hurt by her husband’s emotional betrayal yet still provides for her family and their interests.  The dynamic between them drives a lot of the story and provides for some interesting speculations about the how a man so preoccupied by intellectual pursuits may have related to others.

Dante springs to life as a complex man who loves his family, but whose idealism and divine inspiration sometimes cause him to neglect the worldly sorts of tasks that might keep them fed and clothed.  Antonia loves her father in return and craves his affection and protection, but finds that he has difficulty relating to her.  In part, the book suggests, Dante lived too much on his own to understand the needs of others, especially children.  However, Dante does not only experience difficulty in speaking to Antonia simply because she is a child, but also because she is a woman.  She, like him, possesses a quick wit and a keen sensitivity for beauty, but she lacks his education.  There exists between them a fundamental inability to communicate because Dante thinks in terms of the great poets and philosophers who came before him—and Antonia does not yet know them all.

Dante’s attitude toward his family—particularly his wife and daughter—thus serves as a springboard for reflections on gender roles.  As the daughter of a great poet, Antonia will learn Latin, hear the stories from Virgil, and even learn to paint.  However, she remains a woman, and society expects her not to create great art like her father, but to make a home and care for a family.  She does not deny this calling, or even its validity (Antonia’s aunt in fact provides a lively defense of the occupation of women in her society, asserting that men can accomplish so much intellectual work only because the woman take care of their practical needs).  However, she does recognize her need to find her own calling, rather than to follow the path laid out for her by others.

Heuston’s nuanced and varied depiction of woman is completely refreshing.  She presents a wide spectrum of strong women, from Antonia’s aunt who loves being a wife and mother to the Beguines, a group of lay Christian women who lived apart from men and could earn their own livelihood.  All of these women have different gifts and different strengths; Heuston does not assert the primacy of one vocation over another, but illustrates the various ways women can serve God and others.  Antonia ultimately takes the best from all these women, forging her own destiny where she can love freely and be true to herself.

Dante's Daughter possesses a rare beauty, bringing to life a fascinating woman who chose to accept her struggles and use them to make herself stronger.  This book will leave readers feeling refreshed and inspired.

Dante in Love by A. N. Wilson

Goodreads: Dantein Love

Series: None

Published: 2011

Source: Purchased

Summary: Wilson provides an account of the social and cultural forces that shaped Dante’s world while also exploring Dante’s concept of love and how it inspired his Divine Comedy.

Review: By summarizing the cultural, political, and religious forces at work in Renaissance Italy, Wilson works to expel some of the fear that approaching Dante’s Divine Comedy may inspire in his readers.  The work is so rife with allusions to the events and people of Dante’s day that readers can find themselves feeling as lost as Dante in that dark wood.  Do they need to understand all the allusions?  Are they missing out on some of complex layers of the work if they merely follow the main plot?  Wilson takes these concerns and, in answer, writes the book that just about every Dante novice wishes they had.

Wilson’s explanation of the confusion he felt when reading the Divine Comedy should make readers feel immediately at ease with him as their guide through Dante’s world.  He knows personally the difficulties readers will encounter and does not suggest these difficulties are the fault of the readers.  Rather, he notes that the Divine Comedy is a complex work—but an approachable one, if readers have the right tools.  He thus jumps right in to explaining the pertinent background information, and does not bog down his readers with more facts than he thinks necessary.

Despite Wilson’s desire to make an extremely complex subject simpler, however, he sometimes seems to impede his own efforts.  The book does not progress in a strictly chronological manner, but jumps around so the author can explain the effect events will have in the future or note the differences between works written by Dante at different times.  Wilson also interjects his historical account with a small amount of literary criticism, occasionally diverging from the subject at hand to expound upon some facet of the nature of love.  I would not have minded these digressions if I felt that Wilson ever truly clarified where he wanted to go with them. 

Wilson also intersperses his book with some personal references.  Some of these are fruitful, such as the ones where he explains his own journey through Dante and thus encourages his readers to take the plunge and experience their own transformative reading.  Others are mere asides about his personal opinions on the current state of society and the Catholic Church.  These are really the weakest points of the book.  It is easy for Wilson to criticize the Church for such things as the opposition to artificial birth control, but he provides no arguments for his beliefs, and they are unlikely to resonate with anyone familiar with the lengthy, nuanced answer of the Church as explained in Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body.  Since this is a book about Dante and not a forum to discuss the merits of birth control, such commentary seems out of place.

Despite its flaws, Wilson’s book is an invaluable guide to the world of Dante and his Divine Comedy.  If it does nothing more than let readers know that they are not alone in feeling intimidated by Dante, it will have done good.  I firmly recommend this book to anyone about to read the Divine Comedy.