The City of Poetry

Shows how medieval Italian poets viewed their authorship of poetry as a function of their engagement in a human community.

David G. Lummus is the co-director of the Center for Italian Studies and Devers Family Program in Dante Studies and a visiting assistant professor of Italian at the University of Notre Dame. He has published on fourteenth-century Italian poetry and poetics, especially Giovanni Boccaccio, and the reception of classical culture in medieval Italy. He is the co-editor of A Boccaccian Renaissance (2019).

Introduction; 1. Albertino Mussato, Poet of the City; 2. Dante Alighieri, Poet without a City; 3. Francesco Petrarch, Poet beyond the City; 4. Giovanni Boccaccio, Poet for the City; Epilogue: Coluccio Salutati and the Future of the City of Poetry.