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For the record: rewriting Virgil in the Commedia.

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From: Studies in the Literary Imagination
Date: 20030322
Author:Hawkins, Peter S.

There is no more dramatic example of authorial ambivalence than Dante's relationship to Virgil in the Commedia. One the one hand--and from the very opening canto of the Inferno--Virgil is proclaimed to be not only the glory and light of other poets but the pilgrim's personal master and author. It is from his work alone that Dante says he has taken his hello stilo: "tu se' solo colui da cu'io tolsi / lo bello stilo che m'ha fatto onore" (Inferno 1.86-87; "You alone are he from whom I took the fair style that has done me honor"). This singular indebtedness is registered canto after ...

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