In 1986, Giuseppe Mazzotta, addressing the legacy of the great Dante scholar Charles Southward Singleton, argued that the fairest way to confront the power of Singleton\u2019s work was to avoid the veneration of the master by his disciples and let oneself be guided by a different, more vital principle: perplexity. Veneration, Mazzotta argued, is violent, for \u201cit freezes the thinking of both the scholar and his epigones, it rigidifies it in fixed formulae and, in effect, destroys it.\u201d But \u201cperplexity,\u201d etymologically, involves \u201cinterlacing,\u201d \u201cmixing together.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this sense, perplexity is the best way to approach the production of a scholar like Singleton, as it forces us to actively face our debt to\u2014and distance from\u2014his work, all while intertwining our perspectives with his. For the seven-hundredth centenary of Dante\u2019s death, this special issue of MLN<\/em> revives this exercise in perplexity, celebrating the vitality of Singleton\u2019s teachings in contemporary Dante studies. Francesco Brenna and Alberto Zuliani asked both emergent and affirmed scholars to reflect upon this matter by asking how Singleton\u2019s intellectual legacy still affects their work and have collected the results here as an homage to the ability of Singleton\u2019s teachings to still function as a trigger or reagent for new ideas and for the advancement of our understanding of Dante\u2019s work. A perplexed<\/em> homage, indeed, where worship finds no quarter and where Singleton and even Dante can be read anew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 1986, Giuseppe Mazzotta, addressing the legacy of the great Dante scholar Charles Southward Singleton, argued that the fairest way to confront the power of Singleton\u2019s work was to avoid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":571,"featured_media":6835,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tec_requires_first_save":true,"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"program":[10446],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6833"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/571"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6833"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6876,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6833\/revisions\/6876"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6833"},{"taxonomy":"program","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program?post=6833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}