Dante and the Human Body.

Dante and the Human Body: Eight Essays. John C. Barnes and Jennifer Petrie. editors. Four Courts Press. [pounds sterling]50.00. 224 pages. ISBN 978-1-84682-090-8. This collection is published for the UCD Foundation for Italian Studies and is based on lectures delivered in University College Dublin in 2003 and 2004. They include some penetrating and new insights into Dante's writing from scholars in Ireland, England, Switzerland and Israel. The first two papers take a wider view and place the Divine Comedy in the context of Dante's lime and discuss, inter alia, medical knowledge and psychological insight in his day. The next two contributions emphasise the poet's understanding of human growth and development and look at Dante's grasp of contemporary scientific and medical knowledge. After this there are more detailed studies of the poem's section on gluttony, Dante's view of our heavenly 'bodies', and his treatment of Manfred and Marsyas as based on contemporary knowledge of the body. Finally, there are two papers on theological aspects: the role of the Incarnation and of bodily change as in the Transfiguration. Resurrection, Ascension and Assumption. (T.A.L.)