Dante Ravennate and Boccaccio Ferrarese? Post-Mortem Residency and the Attack on Florentine Literary Hegemony, 1480–1520

Abstract

This article analyzes the way Renaissance authors (including Cristoforo Landino, Girolamo Benivieni, and Jacopo Caviceo) use the ghosts of Dante and Boccaccio as mouthpieces for anachronistic civic polemics and ideological positions that are unpopular or even politically dangerous. The author argues that Florentine writers invoke the ghost of Dante in order to apologize for exiling the poet, to argue implicitly for the return of his body from Ravenna, and to suggest an unbroken literary line in the shared Florentine language and culture. Meanwhile, non-Florentine authors, especially those like Caviceo in Ferrara who write in a language other than the dominant Florentine vernacular and who foresee a new direction of literary development, emphasize the mobility of Florentine authors and even naturalize them as citizens of rival cultural courts.