Lectura Dantis tra istituzionalità e libertà

Boccaccio as Lector Dantis structures his lessons in S. Stefano of Badis around an absolute adherence to the text, assuming as model the self-exegesis offered by Dante’s texts themselves. The exposition of the allegorical text, however, immediately appears to be structurally subordinate to the literal level, and in particular to the erudite one that guides the poem’s reception in an already humanistic and narrative sense, never aesthetic. The tradition of Lecturae Danctis is revitalized in the 1500s by the Florentine Academy, in a way that is often very similar to Boccacio’s. The register changes with the third historical moment of Lecturae, inaugurated on the 27th of April 1899 by the president of Florence’s Dante Society. In this case, broad narrative digressions in Boccaccio’s style are accompanied by brief aesthetic judgements, that converge in the image of Dante poet-artifex promoted by the Prolusion of the Lectura Dantis Tauricensis. An hermeneutic dimension that enters the creative text, and the conception of work as centre of radiation of the critical discourse belong in fact to the entire literary tradition of the Middle Ages: ranging from the Occitan environment of the poet’s at Frederic’s court to the most notable pre-Dante case, Guittone of Arezzo, who offered his very precise poetic conception to the narrative development itself.