ভূমিকা

Said,Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1978). [^4]: All quotations from the Divine Comedy are taken from the translation of Allen Mandelbaum (New York: Bantam, 1982). [^5]: I will be dealing solely with the issue of the impact of Islamic philosophy on Dante.

Thus I will avoid the even more complicated issues raised by Miguel Asín Palacios in his bookLa escatología musulmana en la Divina Comedia , first published in Madrid in 1919, and available in English translation under the titleIslam and the Divine Comedy , trans. Harold Sutherland (London: Frank Cass, 1926). Asín Palacios touched off a heated controversy by arguing that Dante's conception of the other world was heavily influenced by Muslim mythology and theology.

For a good review of the controversy, see Vicente Cantarino, "Dante and Islam: History and Analysis of a Controversy," A Dante Symposium, eds. William de Sua and Gino Rizzo (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), pp. 175­98. [^6]: On the idea of Limbo, see Kenelm Foster,The Two Dantes and Other Studies (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1977), pp. 169­71, Amilcare A.

Iannucci, "Limbo: The Emptiness of Time,"Studi danteschi 52 (1979­80): 72­73; hereafter abbreviated "LET," and Amilcare A. Iannucci, Commentary on Canto iv, Lectura Dantis Virginiana (1990), ed. Tibor Wlassics, vol. 1, pp. 43­44; hereafter abbreviated LDV. [^7]: See Barolini, p. 39, Iannucci, LDV, p. 45, and Gino Rizzo, "Dante and the Virtuous Pagans," A Dante Symposium, p. 119. [^8]: Foster, p. 171, finds this development "vastly . remarkable." See also Barolini, pp. 39­40, Iannucci, "LET ," pp.

74, 90, 104, and Iannucci,LDV , pp. 42, 44. Asín Palacios finds precedents in certain Islamic writers for including pagans in paradise; see pp. 56, 61­63, 65, 81­84. [^9]: Rizzo, p. 121, writes of this moment: "One wonders if we are still in the same Limbo. The darkness is gone, the sighs and sadness are no longer to be seen or heard.