Abstract: This preliminary study seeks to define the question of the idea as a principle of being and becoming of the individual in Dante's works, primarily in the Comedy. Although such ontological concerns are characteristically modern, Dante's insistence on the unfolding or drama of spiritual exile and salvation would place him among the first of Christian existential theologians. Anachronistic implications are approached by examining various dimensions of Dante's own understanding of being, both in its general sense and in relation to man in particular.
Abstract from the American Dante Bibliography 1992
Reproduced by courtesy of the Dante Society of America