Nothing In Dante's Own Hand: A Brief History Of COMEDY's Manuscripts

In this interpolated episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE, I want to give you a brief history of the manuscript of COMEDY. None exists in Dante's own hand. So how do we trust what we have.

I'll talk you through some basic facts--and the weird notion that between the poet's death and the first certifiably dated manuscript, we already have commentaries being written on the text. I'll explain my stance in all this--and how the manuscript for COMEDY is a continually evolving thing.

Here are the segments of this episode:

[00:49] The three facts you need to know to start thinking about the textual history of COMEDY--and the commentaries that are written between Dante's death and the first dated manuscript we have.

[11:23] There are two types of manuscript corruption: horizontal and vertical.

[14:15] There are now two main "veins" of COMEDY manuscripts--and a bit about the strange nationalist divides of who follows which vein back to the source.