Love's Scribe: Reading Dante in the Book of Creation

Review
"Frisardi is one of our best contemporary Dantists, one who shows his love rather than insists on it. Dante can be difficult to read and interpret today, but Frisardi guides us and makes our steps a little easier. Love's Scribe is not an introduction to Dante, per se, but it can serve as a way to wade deeper into the combined sacred and intellectual side of the poet. Virgil guided Dante, Dante guides Frisardi, and Frisardi is guiding us." --Ethan McGuire, The University Bookman
Praise for Andrew Frisardi's edition of Dante's Vita nova (Northwestern University Press, 2012):
"[Andrew Frisardi's edition of the Vita nova is] a real monument, a real achievement, stunning actually. I never thought there would appear in English an edition so rich, so sound, so nuanced, so masterful in its introduction and commentary and notes. . . . To be able to lead anyone into this text, and show what is really happening, and the extraordinary depth and complexity and originality of it in terms that are still comprehensible to a non-Dantist, I don't think has happened in any edition before, in Italian or English."--CHRISTIAN MOEVS, Associate Professor of Italian, Notre Dame University; author of The Metaphysics of Dante's "Comedy"
"Andrew Frisardi's splendid new edition of Vita nova combines his compelling translation of Dante's original work with a rich and fascinating scholarly commentary. At last Dante's innovative and influential masterpiece is available in a contemporary version that captures both its beauty and complexity."--DANA GIOIA, former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts; author of 99 Poems: New and Selected and The Catholic Writer Today and Other Essays
Praise for Andrew Frisardi's edition of Dante's Convivio: A Dual-Language Critical Edition (Cambridge University Press, 2018):
"Andrew Frisardi's excellent edition-translation and its apparatus is to be welcomed for its concern to present afresh the Convivio to an anglophone readership and for the ways it foregrounds its importance and multifaceted character as one of Dante's most important 'other works.'"--SIMON GILSON, Agnelli-Serena Professor of Italian Studies, Magdalen College, Oxford University; author of Reading Dante in Renaissance Italy
"Andrew Frisardi's book is a long-awaited gift to the world of literature and philosophy. . . . [His] translation surpasses previous versions: it is precise and sensitive. . . . His introductory essay . . . represents a most lucid introduction to the Convivio for both the academic and the more general reader. His commentary and notes are in tune with the most recent scholarship."--AMBROGIO CAMOZZI PISTOJA, Assistant Professor in Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University; author of Dante and the Medieval Alexander
In a few passages of his writings, Dante identifies himself as “Love’s scribe”—the scribe, that is, of all love, from natural and human love to the “Love that moves the sun and the other stars.” Another fundamental notion in Dante, and in medieval thought in general, is that the manifold things of the creation are like pages bound together by divine love into a unified book, a series of successive analogies of God—a book written by God, in which can be discerned images and resemblances of divinity. As the current volume shows, this way of reading the creation also opens a vista into Dante’s or any traditional metaphysical-symbolist author’s works as an analogia entis—as a series of signs corresponding to multiple levels of reality, each resonating with others in the hierarchical chain of being.
Intended for general readers, admirers, and students of Dante, Love’s Scribe: Reading Dante in the Book of Creation is lucid and accessible to anyone with an interest in Dante. Tarry a while with an eminent translator-scholar of Dante’s work as he gently guides you to a depth of understanding of aspects of the Sommo Poeta’s (Supreme Poet’s) symbolic language and poetic expression usually