Civitas/Community

Abstract

Dante is a ‘civic author’ and a ‘poet of the city’, but what do these labels mean? This chapter envisions the civitas (community) as an emotional and intellectual pivot of Dante’s theological-political thought and literary imagination. The comprehensive analysis of the uses of civitas(and synonyms) in Dante’s lexicon deploys its rich semantic field in the framework of typical late medieval tensions and cleavages. The chapter also focusses on some fundamental problems inherent to this notion—its articulation with, on the one hand, the pluralitas and, on the other hand, the universal monarchy—and dismisses the hypothesis that Dante developed an anti-civitasstance during his life. Finally, the chapter points out the legacy of Dante’s typological approach, namely concerning the new importance attributed to history, gendered personifications, and authorship in a vernacular literary work.