Accounting for Dante
Urban Readers and Writers in Late Medieval Italy

Examines Dante's relation to his contemporary public, an audience that included poets who responded to Dante's early work as well as those who first copied, preserved, and circulated his poetry. Based on research of manuscripts and documents, this study reveals the importance of professional, urban classes as cultivators of early Italian poetry.

Steinberg describes how notaries and merchants transcribed Dante's poetry in nontraditional formats, such as in the archival documents of the Memoriali bolognesi and the register-book "Vaticano Latino 3793". In bringing to light evidence of the urban reception of the early Italian lyric, Justin Steinberg restores the political, social, and historical contexts in which Dante would have understood the poetic debates of his day. He also examines how Dante continuously responded in his literary career - from the "Vita Nova", to the "De Vulgari eloquenta", to the "Commedia" - to the interpretations and misinterpretations of his early lyrics by this bourgeois audience.