MixedThe Times Literary Supplement (UK)The miracle is that a text separated from us by seven centuries can sing in harmony with our time. For this reason, those of us who love Dante’s work are drawn to biography to ask how; what did he learn, and from whom? How did this man, neither the noblest nor the wealthiest of Florentines, come to write as he did? Barbero does not answer these questions, but he does richly contextualize the life of a middle-class man of letters in medieval Italy ... As Barbero distances himself from existing scholarship, so too does his translator. Cameron has translated passages from the Comedy seemingly without recourse to previous translations. This leads to some odd moments.
