Why Dante Matters

Acknowledgements
Preface: Preliminary Confession

Introduction: Dante and the Existential Point of View
Dante at the Point of Ultimate Concern
Dante: Who, What, Where and When?
Course of the Argument

1 Dante, Self and Selfhood
Love-Procession and the Love-Imperative: Preliminary Considerations in the Areas of Theology and Ethics
Patterns of Self-Relatedness: Being as Ahead of Self, as Away from Self and Alongside Self
A Phenomenology of Being

2 The Vita Nova
Preliminary Considerations: New Life and a New Book
Love and Love-Understanding: The Pilgrim Way
A Commedia a minore

3 The Convivio
Far-wandering and Friendship: The Courage of the Convivio
Feasting and Faring Well: A Guide for the Dispossessed
Problems of Perspective and a Civic Ontology

4 The Commedia
Preliminary Considerations: Spiritual Journeying and the Courage to Be
A Song of Ascents: The Commedia a la lettre
Journeying under the Aspect of Seeing (Inferno)
Journeying under the Aspect of Striving (Purgatorio)
Journeying under the Aspect of Surpassing (Paradiso)

5 The Power of the Word: Issues in the Area of Language and Literature
Being, Becoming and the Sanctity of the Word
The Triumph and the Image and a Writerly Text

Conclusion: In Conversation with Dante

Further Reading
Index of Names