The American Alighieri: receptions of Dante in the United States, 1818-1867【翻译】

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the medieval Florentine poet Dante
Alighieri was an almost completely unknown figure in the United States. Yet, by midcentury,
he was considered by many Americans to be one of the world’s greatest poets and
his major epic, the Divine Comedy, was translated during the Civil War by the most popular
American poet at the time, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This dissertation examines
Dante’s nineteenth-century emergence in the United States and the historical and cultural
reasons why Dante, for many nineteenth-century Americans, became a highly-regarded
literary figure and an unexpectedly popular poet during the Civil War. Using new historicist
and book studies methodologies, it argues that Dante was widely viewed as an important
theological-political poet, a cultural representative of Italy and nineteenth-century Italian
nationalism and liberalism, one who spoke powerfully to antebellum and wartime issues of
national disunity, states’ rights, the nature of empire, and the justice and injustice of civil war.
American periodicals and English-language translations of the Comedy touted Dante as a
great national poet—a model who might inspire any would-be national poet of the United
States—while interpreting his biography and the Comedy in terms of American and
transatlantic political events, ideologies, and discourses. Aware of such promotion, many
American writers, including Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Herman Melville, and Walt
Whitman, read and interpreted the Comedy in terms of national politics and, by the early
1860s, the Civil War. Given its relevance and popularity during the 1860s—numerous books
by or about Dante were published in the United States during this decade—the Divine Comedy
thus became an important epic poem of the Civil War, a poem that Longfellow and Walt
Whitman turned to while constructing their wartime and Reconstruction-era poetry.
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Abstract Approved: ________________________________________________
Thesis Supervisor
________________________________________________
Title and Department
________________________________________________
Date
THE AMERICAN ALIGHIERI:
RECEPTIONS OF DANTE IN THE UNITED STATES, 1818-1867
by
Joshua Steven Matthews
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the Doctor of
Philosophy degree in English
in the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa
May 2012
Thesis Supervisor: Professor Ed Folsom
Copyright by
JOSHUA STEVEN MATTHEWS
2012
All Rights Reserved
Graduate College
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
____________________________
PH.D. THESIS
_____________
This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of
Joshua Steven Matthews
has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement for the Doctor
of Philosophy degree in English at the May 2012 graduation.
Thesis Committee: _____________________________________________________
Ed Folsom, Thesis Supervisor

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
So much from others went into this dissertation that it is certainly not wholly my
own. This project could not exist without Ed Folsom, a true scholar and model, a wonderful
teacher and colleague. Ed spent countless hours reading through draft after draft of each
chapter, writing long comments and emails, and showing tremendous perseverance by
working with me almost solely by email. More than teaching me to be a better writer, editor,
and researcher, Ed has shown me how to be a mentor. Hopefully I can do for others at least
a small fraction of what he’s done for me. I sincerely thank him for everything.
The English Department at the University of Iowa and many friends and colleagues
there were helpful in numerous ways, including Cherie Hansen-Rieskamp, Adam Bradford,
and Rob McLoone. The staffs at the University of Iowa libraries, the Michener library at the
University of Northern Colorado, and the Widener and Houghton libraries at Harvard
University were tremendously helpful in the research for this dissertation. I could not have
completed this work without the massive digital libraries, accessible from nearly anywhere,
on Google Books, Proquest’s American Periodical Series database, and the Walt Whitman
Archive. Internet access to numerous works saved me a tremendous amount of time and
travel expense.
I thank my dissertation committee—Matt Brown, Laura Rigal, Kathleen Diffley, and
Deborah Contrada—for their time in reading, critiquing, and offering advice.
As an early Americanist, diving into the world of Dante was an unexpected and
unusual task. Books and commentaries by Dorothy Sayers, Charles Till Davis, Erich
Auerbach, and Teodolinda Bartolini were helpful. I found Giuseppe Mazzotta’s books and
online course to be not only instructive and profound, but also inspirational for this project.
Even though I do not know him personally, he taught me much. During the project, I
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gained a deep appreciation for Dante himself, who in my view is the master craftsman of
poets.
I’d like to acknowledge some odd beginnings for parts of this project. Much of this
dissertation was created in the oilfields of northern Colorado, where I worked while writing
it. While in the oilfield, walking through snow and driving on roads that aren’t even dirt
patches, I listened to numerous audiobooks as I tried to think about how to structure this
dissertation and its various arguments; the most memorable books, which oddly led to great
insights into this project, were those by Niall Ferguson, Anthony Trollope, and Terry
Pratchett. (Pratchett’s novels especially provided welcome humor, and Great A’Tuin’s
sluggish trek through the universe provided a nice metaphor for this dissertation’s pace.)
Somewhere in this dissertation, perhaps, is Ferguson’s critique of World War I, the county of
Barchestershire, and Discworld.
Finally, my family deserves more than I could ever give them back. To thank them
justly would take up too many books. My parents and brother are wonderful. ’Lias, Boppy,
and Giddy are the best kids any dad could have. My dear wife Cailan is the world. I love her
dearly.
v
ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the medieval Florentine poet Dante
Alighieri was an almost completely unknown figure in the United States. Yet, by midcentury,
he was considered by many Americans to be one of the world’s greatest poets and
his major epic, the Divine Comedy, was translated during the Civil War by the most popular
American poet at the time, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This dissertation examines
Dante’s nineteenth-century emergence in the United States and the historical and cultural
reasons why Dante, for many nineteenth-century Americans, became a highly-regarded
literary figure and an unexpectedly popular poet during the Civil War. Using new historicist
and book studies methodologies, it argues that Dante was widely viewed as an important
theological-political poet, a cultural representative of Italy and nineteenth-century Italian
nationalism and liberalism, one who spoke powerfully to antebellum and wartime issues of
national disunity, states’ rights, the nature of empire, and the justice and injustice of civil war.
American periodicals and English-language translations of the Comedy touted Dante as a
great national poet—a model who might inspire any would-be national poet of the United
States—while interpreting his biography and the Comedy in terms of American and
transatlantic political events, ideologies, discourses. Aware of such promotion, many
American writers, including Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Herman Melville, and Walt
Whitman, read and interpreted the Comedy in terms of national politics and, by the early
1860s, the Civil War. Given its relevance and popularity during the 1860s—numerous books
by or about Dante were published in the United States during this decade—the Divine Comedy
thus became an important epic poem of the Civil War, a poem that Longfellow and Walt
Whitman turned to while constructing their wartime and Reconstruction-era poetry.
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES viii
LIST OF FIGURES ix
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER
I. THE CONSTITUTIONAL ALIGHIERI: DANTE AND
AMERICAN POLITICS, 1818-1865 20
The Coincidence of Italian Unification and American
Division 26
Dante in the South: The Divine Comedy for Nullification
and States’ Rights 33
Dante for the Union: New England Views of the Divine
Comedy 49
Dante in the Civil War: Guelphs versus Ghibellines,
North versus South 58
II. DANTE AS A BOOK: MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF THE DIVINE COMEDY 70
Henry Francis Cary and His Competitors 73
Longfellow Enters the Competition 86
III. THE UNION’S DANTE: HENRY WADSWORTH
LONGFELLOW’S 1867 TRANSLATION OF THE DIVINE
COMEDY 96
Longfellow the Political Poet 102
The Divine Comedy for the American Civil War 122
IV. WALT WHITMAN’S INFERNO: DANTE IN LEAVES OF
GRASS 158
Whitman Reads Dante, 1859-1891 163
Whitman’s Hell and the “Interior History” of the War 171
Sailing into the Afterlife with Ulysses 202
POSTSCRIPT: DANTE IN MODERN AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE 209
APPENDIX A. TABLES 216
APPENDIX B. FIGURES 220
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