Idea de la lírica en el Renacimiento (Entre Italia y España) (review)
Ottaviani feels most at home is both several decades old and primarily written in French — or at least not in English. This is unfortunate, because there has been an outpouring of excellent English-language scholarly writing in recent years on many of the areas with which Ottaviani is most vitally concerned; but there is no trace here of the work of, say, Alison Cornish on Dante’s astronomy, or Simon Gilson on his optics, and the book is, finally, weaker as a result. Though it has many virtues and will be useful, within limits, to specialists, its adherence to a model of critical practice now superseded within Dante studies means that its impact on the field will be smaller than its author’s learning and diligence deserve. STEVEN BOTTERILL University of California, Berkeley