ABSTRACT
The 700th anniversary of Dante's birth has come and gone without giving rise to much dancing in the streets, or formal eulogy in the reviews. Yet, if centenaries are important at all, this one was worthier of celebration than the 400th of Shakespeare, amply honoured in 1964. One needs, somehow, to reach an understanding of the fact that what most of us think of as literature, modern as opposed to ancient literature, and also the reading public of which one is a member, are in large measure Dante's invention. Thomas Bergin's An Approach to Dante. Bodley Head. is an introductory study by a Yale professor, and its tone, despite the long encomium in Time, is the tone of the graduate school. It sets out with more patience than grace to sketch the political, ecclesiastical, linguistic and literary backgrounds.
