ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how the libello proves a poignant and multileveled source of inspiration for Modernist writers, particularly Woolf, Eliot, and Pound. In particular, the definition of Dante as a ‘universal poet’ provided by both Woolf and Eliot showed new and complex implications in relation to the autobiographical form of the Vita nova, offering a model for writing processes that transcend and transfigure individual experience. Moving past traditional approaches, the chapter not only singles out instances of influence, appropriation, and reformulation of the Vita nova, but unveils how the work’s original mixing of poetry and prose – or, better poetry inscribed into a narrative frame – reflected the merging of genres characterising Woolf’s poetic prose and Eliot’s and Pound’s narrative poetry.
