Pasolini after Dante

What role did Dante play in the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975)? His unfinished and fragmented imitation of the Comedia, La Divina Mimesis, is only one outward sign of what was a sustained dialogue with Dante on representation begun in the early 1950s. During this period, the philologists Gianfranco Contini (1912-1990) and Erich Auerbach (1892-1957) played a crucial role in Pasolinis re-thinking of represented reality, suggesting Dante as the best literary, authorial and political model for a generation of postwar Italian writers. This emerged first as Dantean realism in Pasolinis prose and poetry, after Continis interpretation of Dante and of his plurilingualism, and then as figural realism in his cinema, after Auerbachs concepts of Dantes figura and mingling of styles. Following the evolution of Pasolinis mimetic ideal from these formative influences through to La Divina Mimesis, Emanuela Patti explores Pasolinis politics of representation in relation to the national-popular, the questione della lingua and the Italian post-war debates on neorealism, while also providing a new interpretation of some of his major literary and cinematic works.