Literary Geography: The Europe Of The Nineteenth Century In Dante's Footsteps

When in 1922 Paolo Revelli published L'Italia nella Divina Commedia, affirming how much Dante and Italy are indissoluble traditions and names, volumes of European scholars and authors had already appeared: they described their direct personal experience in Italy in search of Dante's genius loci. In fact, starting from the first half of the nineteenth century, we witness the creation of what we can define as a Dante itinerary, or a journey to the places made eternal by Dante in his most famous work: the Divina Commedia. It is a new itinerary, but also a new approach to the study of the Poem through what we can call "literary geography". Eighteenth century is known as a period of great historical changes. It is also the century of Dante. From 1830s to 1920s, we witness the production of volumes, studies, contributions and geographical maps of absolute interest. Among these we also find this itinerary on Dante's footsteps. The main works are those of Jean-Jacques Ampere, Alfred Bassermann and a series of geographical works containing special maps of Dante's Italy.