Dante and Violence (University of Notre Dame Press, April 2021), by Distinguished Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature Brenda Deen Schildgen, is an examination of violence in the domestic, communal and cosmic spheres in Dante Alighieri's literary works. Primarily focused on Dante’s representation of his contemporary reality, it demonstrates that the punishments and rewards in Dante’s heaven and hell may be a direct appeal to his readers to recognize the crimes that pervade their world.

Brenda Deen Schildgen, 2008 recipient of the UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement, specializes in the European Middle Ages, Bible as Literature, Dante, and Jewish, Christian, and Moslem relations in the European Middle Ages. She has a strong secondary interest in colonial and post-colonial literature, especially of Africa and the Indian subcontinent. She is a recipient of numerous fellowships including National Endowment for the Humanities, PEW, Bogliasco Foundation, the National Humanities Center in 2005-06, and Director, 2013-14 NEH Summer Institute, Florence, Italy, June 30-July 24, 2014, “Dante’s Divine Comedy: poetry, philosophy, and the city of Florence.” Her research areas include European Middle Ages, particularly Southern Europe, Reception theory, the relationship between history and fiction, Biblical hermeneutics, Interpretive theory, art and literature. 

View the book at University of Notre Dame Press