Theory and Criticism of Literature and Arts
Issue 10, Nr. 4 – 2026
Copyright © 2026 Éditions Pigouchet, 66
Av. des Champs-Élysées 75008 Paris (France)
ISSN digital: 2297-1874
ISSN print: 2504-2238
Cover: Graphic reworking of a drawing by Sandro Botticelli, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1964398
www.tcla-journal.eu | info(at)tcla-journal.eu
EDITORIAL BOARD FOR THIS ISSUE
Maria Grazia Bonanno, Università di Roma «Tor Vergata», Italy Romeo Bufalo, Università della Calabria, Italy
Philippe Guérin, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, France Lucia Lazzerini, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy
Leena Löfstedt, Universities of Jyväskylä and Helsinki, Finland Raffaele Pinto, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
Lucinia Speciale, Università del Salento, Italy
Dante Beyond Dante
&
Studies in Art and Literature
Vol. 10, Nr. 4 – 2026
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dante Beyond Dante
Title: The Good Place (2016-2020) as an aesthetic echo of Dante’s Divine Comedy
Author: LUCAS PESSO FENIMAN
ORCID: 0009-0008-1289-4503
pages: 4-29
Abstract: This comparative study examines the television series The Good Place (2016-2020) as an echo of Dante’s The Divine Comedy. Adopting the concept of intertextuality developed by Roland Barthes and Julia Kristeva, I investigate how both stories are linked by a narrative thread, the recounting of the pilgrimages of their narrators through the realms of afterlife in pursuit of Infinite Goodness, to serve as guides for its receivers. Hell is not what it appears to be in The Good Place. As the show unfolds, the characters find themselves in an uncanny version of hell disguised as heaven, a torture plan developed by a demon. The spectator embarks on a journey through hell, purgatory, and paradise, similar to Dante’s path in The Divine Comedy. There are many elements that can be correlated between them, symbolisms and aesthetic references that suggest similarities and reveal the lingering presence of Dante’s legacy in the 21st Century.
Title: La Muse dantesque en déréliction
Author: ADÈLE DUCANCHEZ EINSLE
ORCID: 0009-0006-9607-0282
pages: 30-49
Abstract: The article examines Renée Vivien’s rewriting of the Dantean Muse in two poems, “Donna m’apparve” and “Sous la Rafale,” showing how Beatrice is transformed into a degraded, spectral apparition. Drawing both on and against Dante, Vivien reverses the salvific model of the Muse, recasting it as the mirror of a new condition—that of an inaccessible figure marked by loss and suffering. The study aims to highlight how the poet reshapes Dantean imagery into a poetics of dereliction, in which exile, desire, and marginality redefine the very function of the Muse.
Title: La Conjuration de Dante de Fabrice Papillon : un Jugement Dernier écologique ?
Author: ESTHER GODREUIL
ORCID: 0009-0004-0117-8094
pages: 50-67
Abstract: La Conjuration de Dante by Fabrice Papillon, a novel published in 2024, belongs to the now well-established subgenre of Dantean thrillers. While it adopts its conventions—most notably the metaphorical katabasis undergone by the protagonist Louise Vernay and the transformation of the Divine Comedy into a codex—it nonetheless renews their metaphysical scope. The novel presents itself as a modern popularizing summa, echoing the compendium of medieval knowledge embodied in Dante’s poem, while reintroducing an eschatological dimension. Papillon’s thriller thus offers a vision of a secular and modern Last Judgment.
Title: Candida Rosa, da Dante a Hannah Arendt: verso la felicità pubblica
Author: MIRCO CITTADINI
ORCID: 0009-0009-2201-8352
pages: 68-77
Abstract: Lecture delivered on 26 June 2023 on the occasion of the conference “El maleït florí. Dante i el capitalisme”, held in Barcelona at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona.
Title: Un tempio per Dante: il progetto del Danteum di G. Terragni
Authors: MICHELANGELO ZACCARELLO & LUCA LANINI
ORCIDs: 0000-0003-3938-8308 & 0000-0002-9815-5144
pages: 78-92
Abstract: On the eve of the seventh centenary of his death, the cult of Dante appears strongly polarized around Florence and Ravenna, despite the growing centrality that Rome had been assuming in Italian cultural policy, even before the Fascist period. From a dual scholarly perspective—Dante reception and architectural history—this study examines the origins and development of the ambitious project for a Dantean mausoleum in Rome, on Via dei Fori Imperiali, designed by one of the leading figures of Italian Rationalism, Giuseppe Terragni (1904–1943).
Title: Dante, Panikkar e Gaudì tra simbolo e ricerca triadica del mistero (I parte)
Author: GIANNI VACCHELLI
ORCID: 0009-0004-1993-4054
pages: 93-112
Abstract: The article explores the convergences between Dante, Gaudí, and Panikkar, identifying a shared sapiential vision of reality grounded in a relational, symbolic, and triadic–Trinitarian framework. Space—understood in poetic, architectural, and philosophical terms—emerges as a living form capable of expressing the unity of cosmos, human being, and the divine. Art is conceived as an initiatory experience and a principle of integration of existence, while sapientia is distinguished from analytical knowledge as lived, harmonizing insight. The study ultimately recognizes in the Trinitarian intuition and the cosmotheandric vision a common interpretative key linking the Commedia, Gaudí’s architecture, and Panikkar’s thought.
Studies in Art and Literature
Title: Giovanni Boccardi, detto Boccardino il Vecchio, Identificazione dell’atto di battesimo e ricostruzione della bottega
Author: CARLA ROSSI
ORCID: 0000-0001-6557-3684
pages: 113-121
Abstract: The essay presents new data concerning the biography of the Florentine illuminator Giovanni di Giuliano Boccardi, known as Boccardino the Elder, emerging from research initiated through the study of Ms. 198 of the Biblioteca Guarneriana in San Daniele del Friuli. A re-examination of Florentine archival sources has led to the identification of the artist’s baptismal record, preserved at the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore (Baptismal Registers, Register I, fol. 234v), which establishes with certainty his date of birth as 13 December 1459, correcting the chronology previously accepted in scholarship. Analysis of cadastral records has further clarified the genealogical structure of the Boccardi family, restoring coherence to the onomastic line attested in the archives. The study also brings to light two previously unknown elements: the identity of the maternal grandfather, a copyist specializing in Greek texts, who enabled the illuminator’s apprenticeship with Zanobi cartolaio; and evidence of illumination activity across multiple generations, from Boccardino the Elder to his son Francesco and to his grandson Redi, hitherto unknown to scholarship but documented as an illuminator in the Decima Granducale (ASFi, 3782, fol. 10v).
Title: Un offiziolo e un libro d’ore della Biblioteca Fardelliana di Trapani. Il committente del Ms. 16 e il miniatore del Ms. 17
Author: CARLA ROSSI
ORCID: 0000-0001-6557-3684
pages: 122-154
Abstract: Within the manuscript holdings of the Biblioteca Fardelliana in Trapani are preserved an offiziolo and a Book of Hours of primary historical and artistic significance, bearing witness to the cultural dynamics that shaped European illumination between the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance. These are the codices now catalogued as Ms. 16 and Ms. 17, both originating from the collection assembled by Giambattista Fardella (1762–1836), a general and statesman from Trapani and promoter of the city’s library. The two manuscripts have not yet received adequate scholarly attention: Ms. 16 has not been the subject of specific studies, while Ms. 17 is known only through a brief contribution by Benedetto Patera published in the journal Trapani in 1961. The present study offers a first critical assessment, anticipating the results of two monographs currently in preparation. For the first time, the patron of Ms. 16 is identified: iconographic, heraldic, and documentary analysis makes it possible to recognize the Neapolitan knight Enrico “Spata” Loffredo (d. 1421), a man-at-arms in the service of King Ladislaus of Durazzo, as the commissioner of the offiziolo. Ms. 17, by contrast, can be attributed to the Rouen workshop of Robert Boyvin, one of the leading illuminators active in the city between the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Stylistic, compositional, and ornamental features allow the manuscript to be placed within the intermediate phase of the atelier’s activity—one in which the illuminator’s wife also participated—distinguishable from earlier phases by specific solutions in page layout, iconographic construction, and the treatment of borders.
Title: «E son le doti, che ti fan più bello, / penna, spada, caval, plettro e pennello». Arti, lettere e cultura nobiliare nelle opere di Giuseppe d’Alessandro
Author: DANIELA CARACCIOLO
ORCID: 0000-0002-7282-3247
pages: 155-180
Abstract: The contribution examines the figure and work of Giuseppe d’Alessandro within the context of Neapolitan aristocratic culture between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, highlighting the interplay between literary production, visual arts, and aristocratic ideology. Through the analysis of poetic and treatise-based writings, it identifies a model of self-representation grounded in chivalric ethics, the celebration of heroic virtues, and the dialogue between word and image. The study situates this production within the broader political and cultural framework of the Viceroyalty, underscoring its identity-forming and educational functions.
Title: El Greco, Michelangelo e nuove attribuzioni tra Roma e Sicilia: dalla Pietà degli Spirituali all’Ultima Cena di Paternò
Author: ALFIO NICOTRA
ORCID: 0009-0003-5778-3077
pages: 181-189
Abstract: The article reconsiders the recent attribution of the so-called Pietà degli Spirituali to Michelangelo, proposing instead its assignment to the early Roman phase of El Greco, in direct dialogue with Michelangelesque culture. It also offers new assessments of several attribution proposals advanced in recent years for the catalogue of the Cretan painter and presents the attribution of an unpublished Last Supper in the former refectory of the Capuchins in Paternò (Catania). If confirmed, this mural painting could represent a significant element in support of the hypothesis of El Greco’s presence in the city, already associated with figures such as Sofonisba Anguissola and Fabrizio Moncada. The article concludes with reflections on the Study of a Boy, in a private collection, recently proposed as a possible portrait of the young Luigi Gonzaga.
Title: Tra spiritualità e potere. Una storia emblematica della Sicilia normanna
Author: GIUSEPPE ABBITA
ORCID: 0009-0003-4194-6978
pages: 190-199
Abstract: The article examines the bilingual (Greek and Arabic) mandate issued in 1109 by Countess Adelaide in favour of the monastery of San Filippo di Fragalà, a document of major historical and palaeographical significance as the earliest known public act on paper in Europe. The study highlights the multicultural administrative context of Norman Sicily and the role of Greek and Arabic officials. Drawing on the Tabulario and the wills of the hegumen Gregory, it reconstructs the organisation of the monastery, the privileges granted by Roger I and Adelaide, and the function of the cenobium as a religious and economic centre as well as an instrument of territorial control. The article concludes with an analysis of a Greek inscription at the monastery’s entrance, offering further insight into scribal practices and the internal hierarchies of the monastic community.
Title: La rappresentazione del gatto nell’iconografia devozionale
Author: BIAGIO GAMBA
ORCID: 0009-0003-5217-6673
pages: 200-218
Abstract:
The association between the cat and a demonic valence within Catholic culture appears, in all likelihood, to result from a stratification of ancient beliefs and subsequent interpretative amplifications, some of which have persisted, albeit in attenuated form, into the modern era. Although relatively rare, sacred artworks that include the figure of the cat offer an instructive testimony to this symbolic tradition, in which the animal assumes, in certain contexts, a negative connotation, at times functioning as a sign or allusion to evil.
This study focuses specifically on the field of devotional iconography, with the aim of identifying and analysing the modes of presence and the symbolic implications attributed to the cat within this context.