Dante in France, past to present – DHAF

« Dante from yesterday to today in France »
(DHAF, « Dante d’hier à aujourd’hui en France »)

The DHAF project intends to advance knowledge of Dante’s (1265-1321) reception in France, and to contribute with an original, targeted aim, promoted and led by French scholars, to the vast movement that the 700th anniversary of the global literary giant’s death will generate throughout the world.

This reception has never been the subject of global studies. It was limited to the Divine Comedy, putting aside 'minor' works (Vita Nova, Convivio, Rime, De vulgari eloquentia, Monarchia...). Even for the major work, research has remained essentially punctual and limited. The field best marked out, that of translations, needs to be completed and considered from a traductological point of view. The examination of literary reception was largely confined to the 19th century. Other areas remain to be explored: visual arts, 'medievalist pop' culture, scholarly reception.

Our ambition is therefore to explore Dante's reception from the Middle Ages to the present day in its fundamental aspects. DHAF intends to do so by crossing what corresponds to the more traditional fields of literature and visual arts (where nonetheless much awaits to be brought out and undergo in-depth analysis), or translation, with less explored fields, such as scholarly, academic and educational reception, all the way to less canonical fields, or even completely new ones, such as 'popular' appropriations. We are also expecting such 'crossings' to produce hermeneutic advances.

The Consortium associates four universities (Sorbonne Nouvelle, Université Rennes 2, Université Côte d’Azur, Université Grenoble Alpes). The project leader's selection of such partners relies on each of the DHAF project scientific coordinators' qualifications, on their professional achievements, their expertise, and their full commitment to the project.

The methodically coordinated effort aims to present complete inventories and to make the documents collected widely accessible in digital form via the DHAF database. Finally, the systematic field comparison and constant confrontation of these multiple approaches should make it possible, through the decompartmentalization of specialties and interdisciplinarity, to change the overall perception of Dante's work and its French reception, in dialogue with other traditions, the Italian one in particular.