On Amistà

""In this thoughtful account of what friendship does in Dante's text and in Dante's time, Elizabeth Coggeshall offers a nuanced, contextualized picture of friendship as constituting a range of fraught relationships, foregrounding the sociopolitical and literary tensions of Trecento Italy. A timely and immensely valuable contribution to our understanding of Dante and his social networks."" --Heather Webb, Professor of Medieval Italian Literature and Culture, University of Cambridge ""Whereas previous studies of friendship in Dante's oeuvre rely almost exclusively on literary analysis filtered through a theological lens, Coggeshall breaks new ground by looking at friendship in its many guises from a sociological angle. This major contribution to the flourishing field of Dante studies will also be of significant interest to scholars, teachers, and students in medieval and early modern studies."" --Guy P. Raffa, Professor Emeritus of Italian Studies, University of Texas at Austin ""In these days, when friendship is increasingly navigated in virtual settings and intertwined with social media, Coggeshall's fascinating study of the role and value of friendship in the Middle Ages is extraordinarily timely.　As she explores 'friendly' competition between poets, for example, Coggeshall invites the reader to consider not only what medieval intellectuals meant by 'being a friend' but also how their understanding of friendship continues to resonate in the modern era."" --Mary A. Watt, Professor of Italian Studies, University of Florida ""Departing from well-known philosophical, scriptural, and theological contexts, On Amistà refreshingly analyses how Dante molded the lexicon of friendship into the language of survival and self-promotion in his lyric poetry and Latin works, and the consequences for this new vision of friendship in the Commedia's imagined bonds of attachment. I highly recommend this book for readers of Dante and those interested in the continuities and ruptures between the medieval and early modern periods.""　 --Kristina M. Olson, Associate Professor of Italian, George Mason University