Books

8vo (15 cm), 19th cent. half green morocco with titles and fillets in gold at spine, some marginal foxing (mostly to the index leaves, at beginning); generally a clean and well-preserved copy (upper margin a bit narrow, very light repair to the lower blank margin of title). Title within woodcut border, with a half-page woodcut depicting Dante, text printed in cursive type, ff. (8 nn.), 124 numb.Third edition (after those of 1490, and 1521), so the second printed in the 16th cent. Mambelli, 802; Sander 2330; Edit16 CNCE 1158. The Convivio (the Banquet) was written by Dante roughly between 1304 and 1307. This unfinished work of Dante consists of four tracts, or "books": a prefatory one, plus three books that each include a canzone (long lyrical poem) and a prose allegorical interpretation or commentary of the poem that goes off in multiple thematic directions. The Convivio is a kind of vernacular encyclopedia of the knowledge of Dante's time; it touches on many areas of learning, not only philosophy but also politics, linguistics, science, and history. The treatise begins with the prefatory text (the proemium ) explaining the sense of the work and why is written in the vernacular instead of Latin. It is one of Dante's early defences of the vernacular, expressed in greater detail in his (slightly earlier) linguistic treatise "De vulgari eloquentia" (On Eloquence in the Vernacular). Books 2 and 3 form a unit, both focusing on Dante's new love after the death of Beatrice. Book 2 discusses allegory and Lady Philosophy (in connection with the canzone,"Voi che ntendendo il terzo ciel movete" [You who move the third heaven with an act of the intellect], which opens the book), and deals with subjects including astronomy, and the soul's immortality. Book 3 is a eulogy for philosophy, launched by an allegorical interpretation of Dante's great canzone "Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona" (Love, who speaks to me in my mind). In this book, Dante states that true philosophy cannot arise from any ulterior motivation, such as prestige or money. Book 4 is the longest of the Convivio (distinct from the two books that precede it); its subject is the nature of nobility, and opens with the longest canzone of the Convivio "Le dolci rime d amor" (Those sweet poems of love), which is explicitly about kindness or nobility, as well as a condemnation of avarice.

Convivio (The Banquet) is a work by Dante Alighieri that serves as a commentary on several of his own songs. It was intended to provide Dante's views on ethics, logic, and natural philosophy.