Abstract

VOLTAIRE TRANSLATING DANTE. Considering the authority that Voltaire enjoyed in his time, it should not be surprising that even one of his most negligible texts such as the Lettre sur le Dante, which appeared in 1756, aroused very lively reactions from some Italian men of letters, who set themselves up as defenders of outraged national honor. In fact, in addition to presenting a short translation essay of around fifty verses of Inferno’s Canto XXVII, here Voltaire expressed judgments on Dante’s style and poem that sounded disrespectful and hasty. The aim of this paper is to understand the reasons and the stakes of this dusty controversy.