Dante's Masterplot and Alternative Narratives in the 'Commedia' questions the familiar narrative arc at play in the writings of Dante Alighieri and opens his masterpiece to three alternative models that resist it. This is Dante's masterplot, the teleological trajectory by which the poetsubordinates the past to the authority of a new experience. The book's introduction analyses the masterplot's workings in Dante's text and its role in the interpretation of the poem, and it documents its overwhelming success in influencing readings of the Commedia over the centuries. The volumeexplores three competing narrative models that resist and counter its monopoly which are enacted by paradoxes, alternative endings and parallel lives, and the future. By focusing on these non-linear modes of storytelling and testing the limits of linear narration, the book questions criticalparadigms in the scholarship of the Commedia that favour a single normative master-truth, exposes their problematic authoritarian implications, and highlights the manifold poetic, theological, and ethical tensions that are often neglected due to the masterplot's influence. The new picture of avulnerable author and open-ended text that emerges from this study thus doubles as a meta-critical reflection on the state of the field. The book's impassioned argument is that, alongside traditional notions of his trademark plurality of linguistic registers and styles, Dante's narrative pluralismcan, and should, come to play a key role in contemporary and future readings of the work. | Dante's Masterplot and Alternative Narratives in the Commedia by Nicolo Crisafi, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters