About the Journal

Focus and scope

Limina. Intorno al testo is the title of both the journal and the project on which it is founded – a project that is progressively taking shape as a composite, networked structure, reflecting the very concept to which it refers. The margin and the interstice are understood here both as filled physical spaces and, metaphorically, as immaterial sites in which ideas, proposals, encounters, and exchanges may converge.

Limina designates all that surrounds the text and lies between its lines, and that may serve as an unforeseen point of access to it. Limen denotes the threshold, the entrance, the point of entry: to cross it – by immersing oneself in notes, glosses, marks of attention, images – is to approach the page obliquely, along a lateral path. It is to appropriate a work through the words of others, to apprehend it in its everyday dimension, in its minute reception, and in its capacity for social as well as cultural circulation. In doing so, attention is drawn to the process of the construction and restitution of meaning that lies at the very heart of reading. The margin is also the site of occasional writings – a prayer, a poem; the space of memory and recollection – such as the annotations of a sixteenth-century owner; and the locus of children’s doodles. It is life unfolding alongside the text, prompted by reading and by literature.

Circulation, dissemination, fortune, reception: these terms describe the process through which a work is sedimented within its readership and its meanings are reactivated by readers. The limina allow the text to be approached from a different perspective – one that we regard as the only truly living and vital one.

The perspectives from which this phenomenon may be examined are necessarily multiple. For this reason, we have chosen to bring together the various articulations of the concept of limina across the projects that embody it within an open-access database (https://www.dantelimina.it). First among these is the founding project (PRIN 2022), devoted to the limina of the manuscripts of the ancient vulgate of Dante’s Commedia: LiMINA (Lost in Manuscripts. Ideas, Notes, Acknowledgments). This project comprises descriptive records of the manuscripts—produced in collaboration with Manus On Line (https://manus.iccu.sbn.it/limina)–together with the systematic examination of traces of reading found in margins, interlinear spaces, intercolumnar areas, and flyleaves.

The project soon expanded to encompass the various ways in which readers from different periods and cultural contexts have appropriated the text – first and foremost by copying it. An indispensable point of departure is therefore the ecdotic study of the exceptionally rich manuscript tradition of the poem. To this end, the Dante Matrix software gathers collations of approximately six hundred passages from all 580 non-fragmentary manuscripts of the Commedia, enabling the investigation of their textual affinities.

A further line of enquiry, continuous with the manuscript tradition (and with the I.D.P. and I.D.P. 2.0 projects), aims to map and analyse the printed legacy in a comprehensive manner. A particularly privileged field has been selected: illustration. Dante’s poem is, as is well known, profoundly visual. Readers retain images of worlds, figures, and atmospheres. This visual power of the Commedia gave rise to miniatures, drawings, and woodcuts at a time when iconographic traditions were already well established. D.A.N.T.E. (Digital Archive and New Technologies for E-content) is the platform hosting descriptions of the illustrations of the Commedia found in printed editions from the sixteenth century to – ideally – the present day. A catalogue has been created, soon to be available both online and in print, which reverses the customary relationship between artefact and content by placing illustration and its dialogue with earlier iconographic traditions and subsequent codifications at the centre of analysis. Printed editions are thus treated as signs of a rich, composite, and multimedia interpretation of Dante’s work. For each described copy – significantly, only one, since it represents merely one possible witness among many to the transmission of images—details relating to the limina are also provided, as printed books, no less than manuscripts, preserve essential traces of reading.

There is, moreover, what might be described as the elective domain of language, addressed by D:verse (Dante in vernacular experience: readings, studies, exegesis). Language is, of course, a fundamental medium of textual appropriation. D:verse engages with the extensive corpus of translations of the Commedia (and of its commentaries) into the various Italian dialects produced since the nineteenth century, making them accessible and open to investigation through digital editions, commentaries, and glossaries. This field offers considerable potential, insofar as each linguistic system apprehends and renders the work with distinct nuances, crossing the limen of its meaning in order to restore it in forms responsive to different contexts.

Closely related is the crucible of cultures in which Dante’s word, like a seed, is deposited and bears unexpected fruit. From this perspective emerged Dante Juyō, which may be rendered as “the reception and fortune of Dante” in Japan. As is known, the world of the Commedia – and particularly that of the Inferno – continues to live on in manga, video games, and contemporary art. Dante Juyō brings together digital reproductions of early printed editions of Dante held in Japan, some introduced by Jesuit missionaries and others acquired through governmental purchasing campaigns during the Meiji period, the era of Japan’s opening to the West. The project examines their limina with the specific aim of reconstructing the modes and chronology of Dante’s initial reception in the East. It also collects the translations and rewritings that populated the Japanese book market from the late nineteenth century throughout the twentieth. Finally, it addresses contemporary manifestations, including examples from J-pop culture and the visual arts, in which Dante’s presence re-emerges in new forms and configurations.

Reconstructing an identity through the other: it is in accordance with this logic that we consider engagement with other traditions to be essential, in order to draw cultural, methodological, and analytical insights and thus render the hermeneutic approach prismatic. We are convinced that nothing is more vital than exchange and the cross-fertilisation of ideas and proposals – in short, open collaboration grounded in respect and attentive listening. Knowledge and progress arise only from encounters. We are therefore grateful for the many fruitful encounters that have accompanied the path we have undertaken: above all those with younger scholars – many of whom contribute to this first issue – whose enthusiasm, together with their rigorous work, constitutes the true lifeblood of the project; but also, in ways that have at times exceeded our expectations, those with technical specialists, whose expertise has complemented our own and given material form to our ideas through graphic, computational, and digital solutions.

We envisage continuing our work on the remaining manuscripts of the Commedia until the entire manuscript tradition has been covered. We also aim to complete the work on illustrated and annotated printed editions. We hope to replicate the Dante Juyō project in other countries. Furthermore, returning to a national context, we intend to investigate the ways in which authors of modern and contemporary Italian literature – from Foscolo to Leopardi, from Gozzano to Levi, from Bufalino to Pavese – have read Dante, by examining the margins of the editions that once occupied the shelves of their personal libraries.

In sum, we are working towards a conceptual network that seeks to enrich and diversify research, preserving the value of the text – or rather, of texts – while at the same time enabling an internal understanding of that process of literary revitalisation that lies at the centre of our critical reflection.

Publication Frequency

The journal is published on a biannual basis.

Peer Review

All articles submitted to the journal undergo double-blind peer review.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides open access to all its content.