ABSTRACT
This article analyses Erich Auerbach’s early studies on Dante Alighieri in the 1920s, and highlights the theoretical and political rivalries that characterized the academic environment in which he worked. It also underlines the search for the relevance of The Divine Comedy for German society among the interpretative trends that were established after the First World War. On the one hand, this disposition was used as the basis for chauvinistic and racialist readings of Dante’s work; on the other, it supported the defense of a unified European culture that his poem would allow to glimpse. Auerbach’s texts exemplify the second category because, beyond his theoretical reflections on literature, he found in Dante’s verses the meaning of his involvement in the world as a European philologist.
Keywords:
Dante Alighieri; Unity; Action; Philology; History