"Alcibiades quedam meretrix". Dante lettore di Boezio e i commenti alla 'Consolatio philosophiae'

While Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy is widely recognized as having been fun-
damental to Dante’s intellectual education, as testified in a well-known passage of the
Convivio ( II .xii, 2); and notwithstanding the recent studies that have investigated the in-
tertextual results of Dante’s encounter with the Consolation; it remains to be seen how
this encounter may have been mediated by the vast tradition of glosses to the Late Ancient
prosimetrum, given that the glosses enjoyed a wide diffusion within a geographical and
chronological perimeter of pertinence to the Florentine poet. The article has two objec-
tives: first, on the basis of recent historical-methodological acquisitions on the manuscript
tradition of Boethius’ book in Italy, to cautiously define the cultural requisites for the hypothetical codex of Boethius read by Dante at the outset of his intellectual cursus, with
regard to those types of books whose accessibility in Florence at the time of Vita Nova
has been documented; second, to weigh what textual influence the glosses’ intervention
may have had on Dante’s poetic and philosophical use of the Consolation.