This volume explores the connections between Dante and literary contexts of periods earlier than his own, from the pre-Christian era to the thirteenth century. The essays include Pamela Williams (U. Hull), Cato of Utica in Cicero’s De Finibus and Dante’s Commedia ; Teresa Hankey (U. Kent), Dante and Statius; Jean-Michel Picard (UCD), Dante and Irish vision literature; Drina Oldroyd (Griffith U.), Dante and the medieval prophets; John C. Barnes (UCD), Dante’s knowledge of Florentine history; Claire Honess (U. Reading), Dante and political poetry in the vernacular; Stephen Bemrose (U. Exeter), Dante’s ‘Neutral’ Angels ; Lynne Press (QUB), Modes of metamorphosis in the Commedia: Inferno XIII; June Salmons (U. Wales, Swansea), Tradition and innovation in Purgatori; Prue Shaw (University College, London), A reading of Purgatorio XXVI; and, Joanna Sciortino Nowlan (King’s College, London), Dante and the mystical tradition.