Time and the Crystal

The Rime petrose, Dante's powerful lyrics about a woman as beautiful and as hard as a precious stone, are generally acknowledged to be an important moment in his stylistic development. In this full-length investigation of the poetics of the petrose and of their relation to The Divine Comedy, Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez uncover new material, especially from medieval science (astrology and mineralogy), philosophy, and theology. The authors argue that the Rime petrose represent a major