MHRA Publication

‘Drawing inspiration from second-wave cognitivist theories and particularly from embodied cognition, Powlesland proposes a new and fresh way to analyse the Comedy as a participatory text. The scholar achieves this by innovatively borrowing concepts and views from video games studies and adapting them to literary criticism... a strong contribution to Dante Studies, achieved through an innovative and unexpected perspective that bridges the gap between literary studies and videoludic criticism. As such, it is a cutting-edge text both in method and in content.’ — Mattia Bellini, Italian Studies 79.1, 2024, 100-01 (full text online)
‘Powlesland’s study offers an original approach to some of the most well-worn threads of investigation in Dante criticism. Revisiting the last century of Anglophone criticism’s most essential narratological puzzles, Powlesland presents a fresh perspective, one that reinvests the body with its critical role in reading, and that draws on current research in cognitive science and video game theory to complement rigorous analysis of the poem’s narrative structure.’ — Elizabeth Coggeshall, Italica 100.3, 2023, 458-60 (full text online)

‘As the back cover notes, the book “connects new and old points from scholarship with innovative perspectives on the text.” In places, this has provided a potential new framework for viewing the text as a whole; in others, it has produced reasonable readings that escape various interpretive dead ends from previous generations of scholars.’ — Adam Oberlin, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 123.1, January 2024, 108-11