SOURCE: "Dante," in Women as Image in Medieval Literature, Columbia University Press, pp. 129-52.

In the following essay, Ferrante explains in detail Dante's evolving notion of woman, beginning with Vita Nuova and continuing through Paradiso.

Although he begins as a lyric poet within the same tradition, Dante moves beyond the stilnovisti in several significant ways. He turns outward beyond himself in order to understand the love he experiences, not just to acknowledge the beneficial effect of the woman, but to find a deeper significance in her existence and in his love for her. He is able to affirm secular love as the first stage of divine love: if a woman's beauty reflects heavenly beauty, if her powers to refine man come from God, then it is by seeking the source of her beauty, not by rejecting her, that man should reach God. Dante accepts the attraction he feels...