The Dartmouth Dante Project

In June of 1982 I was teaching a course on Dante at Dartmouth College. Taking note of the fact that three of my colleagues there (Kevin Brownlee, Stephen Nichols, Nancy Vickers) were increasingly interested in dealing seriously with Dante in their scholarship and of the fact that Dartmouth's holdings in this area are not strong, I was struck by the idea that a computerized database of the commentaries would not only alleviate the situation of my colleagues at Dartmouth, but of damisti everywhere. I have elsewhere characterized this notion as "the best simple idea I have ever had"— a