Note 238 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
The question of unity was also raised in another controversy of the second half of the sixteenth century. A passage in Varchi's Ercolano (1570), rating Dante above Homer, started a controversy on the Divine Comedy. The most important outcome of this dispute was Mazzoni's Difesa di Dante (1573), in which a whole new theory of poetry is expounded in order to defend the great Tuscan poet.