The critical edition of Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe, Vol. VIII of The Works of George Santayana (The MIT Press, 2019) is now available. George Santayana’s Three Philosophical Poets was first published in 1910 as the inaugural volume in the still-active Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature series and presents Santayana’s case for the unity of philosophy and poetry. He characterized the work as a “piece of literary criticism, together with a first broad lesson in the history of philosophy.”
The critical edition of Three Philosophical Poets includes a text established in accord with critical editing theories and procedure and comes as close to the author’s original intention as possible. The critical edition also includes an introduction by James Seaton, a textual commentary, a listing of all variants among different editions, rationales for emendations, notes to the text, and an index.