‘Tutto avem veduto’? Enumeration and ‘Forgetfulness’ in Dante’s Commedia (original) (raw)
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On the precipice of the First Circle of Hell, Dante the narrator describes his arrival synesthetically: “io venni al loco d'ogne luce muto.” The “silence” of the light is contrasted in the two verses immediately following by the incongruity of the “bellowing” of the sea, a mixed, animalesque metaphor that, Boccaccio notes in his Esposizioni, “è proprio de’ buoi.” According to the Florentine Ottimo Comento, Dante’s description stems from “l’oscurità del luogo, figura la cechitade del loro intelletto; chè come qui è intenebrato lo lume della ragione in sè, così quivi sentono privamento d'ogni luce.” In his late-fourteenth-century commentary, Neapolitan Guglielmo Maramauro writes the following: “Qui D. descrive como esso venne a questo loco MUTO, cioè rimoto d'ogni luce. E qui parla improprie, chè la muteza è solo atribuita a l'omo che non parla. Così questo loco è muto de luce, cioè privato d'ogni luce. E poriase mover un dubio: perchè D. fo con V. nel Limbo «luminoso etc.» e qui dice «I' venni in loco etc.?’” The poetic necessity of convenientia (appropriateness) animates much of Dante’s poetry, but here I will study his use of “improper” rhetoric, for both Boccaccio (“impropriamente”; “proprio de’ buoi”) and Maramauro (“parla improprie”) highlight the incongruity of Dante’s poetics and the seemingly out-of-place metaphors among the upside-down world of Inferno. This talk will explore the strategic use of synesthesia and other “inappropriate,” disordered, poetic instances as fundamental to Dante’s upside-down depiction of Hell, where everything from language to politics to music lacks order. In particular, it will consider the reception of this rhetorical trope– the obverse of appropriateness or that which is “proper”–in some of the earliest commentaries on the poem, as well as the literary legacy of Dante’s infernal silences.
Dante Metamorphoses: Episodes in a Literary Afterlife
Italica, 2004
Similarly Havely is not overzealous in identifying Franciscan elements in every line of the Commedia, recognizing that the Franciscan debate on poverty is by no means the only important factor in the construction of Dante's literary persona. He does, however, present a convincing argument in favour of its pervasive influence throughout the work. To this end, Havely has been painstaking in his efforts to locate the most Franciscan aspects of all three canticles of the Commedia., focusing on avarice and authority in the Inferno, poverty of the spirit in the Purgatorio and on poverty and authority in the Paradiso. Throughout the book as well Havely emphasizes that the debate on poverty was not simply one that pitted Franciscans against the papacy, especially given the existence of periodic papal support for the movement, but rather as one that ultimately also pitted the Spirituals against the Conventuals, confirming the difficulty of resolving the issue, but also accounting for the apparently contradictory views on poverty in Dante's own writing even as late as the Paradiso. It is this absence of a pat solution that gives the debate its continuing relevance, while it is Nick Havely's meticulous research (the appendices, notes and bibliography are particularly useful) and marvelous writing style that mark him as the consummate scholar and that make this book essential reading not only for Dante scholars but also for scholars of medieval religion, politics and culture.
Earthly Paradise: Dante's Initiatory Rite of Passage
Quaderni di Studi Indomediterranei 10, 2017
Despite reaching the summit of Purgatory, Dante is not quite ready for Paradise yet. Through a long sequence of seven cantos that begins in fire and ends in water, Dante the author now takes us through what, in the circumscribed space of pre-lapsarian earthly Paradise, needs to be shown, said and staged for his self as wayfarer to be rifatto sì come piante novelle / rinovellate di novella fronda (“made as new trees are / renewed of new foliage”), so that access to the stars be granted him. If the entirety of the Commedia can be understood as the poetic expression of a vision that finds its roots in love and its end in transformative, prophetic revelation, then the Earthly Paradise sequence goes right to the heart of the mystery that seals Dante’s poem. This paper approaches some of the complexities of that mysterial rite of passage.
‘Miseri, ’mpediti, affamati’: Dante’s Implied Reader in the Convivio [revised proof]
Franziska Meier (ed), Dante's «Convivio» Or How to Restart a Career in Exile, Collections : Leeds Studies on Dante , Peter Lang, 2018
Dante’s implied reader of the Convivio is clearly defined at the beginning of the first book. He addresses his work to those with the natural desire to know. However, in the following canzoni and commentaries, the reader Dante has in mind is constantly redefined and reshaped. It seems that, in repeatedly addressing an assumed reader, Dante’s intention is not only to support and assist in reading this specific text, but to go much further – that is, to test the very possibility that a reader could understand and fully appreciate his work. To be more precise, Dante’s political and philosophical enquiries frame the process of reading and understanding the canzoni. In other words, the ability of the reader to discern the true meaning of Dante’s canzoni has a crucial bearing on whether or not he can be taken as achieving the sense of nobility and reaching philosophical knowledge. The process of reading is therefore a central issue in the Convivio: it is the vehicle for Dante’s epistemological and ethical considerations; furthermore, it expresses Dante’s own concern and anxiety about the possibility of being correctly understood at the very advent of his exile.