DANTE DECRYPTED: MUSICA UNIVERSALIS IN THE TEXTUAL ARCHITECTURE OF THE 'COMMEDIA' (original) (raw)
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The Order of All Things: Mimetic Craft in Dante's Commedia (TOC | Bibliography)
The Order of All Things: Mimetic Craft in Dante's Commedia (Dissertation), 2011
Although scholars have long speculated about the structural details of Dante Alighieri’s Commedia, none have articulated an empirically founded model of the poem’s comprehensive architecture, leaving open the debate about the details of Dante’s design of the poem. While some have adopted widely conjectural numerological methods, others have developed more sustainable mathematical analyses of the poem’s textual dispositio. This study maintains a strictly empirical approach in examining the homology of form and signification in Dante’s Commedia, revealing a close correspondence between the poem’s textual architecture and both physical and metaphysical concepts in Ptolemaic cosmology. Analyzing the Commedia’s program of composition, I first examine the hermeneutic correlation between the multiple Dante subjects and the poem’s stratified diegesis. I then uncover programmatic indices of the poem’s genesis and development in the polysemy of selva, stilo and iri. A close reading of the pilgrim’s final vision reveals the explicitly Trinitary ontology of the terza rima whose ordering function and ubiquity in the text offer a structural mimesis of Divine omnipresence. Following a survey of Dante’s innovative use of Vergilian aesthetics, I demonstrate how Classical nautical metaphors for poetic composition underpin Beatrice’s authority as ammiraglio in the Commedia’s poetic enterprise. Finally, I empirically show that Beatrice’s mathematical identity as the square of the Trinity together with the terza rima are the key to understanding how the Commedia’s quantitative properties — namely the poem’s inventory of distinct rhymes, its canto lengths, their frequencies of occurrence and their distribution across the text — all strictly conform to Pythagorean principles of harmony and proportion. The results of this analysis show how Dante based the comprehensive architecture of the Commedia on the mathematical musica universalis intrinsic to Ptolemaic cosmology. With thirteen notes from the hexachorda dura arranged according to the fundamental Pythagorean musical intervals (octave, 2nd, 4th and 5th), Dante composed the blueprint for crafting a poetically mimetic sign for the cosmos, thus imitating his Maker’s universe in constructing the Commedia as a synthesis of his intellectual patrimony and a signifier for God’s Creation. The study therefore provides the empirical grounds for developing and sustaining scholarship concerning the poem’s textual architecture. Moreover, the study’s enumeration of the poet’s exacting methods for creating meaning contributes to ongoing rational examinations of Medieval aesthetics and Dante’s own mimetic craft as poet.
International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing, 2010
La Divina Commedia was written nearly 700 years ago and for much of that time it has been closely examined and scrutinised across many different levels: the sources; the meaning; the linguistic structure of the poem; the hidden subtexts; the influences; the analogies and the numerology of the poem have all been analysed in detail. However, a totally neglected area of the great work is the architecture of the universe that Dante created, particularly the architecture of Paradise and the Celestial Rose. Dante attempted to create a universe that was truly Euclidian and one that was fitting for the Divine Architect with His compass and straightedge, a popular image of his time. However, Dante inadvertently created a four dimensional universe that was beyond the geometric understanding of his time. The universe that Dante created in La Divina Commedia cannot be drawn with a compass and straightedge. This paper examines Dante's architectural metaphors, the structure of his universe, and the paradox that it creates.
Bibliotheca Dantesca, 2019
The paper presents the MaTeLDa project (Materiality and Textuality: Editing and Rewriting the Lyric Dante in History, Università degli Studi di Padova, 2018-2020), which offers an interdisciplinary study of how Dante was received and 'canonized' in late medieval and early modern Italy. MaTeLDa envisages the analysis of a selection of Dante's texts in material contexts, and of specific instances of the circulation and reception of his lyric poetry, thereby laying the basis for a better understanding of medieval and early modern authoriality; the qualities of books as 'textual objects'; and the ways in which context, form, and annotation in single books may bestow cultural authority upon authors and works. The essay then investigates a case-study in order to illustrate some key aspects of the circulation of Dante's lyric poetry and the construction of his figure as an Author between the thirteenth and the late fourteenth century: the peculiar case of the transmission of Dante's experimental canzone in three languages (French, Latin, and Italian) "Aï faus ris."
Sursum Ductio. Reasoning Upward. An Investigation into the Vertical Structure of Dante's Commedia
2021
This dissertation investigates “vertical readings” of the Commedia, i.e., the interpretive method that compares and contrasts same-numbered cantos in the three canticles of the poem: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Although there is a consensus that specific vertical readings are intentional, critics remain skeptical of extrapolating it into a totalizing system. This dissertation aims to delineate the methodology’s parameters, trace its emergence in the field of Dante studies, and anchor it within the context of Italian Duecento and Trecento culture. This research investigates the methodology by gathering vertical readings in Dante studies into a comprehensive archive. This catalog provides valuable information regarding the history and emergence of the method and its practitioners’ different theoretical bases.
The Journal of Architecture, 2005
This paper discusses the relationship between an architectural project, Giuseppe Terragni’s design of the Danteum, and a poem, Dante’s Divine Comedy. The project is of special interest precisely because it takes the poem as its architectural design program. However, in this particular case, the relationship between poetry and architecture might have been traveled in both directions and in multiple ways. Before Terragni ever interpreted it as a program of architectural design, The Divine Comedy had been an inspiration for works in numerous media including painting, sculpture, and music. While descriptions offered in hymns such as those of Paulus Silentarious on the Hagia Sophia suggest that intersections between poetry and buildings were part of the Byzantine and early Christian cultural tradition that precedes Dante’s Divine Comedy. This paper considers various echoes of The Divine Comedy and the metamorphoses of its expanded body across verbal, visual, and spatial media, while allowing that some of the spatial motifs that were incorporated in the poem have their origins in a similar translation from works in other media, including architecture. this paper questions how the internal logic of architecture, as a symbolic medium, transforms aspects of the poem: How might architecture enrich our understanding of the Comedy in ways which would otherwise not be available? The question is discussed in three parts: part one considers the possibility that architecture underlies the poem already; part two examines visual images based on the poem; part three looks at the Danteum to see how meaning has been projected and transformed. The fact that some of the central myths of a culture are distributedly recorded over many different works in different symbolic media is rather familiar. Thus, it is not particularly surprising that an individual work of art of special significance can acquire an extended body comprising subsequent re-statements in media other than the original. The question this article addresses is not why The Divine Comedy, having already served as a point of departure for paintings or sculptures, was also to serve as a point of departure for architectural design. This question only calls for a circumstantial and historical answer that is very much linked to the status of the poem in Italian culture at the time as well as to the aims of both client and architect. The possibility that the poem, prior to inspiring specific architectural designs, was itself inspired by architectural precedents expressing some of the same underlying mythological themes simply confirms that some manner of transmutation from one medium to another is not only possible, but perhaps even expected. What the article addresses instead is what, about a given work, changes as the symbolic medium changes. If meaning is to some extent dependent upon the medium in which it is constructed or expressed, then translations across media without transformation, loss or accretion are impossible. the more particular questions raised in this article are: what does our knowledge of The Divine Comedy contribute to our understanding of Terragni’s design and what does the latter contribute to our new understanding of the Comedy? To some extent these questions are related to yet another issue which is answered more clearly in this paper - in what exactly consists the act of design formulation that produces the Danteum?
2009
Dante’s relationship with his classical models has interested many scholars over the decades, especially because of the numerous references to classical literature in the Commedia, which suggest a profound knowledge of the auctores despite the little evidence for Dante’s actual education. Previous studies have focused on the modality and quality of classical reception in Dante as the work of a man living in a world that interpreted most pagan literature in Christian terms; on how and where Dante alludes and refers to classical literary material in the Commedia; on how Dante developed the genre of comedy from Antiquity; and finally on how Dante perceived classical literature as inadequate and insufficient compared to the thought and writings of Christianity. My research consists primarily in the analysis of the Commedia’s technical poetical vocabulary (i.e. genre, specific verbs and objects) and poetical topoi and images related to writing poetry that have their roots in classical li...
The Paradox of the Divine Architecture in Dante's La Divina Commedia
The International Journal of the Humanities Vol. 8, Issue 2, p. 295-309, 2010
La Divina Commedia was written nearly 700 years ago and for much of that time it has been closely examined and scrutinised across many different levels: the sources; the meaning; the linguistic structure of the poem; the hidden subtexts; the influences; the analogies and the numerology of the poem have all been analysed in detail. However, a totally neglected area of the great work is the architecture of the universe that Dante created, particularly the architecture of Paradise and the Celestial Rose. Dante attempted to create a universe that was truly Euclidian and one that was fitting for the Divine Architect with His compass and straightedge, a popular image of his time. However, Dante inadvertently created a four dimensional universe that was beyond the geometric understanding of his time. The universe that Dante created in La Divina Commedia cannot be drawn with a compass and straightedge. This paper examines Dante’s architectural metaphors, the structure of his universe, and the paradox that it creates.
Music and Grammar. Models of Dantean Inquiry from the 'De Vulgari Eloquentia' to Inf. 3
Textual Cultures, 2022
Dante's original and insightful linguistics and poetics have prompted important conversations among scholars, in terms of their anthropological, theological, and philosophical implications. In this article, I reconsider Dante's understanding of language and poetics from the perspective of grammar and music. I bring together the scholarship from these two disciplines to analyze Dante's theoretical and poetical works, and I argue that grammar and music offered Dante two distinct ways to think about language. I trace the relationship between the two disciplines in the 'De Vulgari Eloquentia' first, and in the first cantos of the 'Comedy' (Inf. 1-3), in the second part of this article. Ultimately, I show that a deeper understanding of Dante's grammatical and musical models of linguistic inquiry can shed new light on our comprehension not only of his poetics but also of his ethical and political project.