Dante: Contemporary Perspectives 9781442673717

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DANTE: CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES

Dante: Contemporary Perspectives gathers recent and newly commissioned articles on Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), whose epic, the Divine Comedy, is one of the landmarks of world literature. The essays in this volume probe current critical assumptions about the celebrated Italian poet, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. Dante's attitude towards poetic authority and language comes under scrutiny in several essays, while others examine his political thought and his views on women and gender. Several articles focus exclusively on the Divine Comedy and, in particular, on its distinctive textual characteristics. There are new readings of three of the Divine Comedy's most important episodes - those of Paolo and Francesca, the Earthly Paradise, and Ulysses - whose significance extends far beyond their immediate contexts. These essays bring into focus Dante's bold narrative innovations and reflections on literature and history. AMILCARE A. IANNUCCI is a member of the Department of Italian Studies, University of Toronto. He is the author of Forma ed evento nella 'Divina Commedia and is editor of Dante Today and of Dante e la 'bella scola' della poesia: autorita e sfida poetica.

MAJOR ITALIAN AUTHORS General Editors: Massimo Ciavolella and Amilcare A. lannucci

EDITED BY AMILCARE A. IANNUCCI

DANTE CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1997 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-2965-5 (cloth) ISBN 0-8020-7736-6 (paper)

Printed on acid-free paper Toronto Italian Studies: Major Italian Authors

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Main entry under title: Dante: contemporary perspectives (Toronto Italian studies. Major Italian authors) Includes index. ISBN 0-8020-2965-5 (bound) ISBN 0-8020-7736-6 (pbk) 1. Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321 - Criticism and interpretation. I. lannucci, Amilcare A. II. Series. PQ4390.D36 1997 851'.1 C96-931481-7

This volume was published under the aegis of the Emilio Goggio Chair of Italian Studies at the University of Toronto. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council.

Contents

vii ix

3

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION

Dante and Medieval Poetics ZYGMUNT G. BARANSKI

23

Palinode and History in the Oeuvre of Dante ALBERT RUSSELL ASCOLI

51

Dante and the Classics MICHELANGELO PICONE

74

Dante and the Bible: Biblical Citation in the Divine Comedy CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ

94

Forbidden Love: Metaphor and History (Inferno 5) AMILCARE A. IANNUCCI

113

Dante's Ulysses: Narrative and Transgression TEODOLINDA BAROLINI

133

Narrative Design in Dante's Earthly Paradise RICHARD LANSING

vi Contents 148

A Desire of Paradise and a Paradise of Desire: Dante and Mysticism LINO FERTILE

167

Dante and the Authority of Poetic Language STEVEN BOTTERILL

181

Dante and Politics JOAN M. FERRANTE

195

Dante and Androgyny CAROLYNN LUND-MEAD

214

Singing the Book: Orality in the Reception of Dante's Comedy JOHN AHERN

240

Interpreting the Commentary Tradition to the Comedy DEBORAH PARKER

259

Reader's Application and the Moment of Truth in Dante's Divine Comedy WILLIAM FRANKE

281 285

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS INDEX

Acknowledgments

This work would not have been possible without the help of many people along the way, starting with the contributors. Their collaboration has been exemplary; it was a pleasure working with them. Carolynn Lund-Mead, a former student and now a valued collaborator, deserves special mention. In addition to authoring one of the essays for the volume, she also helped in the preparation of the manuscript, inputting corrections and changes as well as checking the accuracy of bibliographical references. John Tulk, a friend and collaborator, also assisted in this task, and I extend my gratitude to him as well. I am equally thankful to Giovanni D'Agostino and Eugenio Ragni, who pored over the proofs and purged the text of many mistakes that had escaped my attention, and that of the other authors too. I greatly appreciate their careful labour, as well as that of Claudia Abbondanza, who did the lion's share of the work on the index. At University of Toronto Press, I would like to acknowledge the efforts on behalf of this project of Anne Forte, Ken Lewis, and Ron Schoeffel. The latter merits special thanks for his unwavering support not only of this book but also the Major Italian Authors series, in which it is published. He encouraged Massimo Ciavolella and me to establish the series, and has nurtured it along to the point where within the next few years it will include several titles. Forthcoming are collections of essays on Ariosto, Pirandello, Croce, and Gadda. To thank Massimo Ciavolella is a bit like thanking myself. We have worked so often and so effortlessly together over the past two decades or so (starting with the founding of Quaderni d'italianistica, the journal of the Canadian Society for Italian Studies) that our professional identities have merged somewhat. He is a cherished friend and colleague, and his departure from Toronto saddens me. I wish him luck at UCLA and am cheered by the thought of our continued

viii Acknowledgments collaboration on the series, as well as many other projects, some of which we haven't even imagined yet. The friendship of Alex Kisin and Barrie Rose has sustained me during the past few years. I thank them for this wonderful gift, and for their generous support of my research. I eagerly look forward to our monthly lunches at which we sometimes even talk about Dante. Neither is an academic; both are endowed with a keen intellect and a quick wit. Their company is both a pleasure and an education. Finally, I would like to remember my wife, Susan, for her patience, encouragement, and help throughout my career. I published nothing without first submitting it to her for revision. She inevitably improved my work. Her presence is evident in this project too, especially in its initial phase. She did a first editing of the manuscript and translated Michelangelo Picone's essay into English from Italian. I have been devastated by her loss and miss her very much. This book, along with all the others I have produced over the years, belongs to her as much as it belongs to me. Financial assistance for this project was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Toronto, and a special fund established by friends to assist me in my research. I gratefully acknowledge the generosity of all the above.

Introduction

From the very beginning, the Commedia has managed to produce meaning and pleasure for those who receive it, and to engage the dominant art forms and media of the time, from the most popular to the most recondite and exclusive. Dante's literate audience quickly realized the poem's importance as well as its complexity - the fact that it works at several different levels at the same time. The Commedia demanded explication, and so no sooner was Dante in his grave than the scholars set to work. By the end of the fourteenth century, the Commedia had produced more commentary than Virgil's Aeneid had throughout the whole of the Middle Ages. With the exception of the Bible, no single text in the Western cultural tradition has generated more literature than Dante's poema sacro. It also produced a rich iconographic tradition, which soon took on a life of its own. First there were miniatures, and then, when print rendered manuscripts obsolete, illuminations gave way to woodcuts, engravings, and drawings. At the high end of the cultural spectrum, the Commedia produced not only a philological response, as it were, in the form of a commentary, verbal and visual, tied to the text, but also a creative response. It inspired the production of other objects, independent of its structure, in both the artistic and literary spheres. In this sense, Dante has produced frescoes, paintings, sculptures, and architecture, too –1 am thinking, in particular, of II Danteum, the grand, unrealized 1938 fascist project to build a templemuseum dedicated to Dante on the Via dell'Impero in Rome (Schumacher) - and along the way these have involved some of the major figures in the history of art from Giotto and Michelangelo to Blake, Rodin, and Salvador Dali. The same obtains in literature, starting with Boccaccio and Petrarch. For example, despite the latter's efforts to resist the

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producerly influence of Dante's poem, the Triumphs' major subtext is the Commedia. And its sway continues to this day. In 1929 T.S. Eliot declared that 'Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them' (51). In his preface to Dante among the Moderns, Stuart Y. McDougal adds that 'Dante's impact on the major writers of the modern world has far exceeded that of Shakespeare' (ix). In addition to being a powerful source of inspiration for artists and writers, Dante has been and continues today to be an intense object of study for scholars. The bibliography in Dante Today, the special 1989 issue of Quaderni d 'italianistica, provides a good idea of the extent of the current scholarly activity on Dante. In the five-year period from 1984 to 1988, no fewer than 1,500 publications on Dante appeared. In the United States, for instance, where, since the time of Longfellow, Dante has occupied a special position in the nation's cultural life, several new publications and lecture series have been established in the past few years in order to accommodate the expanded scholarly interest in Dante. In addition to Dante Studies, the journal of the Dante Society of America, we now also have the Lectura Dantis Virginiana, the Lectura Dantis Newberryana, the California Lectura Dantis, and the Lectura Dantis Americana. The scholarly production on Dante in Italy and the rest of Europe has also risen dramatically, but the critical situation is especially dynamic in the AngloAmerican world. With the exception of Michelangelo Picone, now at the University of Zurich (but for many years he taught at McGill), all the contributors to this volume work in Britain or North America. Collectively, the fourteen essays in this book reflect the range of concerns which has characterized Anglo-American Dante criticism in the past decade or so. And what are these concerns? Although Dante's so-called 'minor' works have increasingly become an object of study (see Ascoli's essay, in particular), Dante's Commedia continues to be the focus of critical attention. Consequently most of the essays in this volume deal with Dante's major work. Dante's 'thought,' especially the theological and political substratum (see, for example, Ferrante's essay) of the 'poema sacro,' continues to be an area of investigation, but much of the attention has shifted to the formal aspects of Dante's Commedia, to its textual qualities and its intertextual and narrative strategies. Another area which has sparked much recent interest is the poem's reception. It is here that I started and perhaps we can turn to this subject again. While Dante's early literate audiences read his poem, aided more and more by a growing body of verbal and visual glosses, those who were unable to read, like the women of Verona in Boccaccio's well-known

Introduction xi anecdote in his Life of Dante, went to their local squares to hear the latest news from the other world. A large proportion of Dante's first audiences experienced an oral performance of the poem rather than a slow, silent, reflective reading of it. As John Ahern points out in his essay on orality in the reception of the Commedia, Dante's poem grew out of and was inserted into a culture which contained 'a very high residue of orality.' And Dante, it seems, was completely aware of this. He wrote his major work in Italian rather than Latin, and in a simple style rather than a complex one. Moreover, he composed it in a frequently sung metre and in easily performable units of approximately 140 verses. All of this suggests, Ahern observes, that Dante wanted to reach a wide audience; he did not wish to exclude the illiterate from enjoying his poem and profiting from it. Dante's listening public, or at least a large, intelligent group within it, soon realized, however, that it did not possess the necessary competence to give the poem the full response it merited. Such a response entails a twofold reception, in which the poem's aural reality is experienced along with a slow, reflective reading of the text. Perhaps this explains why in 1373 a group of semi-literate persons (referred to as 'non gramatici' in the extant document) petitioned the Florentine authorities for a public reading of and commentary on the Commedia, whereby the oral and literate traditions would be combined. So began the lectura Dantis, inaugurated by Boccaccio himself. It is this tradition, reinforced by Gutenberg, which has prevailed. Indeed, the commentary tradition, as I have already noted, began much earlier, right after Dante's death in 1321. Deborah Parker studies this learned tradition through to the Renaissance in the light of recent work on the dynamics of reception. She reminds us that 'commentaries, like the works to which they are directed, are social acts ... shot through with the preoccupations and tensions of the moment.' She distinguishes three phases in the Dante commentary tradition between the Trecento and the end of the Cinquecento. In the first (fourteenth-century) phase, there is a concerted attempt to make Dante's poem authoritative. In the second, Renaissance commentators exploit the authority of Dante's poem to address specific social questions. In the final, late Renaissance phase, the commentators' interests shift from social, political, and philosophical questions to more strictly linguistic matters. Recent work on reception theory as well as a more intense critical examination of medieval poetics and exegetical techniques have resulted in a renewed interest in Dante's early commentaries. Several new editions or reissues of older (nineteenth-century) editions have appeared in the past ten years. The most ambitious undertaking undoubtedly is the

xii Introduction Dartmouth Dante Project, a computerized database of some sixty commentaries, directed by Robert Hollander. This project will redefine our relationship and use of this important body of critical literature on Dante. With a computer, modem, and password, one can access the database. Time and space contract, and scholarship becomes immediately accessible. Type any verse from the poem, and watch the screen fill with commentary, like a medieval manuscript. But the Commedia's influence did not end with the Renaissance. While scholars study its early reception (both oral and learned), the poem continues to produce new glosses at the margins of its pages and new interpretations. A distinction is in order here: it is between exegesis and interpretation. Exegesis stresses the work's temporal distance from the reader. On the other hand, interpretation emphasizes its closeness. The terminology (which comes from theological hermeneutics) belongs to Susan Noakes, who in her recent book, Timely Reading, argues that a balance between the two modes of reading is necessary in order to evaluate a work appropriately. The distinction, however, is traditional and can be found, for example, in Contini's seminal essay 'Filologia ed esegesi dantesca.' which takes it start in reaction to Croce's idealist reading of Dante: 'in un momento dato o si fruisce della poesia o la si guidica e connette culturalmente' [at any given moment one enjoys poetry or judges it and connects it culturally (114)]. The prevailing attitude in post-Crocean Dante criticism has been exegetical, even when the results (inescapable) have been largely interpretative. In his thoughtful essay, 'Reader's Application and the Moment of Truth in Dante's Divine Comedy.' William Franke focuses on the issue of the poem's truth-claims, the truth of the narrative, which has always been a fundamental question for Dante's readers from the fourteenth-century commentators, who downplayed truth at the expense of fiction ('poetando fingit'), to the present times. In a historical and particularly useful scan of the modern debate, Franke acknowledges its grounding in Auerbach and Singleton, both of whom, in different ways, maintained that the Commedia is fundamentally different from other poems in that the story it relates is represented, not as a poetic fiction, but as true history. Both Auerbach and Singleton were driven by Dante's art of realism, a realism which separated Dante's work from his contemporaries and predecessors and which imbued the poem's claims to truth and historicity. In fact, realism becomes closely associated with the poem's claim of representing a historical reality. Franke enters the debate, much as Alan Charity in Events and Their Afterlife had done some thirty years ago, by shifting the locus of historical burden from the

Introduction xiii text to the reader, from then to now. In other words, he opts for interpretation over exegesis. For Franke what is truly historical, more than the literal sense of the narrative, is the historicity of the reader. Truth in Dante's poem does not lie in the mimetic surface, the literal sense, of the narrative but rather is to be had by appropriation by the reader bent on discovering the authentic historicity of his or her existence in a moment of conversion. Franke's approach therefore is not only to shed some light on the understanding of Dante's theory of interpretation but also to bring that interpretation into dialogue with recent approaches to philosophical and theological (essentially existential) hermeneutics, which can both be illuminated by and, in turn, illuminate Dante's epic poem. This explains his choice of the term 'application' (instead of 'reception') in his title. Whether the narrative of a journey to the underworld is interpreted to be literally true or not matters little in the end. What counts is that Dante's poem continues to hold sway over us, continues to produce meaning and pleasure. For some (like Franke) it opens up possibilities for true existence in an act of appropriation by the reader in the present. For others it offers simply the pleasure of the text: linguistic brilliance, satisfying symmetries, compelling stories. For still others the poem's appeal is that it 'connects culturally.' And one could go on. Perhaps the question to ask, then, is why does Dante's 'medieval' poem continue to be contemporary, continue to engage us? The answer, I believe, lies in the poem's distinctive textual characteristics. The Commedia generates a number of possible readings, all of which flow naturally from the literal narrative, which is easily accessible and complete. In this light, the Commedia is neither an open nor a closed text; it is neither writerly nor readerly. An open or writerly text, at least as Eco (Opera aperta) and Barthes (S/Z) originally theorized it, is multiple, difficult, and self-reflective, designed for the refined reader who delights in discovering its complex discursive strategies and consequently in participating in a writerly way in the production of meaning. On the other hand, a closed or readerly text is one which is easily accessible and thus has wide popular appeal. It seems to function at one level only – that of reality - and uses standard signifying practices to convey this impression. Although the Commedia exhibits many of the qualities of an open or writerly text, it also 'reads' easily and succeeds in communicating meaning and giving pleasure even to those unable to appreciate the nature of its elaborate allegorical and metaliterary discourse. Because of this, Dante's poem is more like what Fiske in Television Culture calls a 'producerly' text (95). A producerly text is polysemous and combines the easy accessibility of the readerly with the complex discursive strategies of the

xiv Introduction writerly. These peculiar textual qualities allow the poem to produce meaning and pleasure in audiences which run the gamut from the uneducated to the most sophisticated and discerning. In saying this, I do not mean to imply that the Commedia's polysemy is boundless and structureless: the poem defines the terrain within which meaning may be made. Where exactly the boundary between a possible reading and an 'aberrant' one lies is the subject of much theoretical debate (Eco, The Limits of Interpretation). Suffice it to say that the vastness of the terrain in Dante's case makes 'aberrant readings' difficult but not impossible (see L'idea deforme). Much of the recent critical literature on the Commedia has focused on the 'writerly' quality of the poem. This is certainly true of Zygmunt Baraniski's essay, which explores the 'deeply self-reflexive' and the 'profoundly and consciously metaliterary' aspects of Dante's work within the context of medieval poetics. Building on the work of Alastair Minnis and others who have brought into focus the central role of textuality and interpretation in medieval culture, as well as that of Gianfranco Contini, who noted some years ago that 'a constant feature of Dante's personality is ... the way in which technical reflection perpetually appears alongside poetry' (4), Baranski studies the metaliterary dimension of Dante's Commedia, including his novel use of traditional technical vocabulary. For instance, from this perspective he revisits the controversial issue of the poem's title. Why is 'comedìa' in the end a much more accurate description of Dante's harsh eschatological masterpiece and its ambition than 'poema sacro'l Baranski also broaches a subject which many of the other authors in this volume (Ascoli, Picone, and lannucci, in particular; cf. lannucci's 'Autoesegesi dantesca') discuss, namely Dante's 'autocommentary/ which is designed both to guide and to cut off independent critical analysis. In his essay, Albert Ascoli discusses a particular aspect of Dante's selfexegesis - the 'palinode,' a form of revisionism which involves 'the explicit and/or allusive invocation and transformation of materials from prior Dantean texts within their successors, above all the Commedia's critical evocation of its author's earlier efforts.' The palinode has been at the heart of much American Dante criticism of the last twenty years. The palinodic relationship between the Convivio and the Commedia has received the most attention. Ascoli focuses on the Monarchia and shows the difficulties, because of chronological and philological problems, of establishing this kind of relationship between the political treatise and the poema sacro (although these obstacles have not deterred some commenta-

Introduction xv tors from trying). Ascoli argues that such uniquely ambitious intellectual projects as the Convivio, the De vulgari eloquentia, and the Monarchia should be seen on their own terms, and not solely from the perspective of their reinterpretation in the Commedia. The palinode can also be seen in terms of Dante's intertextual strategy. The most recent scholarship on this subject has affirmed that the pattern of evocation and delimitation prevails not only in the interrelations among Dante's own works (and indeed within individual works), but also between Dante's texts and his classical and medieval poetic precursors. In other words, Dante draws attention, especially in the Commedia, to the shortcomings of his own previous works and those of other authors, whether classical or vernacular, in order to imply the superiority of his own poem. This dialectical attitude permits Dante to measure himself against the literary tradition (which includes the Dante of the 'minor works') and to define the novitas, the newness, of his last poetic enterprise, and to bring into focus the ideological and stylistic conquests of his 'comedìa.' The combination of Christian theology and poetic innovation sets his Commedia apart and above any previous literary undertaking, with the unique exception of the Bible. Dante's reading of Virgil has been set in these terms for some time within the American critical context. (See, for example, Robert Hollander's II Virgilio dantesco and Teodolinda Barolini's Dante's Poets.) Dante does not simply appropriate Virgil's Aeneid; he consistently corrects it, exposing its flaws and limited pagan perspective. More recently, this approach has been extended to Ovid, as two recent American publications attest: The Poetry of Allusion (ed. Rachel Jacoff and Jeffrey Schnapp) and Dante and Ovid (ed. Madison Sowell). Dante e la 'bella scola' della poesia (ed. Amilcare A. lannucci) reaches beyond Virgil and Ovid, certainly Dante's two most important classical referents, and explores his complex relationship with the other poets of the 'bella scola' (Inf. 4.64-105), as well as with Statius. In this volume, Michelangelo Picone analyses Dante's classical canon from a diachronic perspective, pointing out subtle shifts and changes from one work to another. He also distinguishes two attitudes in Dante towards his classical auctores: one attitude is associated with imitatio (i.e., with the impulse to imitate the formal perfection of his illustrious models); the other, with aemulatio (i.e., with the impulse to rewrite and transform his classical models by inserting them in a new ideological context). The first, 'classicist' attitude is reflected in the De vulgari eloquentia and the Convivio; the second, 'anti-classicist' attitude is displayed in the Vita nuova, where the young Dante implicitly

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challenges and overtakes, ideologically at any rate, his classical model Ovid's Remedia amoris. This competitive attitude reaffirms itself much later in the Commedia vis-a-vis all the poets of the 'fair school,' but especially in relation to Virgil and Ovid. The latter's influence is especially pronounced in the Paradiso. The only authority that Dante does not challenge in the Commedia is the Bible, and hence his appropriation of scriptural passages is fundamentally different from his way of engaging other (secular) texts. Christopher Kleinhenz examines the use Dante makes of the Bible in the Commedia through a process he calls 'biblical citation' or the 'poetics of citation.' Kleinhenz first lists the various forms biblical citations take in the poem and then demonstrates the necessity of looking beyond the immediate biblical passage evoked. Meaning in the Commedia is often generated or enhanced by a consideration of the larger referential context provided by the biblical interpretative tradition on the passage in question. For instance, in Purgatorio 13.28-30 the verse from John 2.3 - 'Vinum non habent' - is recited as an example of charity, the virtue which is the opposite of the vice of envy. This is the citation's immediate and primary function - to signal the virtue of charity. However, the exegetical tradition interprets the miracle of changing water into wine (the short Dantesque quotation is taken from this story) as a sign of Christ's power of conversion. This idea of transformation lies at the heart of the episode and is brought into focus by the passage's richly allusive meaning, acquired through exegesis. Another aspect of the Commedia which has increasingly come under scrutiny is the poet's practice of constructing and composing a text which purports to be true and to have exemplary value. The Commedia is an episodic work held together not so much by the fictive narrative of the pilgrim's journey through the three realms of the afterlife as by Dante's life, or rather, the story that he writes about his life. This story is a complex one, but it is possible to distinguish in it at least three plot lines. These are Dante's relationship with Beatrice (a love story); Dante's political vicissitudes, with exile as a central concern; and Dante's intellectual history, focusing particularly on his education as a poet and the writing of the poem. None of the papers in this volume addresses the poem's autobiographical dimension specifically,but several (e.g., Ascoli, lannucci, Barolini, Franke) touch on important elements of the issue. Dante's story (or stories) is told in bits and acts as a kind of frame within which several other stories are told. Some are privileged textually and poetically more than others; their significance is not limited to their

Introduction

xvii

local contexts but resonates throughout the poem. For instance, like Dante's, Virgil's story is not confined to a single episode, and after Dante's it is the most compelling and structurally significant. Two other stories whose meaning extends far beyond their immediate surroundings are the Paolo and Francesca and the Ulysses episodes. An essay is dedicated to each of these two 'structurally determining' episodes, fundamental in defining the poem's design, significance, and textual characteristics. I examine Dante's habit of appropriation and radical reformation of a familiar story by comparing his account of Paolo and Francesca's tragic downfall to Boccaccio's re-elaboration of the same story in his commentary on the episode. In the absence of documentary sources, it is Boccaccio's version which has prevailed. Boccaccio's generous retelling of the story brings into focus the fact that Dante's approach to the material is diametrically opposed to his own. Boccaccio 'fictionalizes' or 'mythologizes' Paolo and Francesca's sad tale. He recognizes in it an archetypal pattern (whose origins can be traced to the adultery of Venus and Mars) and proceeds to reproduce it through narrative amplification and embellishment. His approach is structural; Dante's is moral, and proceeds through extreme reduction and intensification of the material at hand. The fictional or mythic pattern is 'historicized/ reduced to its essential and defining form, and cast into a moral framework, literally the Christian afterlife. Within Dante's typological scheme, Paolo and Francesca are not simply the culmination of two literary and mythic types. They are also the fulfilment or postfiguration of their earthly selves. Literature becomes life, and both are condemned from an eschatological point of view. All of this is brought into focus through the romance motif of the single tomb. Like Tristan and Iseult, Paolo and Francesca are buried together, but their tomb opens into Hell. Unlike Boccaccio, Dante is not interested in plot. Rather he is concerned with the nature of unregulated passion and its inevitable tragic consequences, not only at the level of the individual soul, but also at the collective, societal level. Seen from this perspective, the episode is both an example and a condemnation of courtly literature (the preferred 'palinodic' and metaliterary interpretation; see especially Renato Poggioli's reading of the episode) and a profound reflection on history and its tragic cycle. The prevailing American interpretation of the Ulysses episode (a refinement of Bruno Nardi's influential reading) is both autobiographical and palinodic. It argues that Ulysses' 'folle volo' is analogous to Adam's sin, which in Paradiso 26 is referred to as a 'trapassar del segno,' a going

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beyond the bounds. Dante is implicated in Ulysses' story of intellectual transgression. In the Convivio he had set aside Beatrice and celebrated the 'donna gentile,' a personification of Philosophy, without fully acknowledging the limits of human reason. Thus Dante the pilgrim recognizes in Ulysses his former self, the poet of the Convivio. But in the Commedia Dante returns to Beatrice and through her (a symbol of Revelation, among other things) he is able to journey successfully to God. On the other hand, Ulysses' voyage ends in shipwreck. In the Commedia, therefore, Ulysses is a negative type, the exact opposite of Dante the pilgrim who has managed to exorcize the Ulyssean impulse in him. Teodolinda Barolini accepts in essence this view of Ulysses in her essay. The pilgrim is saved, but the poet, she argues, is not; Dante the poet embarks on 'a voyage whose Ulyssean component he recognizes, fears, and never fully overcomes.' This component is thus related by Barolini to the representational project of the poem itself, which involves transgressing the boundary between life and death and going beyond the limits of language and narrative, especially in the writing of the last cantica. 'The Paradiso, if it is to exist at all, cannot fail to be transgressive; its poet cannot fail to be a Ulysses, since only a trapassar del segno will be able to render the experience of trasumanar.' Much of Barolini's paper is given over to an analysis of the distinctive textual characteristics of the Paradiso, distinct from those of the previous two cantiche. I have referred to the Paolo and Francesca and Ulysses episodes as 'structurally determining,' in that their meaning extends far beyond their immediate surroundings. Along with a few other key episodes in the Inferno (the prologue and Limbo, for instance), they continue to resonate throughout the poem. However,there is another kind of 'structurally determining' episode, one which does not so much produce meaning as gather it in. These episodes are to be found, not in the Inferno, but rather in the following two cantiche and usually at structurally significant places like the beginning, middle, or end of the cantica. The ultimate summative episode is the Empyrean, which stretches over the last four cantos of the poem (lannucci, 'Paradiso XXXI'). Here, beyond space and time, all meaning is gathered in and consummated. But another prime example of this type is the Earthly Paradise, a sprawling episode occupying the final six cantos of the Purgatorio. The Earthly Paradise is certainly one of the nodal points of the narrative where significance converges and is fulfilled, or at least partially fulfilled. Its narrative design or conceptual structure is the subject of Richard Lansing's essay. He illustrates how Dante has purposely integrated the Earthly Paradise into the moral paradigm em-

Introduction xix ployed on the seven terraces of Purgatory proper, thus absolving Dante of the charge of having unaccountably duplicated the narrative material. The sequence of events surrounding the appearance of Beatrice reveals a unity of structure and an imprint of poetic influence that Lansing carefully brings into focus. Lino Pertile's subject is the last realm and deals with another aspect of the Paradise's unique textuality, a topic already broached by Barolini in her Ulysses essay. Fertile focuses on 'Dante's sustained use of the linguistic code of mystical love to describe the contemplative tension of the mind in search of Truth.' From the very threshold of Paradise, Dante allows the pilgrim the joy of desire; but as a poet, he defers the full satisfaction of desire until the very end of the poem. But Fertile also carefully notes that while mystical literature can help us to understand the poetry of the Paradiso, it alone cannot reflect the cantica's intellectual complexity. Although the Paradiso is imbued with a 'lyricism' reminiscent of mystical experience, it is also full of both theological and scientific disquisitions, and historical and political arguments. Yet what defines the poetry of the Paradiso is desire. I quote Pertile's elegant concluding formulation: '... it is a desire of Paradise and a Paradise of desire, an exhilarating approximation to a vision and a joy that remain unsaid and unrevealed. And rightly so: for where there is no desire left to fill, there is no language and no poetry.' Over the past decade, Dante has also become a focal point for larger critical and cultural debates on issues ranging from the ontological status of language (i.e., on the ability of language to mean) to the interaction between literature and other domains of human activity (philosophy, theology, politics, etc.), and questions of sex and gender. Steven Botterill's essay on Dante and the authority of poetic language takes up Barolini's and Pertile's discourse on the language of the Paradiso but inserts it into the larger contemporary debate concerning the referential limits of language. Botterill asks the following question: 'Does Dante believe that the Commedia's linguistic virtuosity and purity of moral intention entitle it to authoritative status; or does he accept (as some recent critics have argued, attributing to Dante the scepticism about language characteristic of contemporary literary theory) that all forms of eloquence, even the language of poetry, are ultimately prevented, by their own inherent inadequacies, from ever attaining the consistency of reference or sufficiency of meaning on which such authority, to be genuine, must presumably rest?' He concludes that 'the poetic language of Paradiso, taken as a whole, is exultant rather than diffident about its own claims to mean, to refer, and to express.'

xx Introduction Joan Ferrante surveys Dante's political thought and explores the relationship between politics and poetry. Ferrante includes an interesting section in her paper on a little-studied aspect (until very recently) of Dante's politics, namely his sexual politics. Carolynn Lund-Mead takes up this subject in her essay on Dante and androgyny, and develops it in great detail. She analyses the question of sexual differentiation and gender both within the context of 'Cistercian androgynous theology' and its contemporary critical (feminist) context. She concludes that 'throughout the universe of the Commedia, from the leadership of Virgil to that of Beatrice and finally to Bernard, gender integration and sexual fluidity characterize a journey of inclusiveness which leads to the God in whom sexual differentiation is posited as the only appropriate goal of the love of humankind.' The variety of critical responses that the Commedia can evoke is a tribute to its textual vitality. After almost seven hundred years, it continues to produce meaning and pleasure. No single collection of essays can hope to reflect the full range of contemporary interest in the poem, and certainly thoroughness was not the objective of this volume. Rather its aim was to explore some of the major issues engaging Anglo-American Dante criticism today, namely, the relationship between Dante's 'minor works' and his 'poema sacro,' the latter's unique textual characteristics, with particular emphasis on its intertextual and narrative strategies, and the Commedia's reception, both oral and learned. Several of the contributions also deal directly or indirectly with Dante's "thought.' especially the political and theological substructure of his major work. Each essay is accompanied by a substantial bibliography, designed to facilitate further research on the various subjects treated. One thing is certain: taken together, the fourteen essays in this volume underscore the fact that the Commedia is a 'producerly' text. Amilcare A. lannucci Toronto, April 1996 Bibliography Auerbach, Erich. 'Figura.' 1944. Studi su Dante. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1963. 174–221. English trans. R. Manheim. In Scenes from the Drama of European Literature: Six Essays. New York: Meridian, 1959.11–76. Barolini, Teodolinda. Dante's Poets: Textuality and Truth in the Comedy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Introduction xxi Barthes, Roland. S/Z. 1970. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang, 1974. Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Life of Dante. In The Earliest Lives of Dante. Trans. James Robinson Smith. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1963. Charity, A.C. Events and Their Afterlife: The Dialectics of Christian Typology in the Bible and Dante. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966. Contini, Gianfranco. Tilologia ed esegesi dantesca.' 1965. Un'idea di Dante. Torino: Einaudi, 1976.113–42. - 'Introduzione alle Rime di Dante.' 1938. Un'idea di Dante. Torino: Einaudi, 1976. 3–20. Eco, Umberto. The Limits of Interpretation. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990. - Opera aperta. Milano: Bompliani, 1962. - 'II pubblico fa male alia televisione?' 1973. Dalla periferia dell'Impero. Milano: Bompiani, 1977. 261-83. Eliot, T.S. Dante. London: Faber and Faber, 1929. Fiske, John. Television Culture. London and New York: Methuen, 1987. Hollander, Robert. 'The Dartmouth Dante Project.' Quaderna d'italianistica 10.1-2 (1989): 287-98. - II Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella 'Commedia.' Firenze: Olschki, 1983. lannucci, Amilcare A. 'Autosegesi dantesca: la tecnica dell'"episodio parallelo.'" Lettere italiane 33.3 (1981): 305-28. Rpt. in Forma ed evento nella 'Divina Commedia.' Roma: Bulzoni, 1984: 83-114. - ed. Dante e la 'bella scola' della poesia: autoria e sfida poetica. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1993. - 'Paradiso XXXI.' Lectura Dantis 16–17 (Spring-Fall 1995). Special Issue: Lectura Dantis Virginiana, vol. III. Dante's Divine Comedy. Introductory Readings III: Paradiso. Ed. Tibor Wlassics. 470-85. L'idea deforme: interpretazioni esoteriche di Dante. A cura di Maria Pia Pozzato. Introduzione di Umberto Eco. Postfazione di Alberto Asor Rosa. Milano: Bompiani, 1989. Jacoff, Rachel, and Jeffrey T. Schnapp, eds. The Poetry of Allusion: Virgil and Ovid in Dante's 'Commedia.' Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991. McDougal, Stuart Y., ed. Dante among the Moderns. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1985. Minnis, A.J. Medieval Theory of Authorship. 2d ed. London: Scholar Press, 1988. Nardi, Bruno. 'La tragedia di Ulisse.' 1937. Rpt. in Dante e la cultura medievale. 2d ed. rev. Bari: Laterza, 1949.153–65. Noakes, Susan. Timely Reading: Between Exegesis and Interpretation. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988.

xxii

Introduction

Poggioli, Renato. Tragedy or Romance? A Reading of the Paolo and Francesca Episode in Dante's Inferno.' PMLA 72 (1957): 313-58. 'Rassegna bibliografica 1984–88.' In Dante Today. Ed. Amilcare A. lannucci. Special issue of Quaderni d'italianistica 10.1-2 (1989): 355–417. Schumacher, Thomas L. II Danteum di Terragni. 1938. Roma: Officina Edizioni, 1980. Singleton, Charles S. Dante Studies I: 'Commedia': Elements of Structure. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954. Sowell, Madison U., ed. Dante and Ovid: Essays in Intertextuality. Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991.

DANTE: CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES

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Dante and Medieval Poetics1 ZYGMUNT G. BARANSKI

The major acquisition of recent medieval studies has been to acknowledge that the Middle Ages had a highly sophisticated understanding of and interest in literary criticism and theory (see, in particular, Minnis; Minnis, ed.; Minnis and Scott). The acceptance of this reality has had a radical effect on the ways in which the literature of the period is now approached and read. It is not simply the case that medieval texts are seen as the product of sophisticated technical considerations; more importantly, it is recognized that, whatever their preferred subject or form, contemporary authors granted considerable space to literary matters within the actual structures of their works. The literature of the Middle Ages was nothing if not deeply self-reflexive; it was - to use today's critical terminology profoundly and consciously metaliterary. That this should have been so is not at all surprising (it is questionable whether, ultimately, any text can avoid turning in on itself); what is astonishing, however, is that it should have taken so long for this fundamental fact to be recognized given the central role accorded to textuality and interpretation in medieval culture. The simple reason for this is that, for many decades, the Middle Ages - until quite recently bracketed off as the Dark Ages - were approached in a grossly oversimplified manner. They tended to be perceived as a vast intellectual desert separating classical antiquity from the Renaissance (once again, everything is in a name ...); and it was in the Renaissance that subsequent generations wished to seek their mental roots. The 'barbaric' Middle Ages were deemed void of originality, sophistication, creativity, and speculative incisiveness. Occasionally, it was conceded, a bright light flared in their darkness: a great and unique figure such as Dante; a privileged cultural haven such as that provided by a court, a monastery, or a school.

4 Zygmunt G. Barariski Yet, rather than assessed in terms of their own historical context/ these supposedly exceptional flashes of enlightenment were often examined merely for characteristics which could be shown to anticipate humanist culture. Although the change in attitude towards the Middle Ages has its origins in the archival research of nineteenth-century historicist scholarship, it is more recent doubts regarding the epistemological efficacy of perceiving intellectual activity in terms of large-scale periodizations, together with a growing challenge to that faith in reason which, for so long, it was assumed had its beginnings in humanist ideology, that have played a major part in calling into question accepted notions of the medieval world. In particular, as regards the specific problem of the standing of literary reflection in the Middle Ages, present-day students of medieval literature seem to have made their breakthrough thanks to a combination of factors: interest in the history of rhetoric, concern with critical theory, and an improved familiarity with the excellent research which, for many years, has been done on medieval theology and philosophy. As I have mentioned, textuality and interpretation enjoyed positions of privilege in the intellectual systems of the Middle Ages. Thus, a key trope with which reality was defined was that of the 'book of the world' or 'of creation': 'legato con amore in un volume, / cio che per 1'universo si squaderna' [bound by love in a single volume / that which is scattered in pages through the universe (Par. 33.86-7)], to use Dante's memorable phrase. By extension, God was perceived as the supreme 'maker' and 'artist' (Curtius 302-47,544-6). The reason for this choice of metaphor lay in the belief that God had fashioned a coherent and meaningful universe which humanity had the duty to 'read' and interpret so as to achieve a glimpse of the divine will, and thereby reach salvation. In practice, on the authority of the Church Fathers, rather than focus on the world itself, medieval thinkers, in order to carry out their hermeneutic duties, turned their attention to the Bible, God's other book and repository of his Word, which, as a divine creation, was deemed to enjoy the same symbolic and ontological attributes as the universe. To help them in this work, the exegetes developed a highly sophisticated system of textual interpretation which allowed them to tease out of the biblical 'letter' a range of different historical, moral, and spiritual 'senses' (de Bruyne, de Lubac, Pepin, Spicq, Whitman), a method which was commonly known as the allegoria infactis. The Bible and its commentary became inextricably entwined (Riche and Lobrichon, Smalley), as is clear from the physical evidence provided by the manuscript tradition. Reading and exegesis became synonymous, as the two meanings of the medieval term lector - reader and interpreter -

Dante and Medieval Poetics 5 tellingly reveal. As a result of a tradition which had its origins in Greek and Roman culture, the same close bonds between a text and its commentary were also evident as regards secular - almost exclusively classical literature, and as regards philosophical and theological writing; although, to distinguish these human works from their divine archetypes, less stratified means of analysis were employed - the so-called allegoria in verbis (Pepin, Strubel). This emphasis on hermeneutics lay at the very heart of the medieval education system (Riche), in which, at every level, instruction was closely tied to the glossing of privileged authoritative texts, the works of auctores who were also auctoritates. In addition, students were taught how to write by following the example of these canonical authors, a process of creative 'imitation' which was at the basis of medieval literature. As was to be expected, given the obsession with textual interpretation and the nature of textuality, ever-more sophisticated and competing models of writing, authorship, language, and exegesis were proposed, with some of the most interesting and novel ideas being developed during the hundred or so years before Dante began his artistic career in the mid-1280s; ideas which reached a climax, not least thanks to the poet's efforts, in late Duecento and early Trecento Italy (Minnis and Scott 373-519). The medieval fascination with the interplay between writing and reflection on writing achieved some of its most notable and original results in Dante's oeuvre. Beyond the significance of the poet's solutions as far as his own artistic career is concerned, his work had a fundamental effect on the unfolding of Western critical thought. Employing a strategy which was a hallmark of his modus operandi, Dante both synthesized many of the views on literature of his day and pushed these in new and unexpected directions (Barariski 'Experimentation'; see also Battaglia Ricci, Haller). In fact, as I shall go on to argue, his considerable artistic originality is indivisible from the novelty of his critical meditation. Whatever their formal and ideological differences, Dante's major works are united by a shared fascination with the ars poetica; even the Monarchia, overtly a historical and political treatise, makes important observations, for example, on allegorical exegesis (3.4.6-11), on the textuality of the Bible (2.7.4, 12; and 3.3.11-3.4.11), and on the processes of signification (2.2.7-8). Taken together, Dante's writings embrace most of the principal critical issues of his day. The poet examined the social and personal functions of literature, and its links with grammar, rhetoric, and logic - the arts of the trivium, on which the education system was grounded (Wagner) - as well as its relationship to aesthetics and to semiosis in

6 Zygmunt G. Barariski general. He also investigated the interconnections and differences between prose and poetry, between Latin and the vernacular, between literary and non-literary language, and between divine and human writing. He explored the nature both of authorship and of readership; and, drawing on the various methods of exegesis, he examined the ways in which what we would now call literary traditions are established and function. He reflected on the theory of convenientiae (the question of the proper relationship between form and content), on the functions of allegory, and on the implications for literary composition of the doctrine of the genera dicendi (arguably the basic tenet of medieval poetics, deeply entrenched in the schools and having its origins in Aristotle, that different kinds of literary texts existed in order to deal with different topics; as a result of this premise, the formal manner in which each topic was presented was controlled by the linguistic and rhetorical conventions of the "mode of writing' [modus] to which it was assigned; these genera dicendi or stili were normally conflated into three main categories - the 'high/ the "middle/ and the low' - and it was axiomatic that cross-contamination between the 'styles' was to be avoided as much as possible; Dante provided a clear summary of these 'rules' of composition in De vulgari eloquentia 2.4.5-8). Dante's critical interests helped structure both his individual texts and his work as a whole; and his observations on literature are insistently present at every level of his oeuvre, surpassing in number, and almost certainly in significance, any of his other concerns, whether political, religious, or philosophical. Yet, the very persistence and breadth of the poet's literary reflections are not without their attendant problems. What follows can be no more than a selection of some salient and representative features of Dante's critical thought and of the literary practices this inspired. My survey will also primarily concentrate on just two texts: the Commedia as the poet's major work, in which his earlier efforts found their fulfilment, and the so-called Epistle to Cangrande, which, until recently, since it has the obvious appearance of a commentary, was considered to be the poet's most important critical document - a view which is now under severe attack. Furthermore, my discussion will be largely tentative, since, despite the quite overwhelming number of analyses of the poet, scholars have largely ignored that richly fertile area which covers what can loosely be termed his 'literary criticism/ Although some of the reasons for this neglect can be attributed to the dominant manner in which the Middle Ages in general and medieval poetics in particular have been viewed, there are causes for this which are peculiar to Dante, and which have their origins in his earliest critical reception.

Dante and Medieval Poetics 7 The poet's readers have of course been aware - at least in general terms - that metaliterary preoccupations play a key role in his oeuvre. Indeed, as early as the 1370s, Benvenuto da Imola highlighted the advantages of taking an approach which was sensitive to the Commedia's metaliterary dimension. In his commentary, he interpreted certain episodes in the poem as allegories of its composition. More importantly, he attempted to explain the coherence of the Commedia's metaliterary aspirations, as well as the overall logic of its startling stylistic and thematic hybridity which so obviously went against the doctrine of discrete 'styles' championed by the genera dicendi (Baranski 'Benvenuto'). The other fourteenth-century commentators, however, while having some sense of the poem's novitas, showed little interest in trying to account for its experimentation. If anything, they lamented the textual unorthodoxies this engendered. Unlike Benvenuto, they were unable or unwilling to pursue the metaliterary clues embedded in the Commedia, and immediately evident in its genre title 'comedia' (I shall return to the poem's 'mysterious' title in due course). Instead, the commentators shifted their attention to other, less problematic areas of Dante's text; and when they did consider technical questions raised by the Commedia, they looked at these in isolation and not as part of a wider metaliterary discourse embracing the poem as a whole (Padoan 41; Sandkiihler). The reasons for all this are not difficult to discern. The medieval commentarium, with its rigid and time-honoured conventions stretching back to the classical world, was not the ideal forum in which to confront an experimental work such as the Commedia, not least since the commentary staunchly supported a view of literature against which the poem was just as energetically reacting. Formal matters were therefore pushed to one side, and the commentators' critical attention was mainly directed towards the Commedia's content. In addition, the basic approach of medieval exegesis was to focus on small textual units, which inevitably militated against more totalizing readings. To this day, the general interpretative directions established by Dante's fourteenth-century readers largely continue to hold good. Style is still subordinated to content, matters of literature are still eclipsed by theology and philosophy. The basic methodological tendency is still to fragment and to isolate: the canto is privileged over the poem, single details are submitted to in-depth examinations, and individual themes - Dante's political, scientific, or religious thought - are viewed as somehow self-sufficient. Yet, what distinguishes such large-scale thematic readings from the apparently similar kind of analysis which attempts to clarify the Commedia's views on literature is the fact that the former cannot give a sense of the poem as a whole,

8 Zygmunt G. Barariski since this is the special preserve of its metaliterary dimension, as Dante's own definition of his work as a 'comedia' implies (Baranski "Trimo"': 5-6); and literary issues play an equally defining role in his other works. The failure, therefore, to examine Dante's obsession with the ars poetica has constituted a major critical flaw in our understanding of the poet. Fortunately, the tide is slowly beginning to turn; and the moment marking the beginning of this sea-change is clear. In 1939 Gianfranco Contini published the 'Introduzione' to his edition of Dante's lyric poetry. In it he acutely remarked that 'a constant feature of Dante's personality is ... the way in which technical reflection perpetually appears alongside poetry' (Un'idea di Dante 4). According to the great philologist, this constituted more than just an interest in literary matters on the poet's part; what was crucial was the fact that poetics and poetry, literary criticism and literature, were indissolubly linked in his work. Dante's oeuvre was not made up of a collection of 'timeless masterpieces/ but of texts which needed to be assessed in terms of medieval literary theory and practice. Contini subsequently elaborated on this insight, highlighting how, for over thirty years, Dante revealed a coherent yet continually evolving and increasingly original appreciation of the nature of writing, which culminated in the composition and the exegesis of the Commedia, a text which, as Benvenuto was the first to recognize, is criss-crossed with metaliterary references designed to help in its interpretation (Un'idea di Dante). The poet's constant reflection on literature was not only the major stimulus behind his artistic experimentation, but it was also - as we shall see - the means whereby he clarified and legitimated the novitas of his writings. It is now widely accepted that just about all Dante's works, from the Vita nuova onwards (ca. 1293-5), mark major new departures in literary history; as a result, like the Commedia, each of these is accompanied by its own internal self-exegetical apparatus. Only a writer who had a keenly sophisticated understanding of the literary tradition could have undertaken such a creative enterprise; and, as has been demonstrated, Dante was always careful to account for his experimentation by measuring his artistic solutions against those of other writers. For instance, the poet organized the Vita nuova in such a manner as to give an idealized presentation of the development of the fledgling Italian vernacular love lyric so that it appears logically to culminate in his own verse in praise of Beatrice. In his prosimetrum, Dante also assessed the Romance erotic tradition as a whole, while highlighting once more the superiority of his art, since its inspiration came not from earthly desire but from Christian caritas (Picone

Dante and Medieval Poetics 9 Tmdizione). In his other works, too, the poet incorporated and judged the practices of classical and medieval authors in order to underline their weaknesses, while proposing his own texts as examples of how their limitations might be overcome (Barolini Dante's Poets; Contini Un'idea di Dante: 33-62, 69-111; Hollander Allegory and Virgilio; lannucci Dante e la 'bella scola'; Picone Trovatori/ 'Giraut/ 'Paradiso/ 'Arturiana/ and 'Baratteria'). Yet, despite his reservations, Dante was always careful to acknowledge the achievements of his fellow-poets and the debts he owed them, as is clear from his treatment of Virgil in the Commedia. What Dante was doing, in effect, was to push contemporary 'imitative' conventions of writing in hitherto unexplored directions; and the fundamental thing to note about all this is that, despite the poet's frequent references to a large number of authors and their works and to matters of general literary interest, his principal focus was always the nature of his own writing and his own status within the tradition. However much Dante's literary reflections are dependent on contemporary notions, they remain on the borders of the critical debate, since they function as a 'self-referential' closed system. This is probably why it is doubtful whether any of his works - especially if one does not accept the authenticity of the Epistle to Cangrande - can strictly be described, either formally or in their aims, as exegetical texts. There appear to be two main reasons why Dante exploited the critical discourses of his day in such a highly personal manner. First, all his major works share similar 'summative' ends, which reflect the poet's efforts to come to grips with different general problems. They are also linked by a deeply ethical viewpoint, which grants them strong didactic qualities. Dante was thus faced with the problem of how most efficaciously and persuasively to present his 'encyclopaedic' concerns, which could not but come into conflict with the separatist ideology of the genera dicendi, while at the same time accounting for his formal and ideological innovations. He resolved his problem by drawing on an exegetical language and terminology which was intelligible to his audience. Aware of the difficulties which his experimentation would create for his readers, Dante wished to stress the continuing coherence and interpretability of his works. As he had announced in the Vita nuova, there are few things more shameful than an 'uninterpretable' text (25.10). He thus kept a clear linkbetween his writing and exegesis; and the wider implications of this manoeuvre are obvious. His readers were supposed to follow his example and, applying standard exegetical procedures as with any other text, they were supposed to appreciate for themselves the formal and ideological causes behind the novelty of his compositions. Dante provided help by regularly introduc-

10 Zygmunt G. Baranski ing metaliterary promptings into his works - for instance, in the Commedia, there is not a single canto without its allusions to literature. In addition, these same metaliterary promptings acted as an 'auto-commentary' which was meant both to guide and curtail independent critical analysis, as is most obviously evident from the detailed explanations in prose which accompany the poems of the Vita nuova and the Convivio. Both works, in fact, are closely modelled on the structures of contemporary critical works, in particular, on those of the glossed poetic manuscript. The former recounts the story of the protagonist's love for Beatrice through a blend of poetry, which serves as an immediate record of his feelings, and prose, which it is claimed was penned later and follows the two basic exegetical paths customarily taken in the interpretation of secular texts: analysis of the poems' formal organization and of their 'deeper' moral meaning (1.1). Similarly, the Convivio, which Dante frequently designated a 'comento' and which has clear ties with the methods of the accessus ad auctores (the 'introductions' to the texts of the auctores} (Trovato), is a philosophical 'encyclopaedia' structured around a literal and doctrinal 'allegorical' reading of a number of his canzoni. (I shall further illustrate all the matters raised in this paragraph when I come to discuss the Commedia.) The second and more radical reason why Dante was so drawn to literary criticism was that, beginning cautiously in the Vita nuova, he was persistently engaged in an ambitious operation of revolutionary dimensions. In a world where the authority of Latin and its culture was just about total, his aim was to establish his credentials not just as an auctor, but as a vernacular auctor; not just the equal but the superior of his classical ancestors. As has been noted, 'no one worked harder at becoming an auctor - not just a maker of verses but an authority - than Dante, and his self-promotion was inextricably intertwined with the promotion of the Italian language' (Minnis and Scott 374). One easy way of doing this was to demonstrate that the exegetical vocabulary and methods which, for centuries, had been almost exclusively restricted to classical and biblical literature in Latin were also appropriate for his 'contemporary' Italian writings. With Dante, Western literary criticism reached a watershed. Not only did a vernacular author claim the same artistic status as the great writers of the past, but he also established a critical tradition whose specific task was to analyse vernacular literature. It was because Dante had prepared the ground with such care that commentaries to the Commedia - whatever their relative intrinsic merits - proliferated during the Trecento (Minnis and Scott 373), thereby providing the foundations for the 'modern' analy-

Dante and Medieval Poetics 11 sis of literature in general. Given the range of Dante's ambitions, it was inevitable that he should have been driven to challenge - critically, artistically, and linguistically - the long-established literary conventions of his culture, regardless of the latter's belief in the inviolability of precedents and auctoritates. The progress of the poet's reflection on literature is marked by a clear movement from the orthodox to the unorthodox; even if, within specific works, both characteristics are evident. Thus, in the Vita nuova, Dante conventionally recognized the superior standing of Latin writers in relation to vernacular ones, and stated that the volgare should only be employed to talk about love, so that women could appreciate the verse written for them (25.3-6). At the same time, he also undermined these very claims from within the libello: he accorded the title poeta, which, until then, had been limited to classical auctores, to writers in the vernacular (Bargagli Stoffi-Miihlethaler), and, in the prose, he presented biographical and literary matters which went beyond the boundaries of the erotic (Barariski 'Experimentation'). In the Convivio (1304-7), Dante made his challenge to Latin culture much more explicit. Although he still asserted the superiority of Latin 'per la [sua] nobilta e per vertu e per bellezza' [on account of its nobility, virtue and beauty (1.5.7)], there is no suggestion in the treatise that the vernacular's subject-matter should in any way be curtailed. In fact, the poet underscored its communicative efficacy and closed book 1 by announcing the vernacular's imminent victory over Latin (1.13.12). The De vulgari eloquentia (1304-7) takes these earlier positions to their logical conclusion. Thus, vernacular poets are allowed to discuss the same topics as classical poetae (2.4.2-5), and they are said to employ a language, the vulgaris, which, since it is older, universal, and natural, is in fact 'nobler' than Latin (1.1.4) (on Dante's shifting views of the vernacular, see Baranski '"Significar"' and Trionfi'; Grayson; Mengaldo). Although Dante introduces the treatise as a rhetorical manual providing instruction on how to compose in the vernacular (1.1.1), its actual purview is that of an 'encyclopaedic' survey of language which considers, inter alia, linguistic history, metrics, the genera dicendi, the social functions of literature, and the Italian dialects (Baranski 'Biblical'). The De vulgari eloquentia continues, too, the critical survey of Romance literature started in the Vita nuova and tries to prove that the 'illustrious vernacular/ the refined supra-regional form of Italian, which had principally been developed by Dante himself, was the best language for the composition of poetry in the volgare. Essentially, what links Dante's analysis of literature in the Vita nuova, the Convivio, and the De vulgari eloquentia is the fact that, despite his

12 Zygmunt G. Baranski innovations, the poet remained within the limits of established theory and practice. Both the poetics they illustrate and the critical ideas they express can be understood in terms of such canonical systems as the opposition between Latin and the vernacular or the genera dicendi. The Commedia, on the other hand, takes a much more radical approach to the literary tradition, as Dante strove to discover the means with which to come to terms with the total complexity of his world, and not, as in his earlier works, with just one area of human experience, whether this had been love, philosophy, or language. For instance, structurally, the division of the poem into three cantiche and one hundred canti is a unique invention. Even more innovative is the poet's rejection - in favour of formal and thematic integration - of that artificial hierarchy of 'authorities/ subjectmatter, style, and language which sustained the doctrine of the genera dicendi. Since, unlike the three other works so far discussed, the Commedia has no explicit formal links with standard contemporary exegetical literature, Dante, to legitimate his experimentation, included in his work a sophisticated system of self-reflective metaliterary allusion which is closely tied to the development of the action (the other-worldly encounters between poets) and to its artistic representation (the poet's use of one or more technical critical terms as part of the overall formal presentation of an episode, such as his mention of the poem's 'comic' nature in Inferno 16.128 and 21.2 [Baranski '"Marvellous"']). More generally, given its stylistic eclecticism and the variety of its intertextual references, the Commedia appears to take into its purview literature in general and not, as was the case in the Vita nuova, just a specific tradition. Dante's aim behind all these manoeuvres was dialectically to define his poema sacro. He highlighted the differences between his poem and other texts, thereby challenging the firmly established theoretical assumptions and artistic procedures on which the latter were based. Furthermore, the Commedia acts as tangible evidence that noncanonical forms of writing are more than possible; forms, for which vindication could not be found in the theory and practice of classical and medieval literature. Dante may, however, have come across some limited support for his syncretism in brief asides to be found in the rhetorical works of Cicero (Ad Her. 4.11.16; De oratore 1.16.70), Horace (Ars poetica 9-11, 93-6), Quintilian (Instit. orat. 8.3.21, 11.3.181), and Augustine (De doctr. chr 4.22), whose writings it can be demonstrated he was probably reading in the run-up to starting the Commedia (Baranski ' "Primo"': 18-20). Despite his fundamental rejection of the constraints which his culture imposed on an author, Dante - as I mentioned earlier - also ensured

Dante and Medieval Poetics 13 that his work maintained some ties with the tradition. He was aware that he was writing for a culture which had evolved a highly codified and prescriptive view of literature. Dante's goal was not to discard the tradition but to innovate and challenge it from the inside. If the poet had not established a tension between conventional forms and his own work, he would have found it difficult both to highlight the novelty of the Commedia and to communicate with his audience - a signal failure for a work of universal reform. As I discussed previously, Dante hoped that his readers would use his metaliterary promptings - just as they would have done with a more 'standard' text - in order to interpret his 'new' poem. He encouraged them to undertake this exegetical exercise by addressing them in ways which would have been familiar. It is noteworthy that Dante did not fashion any new technical terms with which to define his poem. For instance, when he assigned to it the title 'Comedia/ he was both drawing on current usage and questioning its effectiveness. Hence, a semantic discrepancy is invariably apparent between the content and form of the Commedia and the normal associations of a particular metaliterary reference; and this discrepancy - Dante believed - would also encourage interpretation. A good example of this process may be found, as I have just said, in Dante's choice of title for his poem (the adjective divina was only added in the 1555 Venetian edition printed by Gabriele Giolito). It is obvious that the standard and widely circulating definitions of comedy in terms of its 'low' or 'middle style' and of its narrative organization - 'Comedy ... begins with various difficulties, but its subject-matter ends well' (Ep. 13.10) - cast little light on the Commedia. Already several of the Trecento commentators attempted to propose more satisfactory reasons for the poem's title; and it has been a problem which has continued to fascinate (Agamben; Barariski "Trimo"'; D'Alfonso; Ferrucci; lannucci 'Dante's Theory'; Porena; Quaglio; Rajna; Rossi). For example, Dante's choice has been seen as stressing the difference between the Commedia and Virgil's 'alta ... tragedia' (Inf. 20.113) (Schiaffini 75); as a sign of modesty (Contini Varianti: 614); and as indicating the poem's political interests (D'Alfonso). The main significance of such suggestions is that they can all be substantiated on the basis of contemporary evidence. Indeed, it is possible to show that, of all the medieval modi, comedy was the most elastic and wide-ranging. Thus, it also accommodated characters and feelings of every kind (Quintilian Instit. oral.: 1.8.7); it had links with prose (John of Garland 1.51-2); and it employed a wealth of formal registers (Horace Ars poetica 95; Quintilian Instit. oral.: 10.1.65; Matthew of Vendome 2.7). Comedy embraced every subject and style; it could signify literature in

14 Zygmimt G. Baranski general, not least since in the Middle Ages it had lost its dramatic associations (Baranski "Trimo"' and 'Comedia'; Bareiss; Cloetta; Kelly; McMahon; Quadlbauer; Ruggiers; Villa). The term also indicated the poem's religious dimension. St Jerome had noted comedy's moral force (Ep. 54.9), while scriptural sermo humilis (Auerbach Literary; and Studi: 165-73) had ties with the 'comic' stilus humilis - in the thirteenth century, like comedy, the Bible was quoted as an example of both the low' and 'middle style' (Bene da Firenze 1.6). In the Commedia, Dante brought together the various properties of comedy which his culture recognized but which it never actually synthesized. 'Comedia' was thus the perfect title with which Dante could both point to the variety of his work and provide a clue to its interpretation in a textual area which the accessus ad auctores underlined as significant for appreciating a text as a whole. Comedy was the one 'style' which could give shape to the classical rhetoricians' hints on literary freedom. Most importantly, it could satisfy Dante's divinely ordained duty to present and clarify in a single work the wealth of 'that which is scattered in pages through the universe' (Par. 33.87) (Baranski "Trimo"'). This is the fundamental ideological reason why - according to Dante - his poem is necessarily different from other human works. It could neither be composed nor evaluated in the same way as these, given that God was its co-author:' '1 poema sacro / al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra' [the sacred poem / to which heaven and earth have put their hand (Par. 25.1-2)]. The poet had the divinely instituted responsibility to report as precisely as possible on his multiform eschatological journey (Purg. 33.52-7; Par. 17.127-9), something which he could only do if he was not hamstrung by the literary conventions of his day. Other writers could not provide appropriate models for him to 'imitate,' since they were limited formally and thematically by their adherence to the canons of the genera dicendi. The Commedia seeks its legitimation in God, the supreme auctor and the one auctoritas able to ensure that its original syncretism could not be dismissed as an aberration. Thus, Dante's most important sources behind the composition of his poem are God's two 'books': the 'volume' (Par. 33.86) of the universe, in which the pilgrim had peered at the end of his journey, and the Bible, whose sermo humilis, according to contemporary exegesis, embraced every style, subject, and scientia. Dante followed his all-embracing divine models and, in a numerically balanced structure which imitated God's artistry, he fashioned his own harmonious synthesis by bringing together and modifying all the 'books,' 'modes of writing,' and languages of his culture.

Dante and Medieval Poetics 15 Since the Second World War, most scholars who have argued that close links exist between the Commedia and divine forms of writing have primarily turned to the Epistle to Cangrande to support their case. This has been especially true as regards those who believe that Dante wanted his poem to be viewed through the spyhole of the allegoria in factis (see especially Singleton; Hollander Allegory}. The main problem with this approach is that the debate on the Commedia''s biblical poetics has shifted away from the poem itself - where it obviously belongs - and has concentrated instead on the letter. As a result, the crucial fact that the poem contains all the necessary clues to its interpretation has once again been downplayed; in particular, until very recently, the compelling clues which Dante included in the Commedia that his work needs to be read according to the conventions of the allegoria in factis have been ignored (but now see Barariski 'Lezione' and '"Marvellous'"; Barolini 'Heaven' and 'Ricreare'). However, if we recall the way in which Dante's literary reflection has normally been studied, then this state of affairs should cause little surprise: scholars have avoided the challenging depths of the Commedia's metaliterary dimension for the apparent safety of a text which, whatever else, does have the appearance of literary criticism. However, this is a dubious haven, to say the least, given that the Epistle's authenticity has long been a matter of dispute (Brugnoli), and that many recent studies argue that it is a forgery (Baranski 'Comedia'', Kelly; and see below; support for its authenticity has continued to come from Armour; Hollander Dante's Epistle-, Paolazzi; and Fertile). The letter, purportedly written to Cangrande della Scala - Lord of Verona between 1312 and 1329 - begins by dedicating the Paradiso to its addressee (paragraphs 1-4); then provides (5-16) a general discussion of allegory and an analysis of the Commedia under the six standard headings made popular by one of the major branches of the accessus ad auctores - 'the subject, the author, the form, the aim, the book's title, and the branch of philosophy to which it belongs' (6); and finally undertakes a dense philosophical and theological interpretation of the first four terzine of the third cantica (paragraphs 17-33). At present, little help in deciding whether the Epistle should be assigned to Dante comes from evidence provided by the manuscript tradition, from hypotheses regarding its dating and the manner of its composition, and from studies of its possible interrelationship with the other fourteenth-century commentaries to the Commedia (Baranski 'Comedia': 27-8, 48-9). On the other hand, analyses of its style (Dronke; Hall and Sowell; Kelly 79-111) have tended to offer somewhat more solid evidence

16 Zygmunt G. Barariski against its Dantean origins. The best evidence regarding its authenticity, however, comes from an examination of its characteristics as a commentarium and from a comparison between its interpretations of the Commedia and the poem's auto-exegetical system (Baranski 'Comedia'). The standard position taken by supporters of the letter's genuineness is that it provides important information both on the poem's title and on its allegory. Yet, the validity of such claims is extremely questionable. Thus, in marked opposition to the Commedia, the Epistle presents very basic and conventional definitions of comedy (13.10), which are dependent on the most conservative medieval discussions of the stilus such as those found in glossaries and in the commentaries to Terence. It focuses on the etymology of comedy ('comedy comes from comos, village, and oda, which means song, thus comedy is as it were "country song'"), on its 'unstudied and low' style, and on its narrative structure (see my earlier discussion of the poem's title). From statements such as these, it is not at all clear in what way the Commedia might differ from other traditional 'comic' works. In addition, the letter's blanket dismissal of the vernacular as 'unstudied and low' goes against both Dante's celebration of the vulgaris in his two treatises and the many different excellent uses to which he puts it in his poem. The Epistle's traditionalist view of the superiority of Latin over the vernacular, which remains implicit in paragraph 10, becomes much more evident in the fact that it translates all quotations from the Commedia into the classical language. If the letter really were by Dante, then, this would be quite an extraordinary turn of events. It would suggest that, contrary to his artistic practice in the poem and his selfvindication in the eclogues (2.51-4), the poet suddenly accepted the criticisms of a Giovanni del Virgilio, who pleaded with him to employ Latin and not the commonplace vernacular when dealing with sophisticated intellectual matters (1.5-24). The Epistle's recourse to Ars poetica 93-6 has been deemed significant, and therefore as providing evidence of Dante's authorship, in connection with another problem relating to the Commedia's form, namely, the issue of its stylistic hybridism: 'Similarly they differ in their style of language: tragedy is high and sublime, while comedy is unstudied and low, as Horace says in his Poetria, where he allows comedians occasionally to speak like tragedians, and vice versa: "Yet sometimes comedy raises its voice / and angry Chremes reproaches with swelling language / and in tragedy Telephus and Peleus often lament in pedestrian language, etc"' (13.10). However, taken in themselves, there is little, if anything, in these verses that offers information specific to the Commedia. Horace advises caution when mixing 'styles' and allows a similar licence

Dante and Medieval Poetics 17 to both comedians and tragedians. Furthermore, the author of the Epistle is not in fact drawing on the Ars poetica to propose the loosening of the doctrine of the genera dicendi; he is reiterating the necessary separation between 'modes of writing/ the customary reason for which Horace's lines were quoted in many commentaria (Mengaldo 211-12; Quadlbauer 138-9,173, 214, 223-4; Villa 40). It is clear that major discrepancies exist not only between Dante's and the letter's views of the Commedia, but also between their respective views of literature. The poet has a radically innovative sense of writing, while the author of the Epistle trots out the most conservative cliches of his day, as is also apparent in his two-part discussion of allegory. Scholars have tended to concentrate on paragraph 7, the first half of his presentation, since they believe that it confirms that the Commedia depends on the allegoria in factis. Yet, it is only in paragraph 8 that the 'subject' of the poem's allegory is explicitly presented: 'But if the work is considered allegorically, the subject is man according as by his merits and demerits, the result of his free will, he deserves rewards or punishments from [divine] justice.' It has been authoritatively demonstrated that this is the kind of general assessment of the Commedia which would have been typical of a moralizing reading undertaken according to the conventions of the allegoria in verbis (Minnis and Scott 385-6) - a way of approaching the poema sacro which signally fails to distinguish Dante's poem from other secular texts and which denies its claims to 'sacredness.' Indeed, by stating that the Commedia has a moral subiectum, the Epistle reduces it to the most basic of contemporary critical notions, since it was widely asserted that literature was classifiable under ethics (Allen). And the remainder of the letter's accessus section reiterates this same moral point, thereby underlining the belief that the Commedia is a standard fictional work (Baranski 'Comedia': 42-3). Yet paragraph 7 boldly declares that 'the meaning of this work [the Commedia] is not simple, rather it can be called polysemous, that is having various senses,' which would imply that Dante's poem has a biblically inspired allegorical structure. However, this statement not only goes against what is said in the following paragraph, but it also undermines the letter's own overall secularizing interpretation of the Commedia. Furthermore, it is striking that the Epistle exemplifies the distinctions of 'polysemous' allegory solely with examples drawn from the Scriptures. All these seeming contradictions can be resolved if one examines the argumentative logic of paragraphs 7 and 8. Thus, the first paragraph, rather than dealing with the Commedia, is - as it openly announces - a general

18 Zygmunt G. Barariski introduction: 'to clarify, therefore, what has to be said.' It offers a presentation of allegory's full range, which, conventionally, had to be illustrated with biblical references. The poem's actual exegesis begins in paragraph 8, as is obvious from the fact that it is only at this point that it is examined under the first of the accessus headings, that of the 'subject'; and, as we have noted, this analysis is undertaken according to the allegoria in verbis. The two paragraphs are not complementary; rather, they stand in opposition to each other, with the Bible and the Commedia embodying the two main types of allegory, with little doubt being left as to which of the two is superior. Unlike the Commedia, or even Dante's other works, there is nothing remarkable about the Epistle's view of literature. In fact, its ideological preferences are in sharp contrast to those favoured by the poet. Its author belongs to the conservative wing of Trecento Dante exegesis. Like the majority of the other fourteenth-century commentators to the Commedia, he is troubled by the poem's formal and ideological experimentation. He tries instead, quite inappropriately, to squeeze it into the conventional literary stereotypes of his day. Yet, if there is one thing about which all Dante's readers can agree, it is that there is nothing commonplace about the poet and his oeuvre. As Dante's reflections on literature so marvellously reveal, he glories in the startling excitement of the new. Note 1 This chapter is a summary of some of the work I have been doing in recent years on the relationship between Dante and medieval literary criticism and theory; see my various studies listed in the Bibliography.

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20 Zygmunt G. Barariski Barolini, Teodolinda. Dante's Poets. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. - 'Dante's Heaven of the Sun as a Meditation on Narrative.' Lettere italiane 40 (1988): 3-36. - 'Ricreare la creazione divina: 1'arte aracnea nella cornice dei superbi.' In Studi americani su Dante. Ed. G.C. Alessio and R. Hollander. Milano: Franco Angeli, 1989.145-64. Battaglia Ricci, Lucia. Dante e la tradizione letteraria medievale. Pisa: Giardini, 1983. Bene Florentinus. Candelabrum. Ed. G.C. Alessio. Padova: Antenore, 1983. Benvenuti de Rambaldis de Irnola. Comentum super Dantis Aldigherij Comoediam. Ed. J.P. Lacaita. 5 vols. Firenze: G. Barbera, 1887. Brugnoli, Giorgio. 'Introduzione.' Epistole. By Dante Alighieri. In Opere minori. Vol. 2. Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi, 1979. 512-21. Cicero. De oratore. Ed. A.S. Wilkins. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903. [Cicero]. Ad Herennium. Ed. and trans. H. Caplan. London: Heinemann, 1981. Cloetta, Wilhelm. Komb'die und Tragb'die im Mittelalter. Vol. 1 of Beitrage zur Litteraturgeschichte Mittelalters und der Renaissance. Halle a. S.: Max Niemeyer, 1890. Contini, Gianfranco. Varianti e ultra linguistica. Torino: Einaudi, 1970. - Un'idea di Dante. Torino: Einaudi, 1976. Curtius, Ernst Robert. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Trans. Willard R. Trask. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979. D'Alfonso, Rossella. '"Comico" e "commedia": appunti sul titolo del poema dantesco/ Filologia e critica 7 (1982): 3-41. de Bruyne, Edgar. Etudes d'esthetic]ue medievale. 3 vols. Bruges: 'de Tempel,' 1946. de Lubac, Henri. Exegese medievale. 2 vols. Paris: Aubier, 1959-64. Dronke, Peter. Dante and Medieval Latin Traditions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.103-11. Ferrucci, Franco. 'Comedia.' Yearbook of Italian Studies 1 (1971): 29-52. Grayson, Cecil. Cinque saggi su Dante. Bologna: Patron, 1972. Hall, Ralph G., and Madison U. Sowell. 'Cursus in the Can Grande Epistle: A Forger Shows His Hand?' Lectura Dantis 5 (1989): 89-104. Haller, Robert S., ed. Literary Criticism of Dante Alighieri. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973. Hollander, Robert. Allegory in Dante's 'Commedia.' Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969. - II Virgilio dantesco. Florence: Olschki, 1983. - Dante's Epistle to Cangrande. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993. Horace. Ars poetica. Ed. C.O. Brink. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971.

Dante and Medieval Poetics 21 lannucci, Amilcare A. 'Dante's Theory of Genres and the Divina Commedia.' Dante Studies 91 (1973): 1-25. - ed. Dante e la 'bella scola' della poesia: Autorita e sfida poetica. Ravenna: Longo, 1993. Jenaro-MacLennan, L. The Trecento Commentaries on the 'Divina Commedia' and the Epistle to Cangrande. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974. Jerome. Epistolae. Ed. I. Hilberg. Vienna: F. Tempsky; Leipzig: G. Freytag, 1910-18. John of Garland. The 'Parisiana Poetria' of John of Garland. Ed. T. Lawler. New Haven-London: Yale University Press, 1974. Kelly, H.A. Tragedy and Comedy from Dante to Pseudo-Dante. Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of California Press, 1989. McMahon, Philip A. 'Seven Questions on Aristotelian Definitions of Tragedy and Comedy.' Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 40 (1929): 97-198. Matthew of Vendome. Ars versificatoria. Ed. E. Faral. In Les Arts poetiques du Xlle et XHIe siecle. Paris: Champion, 1971.109-93. Mengaldo, Pier Vincenzo. Linguistica e retorica di Dante. Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1978. Minnis, A.J. Medieval Theory of Authorship. 2nd ed. London: Scolar Press, 1988. - ed. The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. II. The Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming. Minnis, A.J., and A.B. Scott, eds. Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c. 1100-c. 1375. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Padoan, Giorgio. II pio Enea, I'empio Ulisse. Ravenna: Longo, 1977. Paolazzi, Carlo. Dante e la 'Comedia' nel Trecento. Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1989. Pep in, Jean. La Tradition de I'allegorie medievale. Paris: Etudes augustiniennes, 1987. Fertile, Lino. 'Canto-cantica-Comedia e 1'Epistola a Cangrande.' Lectura Dantis 9 (1991): 105-23. Picone, Michelangelo. 'Vita Nuova' e tradizione romanza. Padova: Liviana, 1979. - 'I trovatori di Dante: Bertran de Born.' Studi e problemi di critica testuale 19 (1979): 71-94. - 'Giraut de Bornelh nella prospettiva di Dante.' Vox Romanica 39 (1980): 22-43. - 'Paradiso IX: Folchetto e la diaspora trobadorica.' Medioevo Romanzo 8 (1981-3): 47-89. - 'Dante e la tradizione arturiana.' Romanische Forschungen 94 (1982): 1-18. - 'Baratteria e stile comico in Dante (Inferno XXI-XXII).' In Saggi danteschi americani. Ed. G.C. Alessio and R. Hollander. Milano: Franco Angeli, 1989. 63-86. Porena, Manfredi. 'II titolo della Divina Commedia.' Rendiconti della R. Accademia

22 Zygmunt G. Baranski Nazionale del Lined, Classe di scienze morali, storiche efilologiche ser. 6, 9 (1933): 114-41. Quadlbauer, Franz. Die antike Theorie der 'Genera dicendi' im lateinischen Mittelalter. Vienna: Hermann Bohlaus Nachf., 1962. Quaglio, Antonio E. 'Titolo.' In 'Commedia/ Enciclopedia dantesca 2: 79-81. Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria. Ed. H.E. Butler. 4 vols. London: Heinemann, 1921-2. Rajna, Pio. 'II titolo del poema dantesco.' Studi danteschi 4 (1921): 5-37. Riche, Pierre. Les Ecoles et I'enseignement dans I'Occident chretien de la fin du Ve siecle au milieu du Xle siecle. Paris: Aubier, 1979. Riche, Pierre, and Guy Lobrichon, eds. Le Moyen Age et la Bible. Paris: Beauchesne, 1984. Rossi, Aldo. 'II "serio-comico" dantesco.' Paragone 30 (1979): 32-48. Ruggiers, Paul G., ed. Versions of Medieval Comedy. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977. Sandkiihler, Bruno. Diefruhen Dantekommentare und ihr Verhaltnis zur mittelalterlichen Kommentartradition. Munich: Max Hueber Verlag, 1967. Schiaffini, Alfredo. 'A proposito dello stile comico in Dante.' In Italiano antico e moderno. Ed. T. De Mauro and P. Mazzantini. Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi, 1975. Singleton, Charles S. Dante's 'Commedia': Elements of Structure. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. Smalley, Beryl. The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1952. Spicq, Ceslas. Esquisse d'une histoire de I'exegese latine. Paris: Vrin, 1944. Strubel, Armand. '"Allegoria in factis" et "allegoria in verbis."' Poetique 23 (1975): 342-57. Trovato, Mario. 'II primo trattato del Convivio visto alia luce dell'accessus ad auctores.' Misure critiche 6 (1976): 5-14. Villa, Claudia. La 'Lectura Terentii.' Padova: Antenore, 1984. Wagner, David L., ed. The Seven Liberal Arts in the Middle Ages. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. Whitman, Jon. Allegory. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.

Palinode and History in the Oeuvre of Dante ALBERT RUSSELL ASCOLI

The aim of this paper is threefold: (1) to review a topic, the 'palinode/ which has been at the heart of American Dante studies for the last twenty years and which in fact can be understood broadly as a figure for most of the work in this period on Dantean inter- and intra-textuality; (2) to bring Dante studies into productive relationship with two major trends in method on the American literary scene generally, namely 'rhetorical' and 'historical' reading (in this case, rhetorical reading as historical reading);1 and (3) to continue my own ongoing attempt (in which I am clearly not alone) to redefine the ways in which the 'opere minori' of Dante can and should be read2 - to the point of interrogating what it means to think of such uniquely ambitious intellectual projects as Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia, and Monarchia as minor works and as pendants from and dependents of the colossal achievement of the Commedia. At least since the work of Contini (1938,1958,1965a, 1965b) and Singleton (1949, 1954, 1956), Dante criticism on both sides of the Atlantic has focused intensely on Dante's characteristic propensity for overt reflection on the nature of his own poetic practice, and especially his self-placement within a complex vision of literary history that includes both classical and contemporary poets, and perhaps even the Bible itself. In North America this tendency has been stimulated and oriented by theories of 'intertextuality'3 and by important studies of the way in which medieval and Renaissance authors write literary history allusively and 'from the inside/4 Within the vast economy of Dante's literary self-awareness and autoreferentiality, the term 'palinode/ literally a 'singing again' or 'recantation/ describes a particular form of revisionism5 - namely the explicit and/or allusive invocation and transformation of materials from prior Dantean texts within their successors, above all the Commedia's critical evocation of its author's earlier efforts.

24 Albert Russell Ascoli Twentieth-century Dante criticism has focused almost obsessively on its author's propensity for repeating, correcting, and even overtly contradicting himself from one work to the next at a number of different levels - of concept, of image, of narrative, of character, and so on. The exemplary sequence, of course, is the one that leads from the Vita nuova, with its explicit focus on Dante's love for a human, if virtually inaccessible, woman, Beatrice; through the apparent turn in Convivio to an allegorical 'donna gentile,' who represents Dante's first mournful then joyful recourse to the 'consolation of philosophy'; and on to the return of Beatrice in Purgatorio 30, now explicitly revealed as afigura Christi and mediator of Dante's salvation. However one charts this sequence, and there have been an extraordinary number of variants,6 there is no doubt that Dante wrote it at each stage to be seen as a sequence, or that there is some sort of maturation or ascent dramatized in each successive passage from one text to the next. This, in fact, is already the case in the relation of the Vita nuova to the previously composed poems it surrounds with narrative and commentary, transforming them from lyric moments not dramatically different than those found in Cavalcanti and Guinizzelli, and in the Provencal and 'Sicilian' poets before them, into something quite different.7 More generally speaking, in the Italian context, and even to some extent in our own, speculative theories of chronology (e.g., Nardi's placement of the Monarchia in 1308)8 and of belated textual revision (e.g., Pietrobono's claim that Dante 'retrofitted' the ending of the Vita nuova to support Dante's later rejection of the Convivio's philosophical stance)9 have been deployed to create a coherent and evolutionary interpretation of Dante's literary career and intellectual biography, usually with the Commedia as ideal telos.10 These discussions, which were characteristically guided by commitment to the primacy of Dante's 'thought/ then found powerful and appropriate correction in Gianfranco Contini's examination of the evolution of Dante's career primarily in terms of stylistic, rhetorical, and narratological considerations, particularly his seminal insistence on Dante's ceaseless linguistic 'experimentalism' and the rhetorical deployment of the first-person voice (culminating in the pilgrim/poet tension that structures the Commedia).11 The dominant American variant of this critical strategy emerged in the early 1970s largely through John Freccero's elegant reading, with its debt both to Contini and to Bloomian theories of literary revisionism, of 'Casella's Song' as a poetic recantation of the consolatory Boethian poetics of Convivio (Freccero 1973).12 The structure of the 'palinode' was clearly congenial to Freccero, since in the domain of literary intertextuality it

Palinode and History in the Oeuvre of Dante 25 approximates the psychic and narrative structures of conversion which form the basis of his reading of the Commedia. In addition, to return to where we started, Freccero's essay has the special virtue of suggesting that the palinode is in fact potentially paradigmatic for many, if not all, forms of Dantean intertextuality and literary history. The same essay which shows how 'Amor che nella mente mi ragiona' is reinterpreted and recanted as it is recontextualized, also suggests a revision of an earlier portion of the Commedia (i.e., Inferno 5) as well as of important literaryphilosophical precursors, notably Boethius (Freccero 1973: esp. 188-94).13 In other words, the pattern of repetition and recantation is fundamental not only among the various Dantean texts, but within individual texts (as Singleton [1966] had earlier suggested)14 and between Dante's texts and his various classical and medieval 'auctores.'15 The basic argument of most recent 'intertextual' work on the palinode and on precursor poets is as follows: Dante evokes his own texts or those of others in a variety of ways (verbal or conceptual echo, generic modelling, narrative episode, dramatic representation), only to define a limit to their value as model, usually in the form of a critique of the doctrinal substance conveyed by their poetic practice (the Convivio's philosophical stance, Virgil's and Ovid's paganism, and Cavalcanti's epicureanism being only the most obvious examples).16 In this account, Dante again and again leads his readers to the same conclusion - that is, that the union of Christian theology and poetic representation sets his Commedia apart from practically everything else that has ever been written, with the unique (and even then at times not absolutely clear) exception of the Bible itself. Furthermore, as Giuseppe Mazzotta demonstrated in an essay (1972) that also appeared in the early '70s, Dante's inscriptions of literary history can also be characterized as typological, that is, as conforming to the pattern of salvation history as defined in the Bible, where the Christ event permits the complete reinterpretation of the significance of the Hebrew Bible as the Old Testament.17 And for that matter, one could argue that Auerbach's notion oifigura, that is, the interpreting and recontextualization of historical events in the eschatological frame of the Commedia, is part of the same phenomenon.18 An example of the convergence of literary palinode with historical figura is the case of Guido da Montefeltro, whose belated conversion is celebrated in Convivio (4.28.8) and then subverted in Inferno 27, where his ultimate damnation is revealed. Guide's sorry tale at once corrects an error in the earlier text and sets the historical record straight from the 'infallible' perspective of eternity. A similar phenomenon can be registered, as we shall see, in the treatment of Frederick II and

26 Albert Russell Ascoli his family. In other words, this structure is a means for re-presenting a series of histories: Dante's internal creative biography, the literary history of his relations with other poets, as well as the political-social history of his time. Just as the Commedia confronts, interprets, and ultimately aims to dominate the realm of human history by appearing to transcend it, so Dante confers upon himself a typological and eschatological perspective, as if at the end of literary history, fulfilling and transcending those who have written before, including his own earlier incarnations.19 It is now possible to suggest how a re-examination of the palinode involves a reconsideration both of the rhetorical organization of Dante's texts and of the ways in which those texts may be understood historically - both as products and as interpretations of history. The topic of Dante and history is not exactly new, of course. Auerbach (1929) went so far as to argue that Dante was essentially a 'poet of the secular world' in the sense that the most fundamental achievement of his art was the 'full' representation of historical reality. Giuseppe Mazzotta, in Dante, Poet of the Desert, turned from a model of virtually transparent mimesis or figural imitation to a powerful account of the problematic 'poetics of history' by which Dante confronted from the perspective of language 'history as the economy of redemption and as the realm of exile' (1993: 3). What these accounts share, for all their differences, is a focus on how history appears, in its particular contingencies and as a conceptual domain, within the economy of Dante's representations.20 While I do not want to underestimate the importance of these accounts for understanding 'from the inside' Dante's representation and understanding of history, what I wish to focus on is that which they perforce set aside, namely the question of how an unfolding set of historical events and circumstances made Dante and his representations possible in the first place - how history implies, subsumes, and, as it were, transcends the Dantean oeuvre, just as much as the other way around.21 My hope is not so much to deny the existence of the palinode, as some recent critics have done,22 but rather to see it clearly as a powerful rhetorical device rather than as a true expression of Dante's experience,23 and to use it as a tool for historicizing Dante's literary career, always mindful that to identify the marks of history upon the Dantean texts, one must first come to terms with the strategies by which history is mastered even as it is represented. What makes such a question so difficult to answer, other than the intrinsic complexity of charting the lines of force from world to text and back again, is that the palinode is designed specifically to anticipate and to prevent the asking of it. The palinode is a rhetorical-conceptual device

Palinode and History in the Oeuvre of Dante 27 for containing and dominating the unruly differences of the self and history. Dante establishes a narrative with continuity between beginning and ending (by the recurrence of common elements; for example, Beatrice and the Dantean T), but also with the focused and meaningful disruption of what Aristotle would have called peripeteia (reversal) and anagnoresis (recognition) and what Freccero, with reference to Augustine, calls conversion. Thus, contradictions of the self and history are at once acknowledged and contained by their placement within a hierarchical narrative order, where what comes above and last subsumes and interprets what comes below and before. Against the fictive power of the palinode stands the factual power of history itself. One might indeed expect that the palinode would find its limits under extreme forms of historical pressure. The most obvious example, of course, would be the intervention of death - a death so sudden or disruptive that no room for the writing of a retractio remained. In Italian literary history, useful examples appear in the later cases of Poliziano's Stanze and Boiardo's Orlando innamorato, the one terminated at the assassination of its Medicean protagonist/patron, the other at the author's own demise, both left unfinished. One could argue that the motive engine for Dante's first and most powerful recourse to the palinode in the Vita nuova itself was precisely the death of Beatrice,24 and that he later, apotropaically, converted his own death (made more pressing by the untimely, and poetically prefigured, death of his sometime 'primo amico' Guido Cavalcanti) into the palinodic perspective par excellence, the world of divine justice beyond individual lives and beyond history itself. Nonetheless one would have to acknowledge Dante's luck in himself surviving barely long enough to close the 'poema sacro,' whose visionary and revisionary power depends to no little extent on its seamless totality.25 Death, however, is not the only way in which history makes itself felt or resists authorial attempts to bring it under control by giving it a definite shape, although it would have taken something or someone quite extraordinary to resist incorporation and appropriation within a providentially poetic order, something, or someone, that was crucial in the most basic way to Dante's historical experience and to his project for interpreting it, and that therefore could not be reduced to the mere effluvia of contingency. Such elements, I submit, can be found, first, in the one major treatise Dante actually completed, Monarchia, which also constitutes, with a few of the epistles, his most direct attempt to influence the course of contemporary political history and, second, in a crucial historical personage, Emperor Frederick II, whose powerful hold on Dante's poetic and

28 Albert Russell Ascoli political imagination is betrayed by recurrent appearances in the major post-exilic works. The case of Monarchia is especially intriguing because its relationship to the Commedia is much less easily fixed than that of the Vita nuova, Convivio, or De vulgari eloquentia, and because its ambitions to influence the shape of history are more direct and greater than those of the other works.26 The political discourse of the Commedia undoubtedly shares some of the Monarchies principal theses - the parallelism of imperial and salvation history (Inf. 34; Par. 6-7), the complementary functions of pope and emperor (Purg. 16), and so on. But it also clearly betrays the same kinds of differentiating shifts that characterize the Commedia''s relationship to the other treatises. For example, where Monarchia openly attacks the Decretalists' allegorization of the 'duo magna luminaria' of Genesis and the subordination of the 'lunar' empire to the 'solar' papacy (3.4), Purgatorio 16 offers its own revised allegorization of two separate but equal 'suns' figuring the two great institutional authorities (cf. Mazzotta 1979: 9; Nardi 1960: 186-207). For Nardi, a version of the palinode is clearly at work here too. Monarchia is the logical consequence of Dante's drive towards a fully articulated philosophical rationalism in Convivio, and it brings into the open a radical, for Nardi Averroistic, split between the domain of nature and active human reason, on the one hand, and, on the other, the realm of Grace and acquiescing human faith. The institution of a hierarchy in the Commedia which subordinates nature to grace, reason to revelation, Virgil to Beatrice, is thus a corrective to both Convivio and Monarchia (Nardi 1966: 71-109, esp. 80-2; 1942: 133-8; 1960: 116-31 et passim). The problem with this hypothesis is that in order to conserve the palinodic narrative as such, Nardi has to date Monarchia to 1308, although there is no hard evidence that allows one to do so, any more than it is possible to link the treatise to the slightly later period of Henry VII's foray into Italy (1310-13), or, for that matter, to the late teens, after Dante had completed the Paradiso (to which there is one explicit reference in the text, which, however, critics have attempted to dismiss as a later interpolation).27 If Monarchia comes later, it means that the transcendent synthesis of the Commedia was not absolute but contingent and, as it were, generic, linked to the perspective offered by the particular literary form and stance embodied in the Commedia and not to a permanent and essential 'conversion' of Dante's self and his poetics (cf. Tambling 7). My point, however, is not that Nardi's dating, or any of the others, is demonstrably incorrect, though I do incline to the later date myself. Rather, right or wrong, in the

Palinode and History in the Oeuvre of Dante 29 absence of definitive evidence the case of Monarchia suggests the fragility and instability of the palinode, that is, of the attempts by Dante and his critics alike to impose an idealized historical narrative on his life and works. Let me come at the same point from another angle. The pattern of allusion and repetition-in-dif ference in Dante's oeuvre is not limited to the Commedia vis-a-vis the other texts. Clear echoes also connect one of the opere minori to another. And in most such cases it is much more difficult to establish the hierarchical narrative and conceptual order that so clearly characterizes the Corn-media's relationship to the treatises. That Convivio's love story follows the Vita nuova's is obvious, as is the drama of a struggle between two thoughts of love, but Dante is careful to avoid stating that love of Lady Philosophy replaced that of Beatrice, who, he says, continues to dwell in his soul (Convivio 2.2.1; cf. 2.8.8). Rather, it is the Commedia that seemingly creates a radical opposition between the two. In other cases, apparent contradictions are even less easily resolved into a palinodic hierarchy. A case in point is the divario between Convivio and De vulgari eloquentia over the relative nobility of 'grammar' (i.e., Latin) and vulgare (i.e., Italian). And in these cases the suspicion arises either that Dante adopts different and even opposed positions according to the specific and contingent needs of a given argument (that is, he is shamelessly rhetorical in his deployment of concepts), or that his notion of dialectic allows for the determination of truth value according to specific context (i.e., he allows for a double or multiple truth, accepts the 'sic et non').28 An especially interesting instance of this phenomenon, at least from the point of view of this essay, is the pattern of connections that link Convivio, book 4, and Monarchia (Nardi 1966: 56; Took 150). This pattern forms the basis for Nardi's claims that Monarchia derives directly and almost immediately from Convivio - but, as we shall see, with the evident resemblances there are also differences - in the form of omissions, additions, and contradictions - between the two works which invite a somewhat more sustained examination than is usually given them. In book 4 of Convivio, a discussion of the nature of imperial authority arises in the course of a digression whose governing purpose is to show that Dante's definition of nobilitas as an individual, divinely conferred quality which is the ground of all human virtue (4.18-19) does not contradict the authority either of Emperor Frederick II (to whom is attributed the notion that nobility derives from ancient lineage and its attendant wealth; i.e., that it is familial and transpersonal) or of Aristotle, who seems to give Frederick and his followers indirect support by his assertion that anything

30 Albert Russell Ascoli believed by a large number of people is necessarily rooted in truth (4.3). Monarchia obviously picks up and develops several of Dante's claims in Convivio (esp. 4.4-5) - the necessity of a single, universal monarchy; the supreme role of the emperor as 'cavalcatore della volonta umana' (4.9.10) and as ultimate judge over human actions; the directly mandated assignment of empire and emperorship to the Roman people; the privileged place of the Roman Empire in the economy of salvation history. Moreover, the evidence adduced concerning the providential nature of Roman history in Monarchia, book 2, reflects the same close reading of Virgil's Aeneid as does the latter part of Convivio, book 4, and, obviously, the Commedia as well (Leo; Nardi 1966: 51, 62-3, and 1960: 101-2 et passim; Hollander 1968). In fact, although the thorny question of the relationship of emperor to pope, which constitutes the polemical burden of Monarchia, is not discussed in Convivio, nonetheless the earlier treatise does preview the rhetorical and conceptual strategies through which Dante will address the problem in book 3 of Monarchia. Though Convivio goes to some lengths to define the emperor's and empire's absolute dominion in the judicial and political domain of the 'ragione scritta' (4.9.9), the point of the digression is to circumscribe their authority, to show where it does not hold sway, namely in the realm of philosophical and especially ethical reasoning (4.6.8-9). That domain, instead,belongs to the philosopher, embodied first of all by Aristotle, but also, implicitly, by Dante himself. Dante specifies the absolute auctoritas of emperor and philosopher in two distinct realms of human experience and then insists on the necessary complementarity and interdependence of the one and the other (4.6.17-20). This conceptual structure, which Gilson designated as the 'aporia dantesca/ is then repeated in Monarchia (1949: 156) - although the philosopher as textual protagonist has disappeared altogether, only to be replaced by the pope, who occupies an equivalent dialectical position vis-a-vis the emperor. Elsewhere I have argued that this strategy of defining, but also delimiting, absolute authority allows Dante to create a conceptual and rhetorical space for his own auctoritas to emerge in both of these texts (1989:35-9 and nn; 1993:54-6). Here instead I want to emphasize the way in which the evident transfer or displacement of a complex of concepts (regarding imperial authority) and an argumentative strategy (the separation and interdependence of authorities) works to create not only a continuity but also a notable shift between the two treatises - one which cannot be adequately grasped in the terms of the palinode. One might argue that by substituting the pope for the philosopher as the intellec-

Palinode and History in the Oeuvre of Dante 31 tual/spiritual 'other' of the emperor, Dante exchanges reason for faith as the most important mode of human vision - thus following the typical pattern of the palinode as deployed in the Commedia. Yet this is precisely what Monarchia does not do. The function of the empire is to fulfil the terrestrial bonum of rationality and justice (1.11; 3.15 [see Trovato 1988, 1990]). The exercise of the emperor's judging will both exemplifies and enables the full realization of the 'possible intellect' (1.3-5). Moreover, the treatise itself explicitly adopts the perspective of rationality (e.g., 1.2.4-8, 3.2) notwithstanding a number of recourses, under evident constraint, to arguments from both faith and experience (e.g., 2.1.7-8; 2.7). And the principal function of the argument concerning the separate but equal relationship of pope and emperor in book 3 is to limit rather than to affirm papal authority. The disappearance (or perhaps better 'sublimation') of the figure of the philosopher between Convivio and Monarchia thus requires a different and non-palinodic explanation; namely, that he, the philosopher, would be an obvious terzo incomodo in this context. Since the emperor's judicial authority in the domain of natural reason is characterized by being unitary and undivided (this is the burden of book 1, esp. chapters 7-10), the reassertion of the philosopher's intellectual authority as a necessary complement to it would compromise and vitiate it (by dividing what is by definition indivisible). Just as it would introduce an unbalancing asymmetry in the neat duality of book 3. The suspicion, then, would be that the echoing of Convivio in Monarchia is not a deliberate revisionary evocation, a palinodic recantation, of an earlier text by a later one. Rather, it rehearses a conceptual and rhetorical strategy which had served Dante's turn in the past - one that unveils not the transcending emergence of new and stable meaning, but instead an essential rhetoricity which subtends and potentially evacuates meaning (which is not, however, to say that Dante did not take very seriously the politics articulated in Monarchia -1 would argue in fact that it is the very importance he attaches to them that drives him to deploy an intrinsically flawed line of argument). Even more specific evidence for this hypothesis comes at the one point where Monarchia flatly contradicts Convivio, on a topic that constitutes the very substance of book 4 of the earlier treatise. As mentioned earlier, Convivio systematically asserts that nobility is individual and divinely infused, not genealogical, racial, social, and/or economic in origin, attributing the opposing position to Frederick and his vulgar followers (4.canzone.21^40; 4.3.5-10). Furthermore, it has long been noted that the opinion attributed to Frederick in Convivio is not easily to be found in his

32 Albert Russell Ascoli surviving writings and that in fact one sonnet attributed to him actually takes a line very close to Dante's own.29 Rather, it can best be located in Aristotle's Politics (4.8.1294a.20-l). In Monarchia, however, Dante specifically adduces as his own the Aristotelian definition of nobility, now attributing it to its proper source: 'est enim nobilitas virtus et divitie antique, iuxta Philosophum' [Nobility is virtue and ancient wealth, according to the Philosopher (2.2.4)].30 If we discount the unpersuasive scholarly attempts to claim that Dante had not yet read the Aristotelian treatise when he wrote Convivio,31 this reference at the very least exposes a disingenuous and strategically motivated line of argument in the earlier work. It does not, however, then place Monarchia in a position of palinodic superiority since, as Convivio does make clear, the imperial/Aristotelian definition of nobility is transparently at odds with the Christian notions of free will and of the autonomous value of the individual soul. Instead, I conjecture, the open use of the Aristotelian definition in Monarchia is dictated by a shift of conceptual domains and is equally strategic in nature. In the domain of (Christian) ethics, the domain of Convivio, nobility must be individual. In the domain of politics, especially imperial politics, the need for institutional continuity - within the Roman people, and from one emperor to the next - requires a social and transpersonal concept of nobility (cf. Kantorowicz 1957). And so Dante adopts one without hesitation, despite a full awareness of the problems it presents from other perspectives. In short, the contradictions between Convivio and Monarchia do not become the foundation for a hierarchically articulated palinode or establish Dante's transcendent authority over his material; rather, the parallel passages in the two texts are mutually 'subversive/ in the limited sense that the juxtaposition reveals that both treatises deliberately suppress relevant conceptual steps for strategic, that is, for contingent, rhetorical, and historical, reasons. The relationship between the treatises is thus based at least as much on convenient forgetfulness as it is on a confessional and recantatory remembering, and it points obliquely to the contingent constructedness of the author's intellectual history. This idea finds further confirmation if we look at the single greatest change in the material that is passed on from Convivio to Monarchia - an alteration, not by addition or revision, but rather by suppression. As we have already seen, in Convivio the discourses about imperial authority and the role of the Roman imperium, as well as the discourse concerning nobility, are all inextricably linked to a specific historical figure, Frederick II of Swabia, designated by Dante precisely as the 'last emperor of the

Palinode and History in the Oeuvre of Dante 33 Romans' (4.3), since none of his German-born successors has been properly installed in office or made the obligatory effort to take up his place in the centre of empire, Italy (as Frederick, whose court was in Sicily, obviously did, virtually alone among the holy Roman emperors).32 Monarchia, however, is the only one of Dante's four major post-exilic writings (the others being Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia, and the Commedia itself) in which there is no reference to Frederick, although the material linked to his name in Convivio is largely conserved, and although it is the one work in which one would most expect to find him, given its exclusive focus on imperial politics. In a recent essay on 'the poetry of history/ Roger Dragonetti has argued that Dante's treatment of Frederick embodies the power of poetry to absorb and transform the raw materials of history through its representations. The question, I will suggest, is more complex than Dragonetti allows it to be. In any case, it is clear that at least after 1301, Frederick played a decisive role in Dante's historical imagination, both in his politics and in his linguistics and attendant poetics. He points, above all, towards the place where power, knowledge, and imagination might perhaps encounter and collaborate. And he thus both informs and taints Dante's hopes for a central role in the ethical and political life of the day. In Convivio, Frederick's crucial place in any minimally historicized understanding of the institution of empire, and the political circumstances of Italy, in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries is clearly acknowledged. In addition, it is arguable that he becomes the figurative stand-in for the hypothetical audience of the treatise - the men of politics and commerce, illiterate in Latin, who need a divulgative tutelage in ethical philosophy to guide them in their activities (1.10.5). Thus, Dante implicitly stages himself, via his poetry and commentary, as the philosopher who stands as necessary complement to the emperor, identified through Frederick. De vulgari eloquentia makes the point even more plainly. Dante's account of the development of the illustrious Italian vernacular places its origins, at least as far a poetry is concerned, at the court of Frederick, as patron of Giacomo da Lentini (II Notaio), Pier delle Vigne, and others, and as a poet himself (1.12.1-4), while Dante, in the company of Cino da Pistoia and Guido Cavalcanti, figures as the consummate and climactic voice of the vulgare illustre, the lineal descendant of the scuola siciliana. And his later definition of the vulgare illustre as properly aulic and curial, that is, as the language which could be spoken and written in the central royal court of Italy, clearly looks back to Frederick's court as an empirical model for what once was and perhaps again will be (1.18.2-5). And here again he

34 Albert Russell Ascoli posits a complementary relationship between the poet guided by the 'gratioso lumine rationis' (1.18.5) and his powerful patron. Nor is the value he attributes to Frederick in Convivio and De vulgari eloquentia exclusively, neutrally historical and political - rather he confers on him an ethical worth equivalent to his historical importance: Frederick and his son Manfred are praised to the skies in De vulgari eloquentia 1.12.4: 'those illustrious heroes, Frederick Caesar and his well-born son, Manfred, displayed the nobility and rectitude of their souls, and, while Fortune allowed, behaved with humanity, disdaining what is bestial' [illustres heroes, Fredericus Caesar et benegenitus eius Manfredus, nobilitatem ac rectitudinem sue forme pandentes donee fortuna permisit humana secuti sunt, brutalia dedignantes] .33 It is particularly noteworthy that Dante here assigns Frederick the three attributes which are most fundamental and laudable in the language of Convivio and De vulgari eloquentia: illustriousness, nobility, rectitude. Nonetheless, there are egregious problems implicit in linking Dante's imperial and poetic hopes to the 'last emperor.' Even in the quoted passage, the qualifier 'donee fortuna permisit/ which allows for an eventually descent from humanity into bestiality, foreshadows the contingencies which clearly remove Frederick from any possible idealization. As Dragonetti observes, these problems emerge full-blown (and, I would add, in a clearly figural-palinodic mode) in the Commedia, beginning with Frederick's damnation as a faithless epicurean in Inferno 10, a canto which calls sharp attention to the Guelf/Ghibelline, church/ empire conflicts that had originated with Frederick and that still ravaged Italy during Dante's youth (and that reproduced themselves in the Black/ White factionalism that led directly to his exile). The process continues with the episode of Pier delle Vigne (the emperor's unfortunate chancellor as well as a poet of the Sicilian school), where Frederick appears as a capricious and violent ruler whose whims jeopardize the fortunes and the lives of his faithful councilors. Through a number of carefully structured parallels between Pier's circumstances and Dante's own, canto 13 clearly jeopardizes his convivial fantasy of the poet-philosopher's symbiotic relationship with an imperial master - along with any remaining hopes of implementing a rationally grounded political program in history. The palinode is further articulated in a series of increasingly displaced allusions to Frederick via his family members (notably Manfred, his son, in Purgatorio 3, and Constance, his mother, in Paradiso 3). In Purgatorio 24, as is well known, Dante establishes a fundamental rupture between his own dolce stil nuovo and the poetics of II Notaio and the Sicilian lyricists.

Palinode and History in the Oeuvre of Dante 35 While the Commedia apotropaically as well as palinodically invokes Frederick, only to dismiss him, Monarchia is a very different story. As we have already seen, there no palinode is deployed - Frederick is simply excluded altogether. But why make so much of an absence, given the notorious difficulty of arguments, as it were, ex nihilo and in absentia? Because, as I have already said, so much of the material elaborated in Monarchia first appeared in Convivio, tightly linked to Frederick II. Because, as Dante says in Convivio (4.3.6), historically Frederick was the last occupant of the office he is discussing in Monarchia (or the next to last, depending on where the treatise is dated vis-a-vis Henry VII, who in any case is also excluded from the treatise), and this is a work whose specific goal is that of reinstating empire and emperor in the historical world. Because, finally, Frederick's open warfare with a series of popes is among the most pressing historical evidence (along with Boniface's various escapades) for the need to find a solution to the problem of imperial vs. ecclesiastical claims to power. This last item, of course, also tells us clearly why such an exclusion might be necessary: Frederick's historical existence, his empirical occupancy of the imperial throne, constitutes a virtual point-by-point refutation of Dante's logical arguments in Monarchia. Rather than bringing unity, he created divisions; rather than reconciling reason with faith, he is a reputed unbeliever and heretic; rather than submitting, with filial piety, to the spiritual authority of the church, he contested it fiercely; and so on and so forth. His name in itself would be a reminder of the disruptions in the imperial line that severed the institution not only from its Roman origins, but even from the recent medieval past. The strain of recuperating the apparent violence and illegitimacy of the original Roman Empire is, as I have argued elsewhere (Ascoli 1991b), evident in the convoluted attempts of book 2 to show that Roman world domination is legal and even divinely sponsored. Frederick's presence would aggravate the problem - he is clearly too near in time, too obviously at odds with the rationalized fantasy of a rapport between church and state, in other words, too messily historical to be confronted within the boundaries of the treatise. And indeed, from the perspective of a rational human being scrutinizing the signs of recent history for expressive traces of the divine will, the twelfth and early thirteenth century offer very little support for the idea that God sponsors the existence of a universal, Roman monarchy. It was probably obvious to the reader from the beginning why Frederick was excluded from Monarchia (and, for that matter, why Boniface, as well as Clement and Henry, if applicable, are not mentioned either). What

36 Albert Russell Ascoli I suspect was not obvious to start with, and what I hope is clearer now, is what the relevance of this exclusion is for our understanding of the palinode as a rhetorical-conceptual device for the textual inscription of history. Precisely because the telos of the treatise is the empirical transformation of the historical scene, Dante is simultaneously asserting the priority of the secular world and suppressing significant features of it. The palinode would not work in this text because the prior contingent elements that would otherwise be offered only to be retracted cannot be allowed to appear for even the fleeting moment necessary to recant them, cannot (pace Dragonetti) be fully textualized. These elements cannot be subjected to the palinode because they are, at base, neither an unmitigated fiction nor a pure concept of Dante's - instead they are history - or rather they are the historical significance of Frederick as it has pressed itself upon Dante and expressed itself in his writings. Not, of course, that I would claim, simply inverting Dragonetti, that 'history' in the person of Frederick II makes itself felt in an unmediated and/or irresistible way. No doubt that Dante could, like anyone else, ignore inconvenient historical facts, especially those a generation or two in the past, at his discretion. My case is based on two related points: (1) that Dante's thought about language and politics in his post-exilic experience was shaped in relation to the historical figure of Frederick and in a way that points directly to Monarchia and makes his absence from it quite striking; (2) that Dante clearly prefers, as we see in the Commedia and elsewhere, to dominate and transform historical materials through the power of his representations - if this is possible at all. Frederick is missing, in other words, because he is too obviously at the origins of Dante's political discourse and yet cannot be recuperated and incorporated within that discourse, at least not in Monarchia. What is it, then, that makes it possible for Dante to represent and reshape Frederick in the Commedia and not in Monarchial And since he does do so there, why does that not imply a transcendence of the limited experience of Monarchia equivalent to that achieved with respect to Convivio and De vulgari eloquential To sketch the relationship between the Commedia and Monarchia let me now turn to the passage in the 'poema sacro' with the most obvious and most obviously problematic connections to the political treatise. In Purgatorio 16, the 'girone' of invidia, Marco Lombardo responds, to Dante's question concerning the origins, celestial or terrestrial, of the disappearance of virtue and order from the world, by giving an account of the 'anima semplicetta' whose innocent yet ignorant

Palinode and History in the Oeuvre of Dante 37 will requires law and guidance to teach it which pleasures to follow and which not:34 Di picciol bene in pria sente sapore; quivi s'inganna, e dietro ad esso corre, se guida o fren non torce suo amore. Onde convenne legge per fren porre; convenne rege aver, che discernesse de la vera cittade almen la torre. (91-6) [First it tastes the savor of a trifling good: there it is beguiled and runs after it, if guide or curb bend not its love. Wherefore it was needful to impose law as a bridle, it was needful to have a ruler who could discern at least the tower of the true city.]

The guidance, which is now lacking from the world, should come from these same two sources: Soleva Roma, che '1 buon mondo feo, due soli aver, che 1'una e 1'altra strada facean vedere, e del mondo e di Deo. L'un 1'altro ha spento; ed e giunta la spada col pasturale, e 1'un con 1'altro insieme per viva forza mal convien che vada; pero che, giunti, 1'un 1'altro non teme ... (106-12). [Rome, which made the world good, used to have two suns, which made visible both the one road and the other, that of the world and that of God. The one has quenched the other, and the sword is joined to the crook: and the one together with the other must perforce go ill - since joined, the one does not fear the other.]

As in Monarchia, here Dante derives the need for imperial, and papal, rule from the problem of regulating unstable human desire. And here too he divides that rule into a temporal and a spiritual domain and requires that there be a separation between them. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, he here deploys, for his own, opposite purposes, an inverted version of the Decretalists' allegory of the 'two lights/ which he attacks in Monarchia. Unlike Monarchia, however, this passage, and the Commedia in general,

38 Albert Russell Ascoli stress the utter contemporary failure of these historical authorities. It is thus certainly no accident that Frederick is named for the last time in the poem immediately following the discourse on the 'due soli/ with specific reference to his troubles with the church which have now resulted in the banishment from Lombardy of the 'valore' and 'cortesia' that once dwelt there (16.115-20). The reasons are not far to seek. In Monarchia Dante is reading the historical scene from the inside, as it were, from the perspective of human reason alone confronted with an array of dark and difficult signs to be interpreted (2.7.1,4-9; 2.9.1). To make his ideal project seem realizable, he must, as he does with Frederick II, suppress as much as possible the overwhelming evidence that any attempt to reinstall universal monarchy is doomed to failure. In Purgatorio, by contrast, Dante represents himself gazing at history not from the inside, and within the limited confines of reason, but from outside and above, where he has the benefit of an eschatological perspective beyond history, and thus direct knowledge of the divine will, as revealed to him by its many and various agents. From a secure position, above the fray, the violence and the failures of history can be contemplated with sorrow, yes, but also clarity and freedom. Why not then simply place Monarchia within the chronology of palinodic transcendence as Nardi would have us do - after Convivio but before the Commedial The answer, at which I have already hinted, is that we have no historical basis for doing so - poetic and rational pretexts, yes, and the force of an overwhelming desire, ours and the author's own, to confirm the ideal narrative order of Dante's thought and his oeuvre, but no stable empirical evidence that supports us. The fiction of the 'opere minori/ subordinate to the master text, which surveys and orders history but lies at its end, in eschatological timelessness and transcendence, collapses under the pressure of chronology and contingency. Perhaps the simplest hypothesis, and one that allows us to set aside the question of dating entirely, is that the differences between the Voice of reason' as it manifests itself in Monarchia, and for that matter Convivio, and the eschatological-prophetic perspective of the Commedia can best be accounted for 'generically' and 'rhetorically' by the different premises, purposes, and attendant argumentational and figurative strategies of the works, as easily as they can by a conjecture concerning intellectual or artistic development.35 Nonetheless, it is important not to let such a hypothesis persuade us either that Dante was not conscious of the dangers of adopting contradictory perspectives or that palinodic inter- and intra-

Palinode and History in the Oeuvre of Dante 39 textuality is not a basic rhetorical fact of the Commedia and Dante's other works. In fact, if we wished to insist on the 'integral' character of the reference to Paradiso in Monarchia, we could even argue for a reverse palinode. We could argue, for example, that the literalist debunking of the Decretalists' allegory of the 'two lights' is equally subversive of Dante's recourse to the metaphor of the 'due soli' in Purgatorio 16. And we might claim that Monarchia recognizes, as the Commedia does not, that political history cannot finally be transcended or left behind, that once again the author of the Commedia (and the unfortunate Florentine prior of 1301) finds himself caught up in the historical fray. But even if we concede that the Paradiso reference was a later authorial interpolation, we still should treat it as a revision to be understood within the economy of Dante's complex revisionary practice. That is, even if the text that contains the retrospective reference to the Commedia belongs to a second or later draft, Dante clearly and deliberately invites the reader to understand Monarchia as postdating the Commedia, and thus himself opens the way to a reversal, or even a collapse, of the palinode.36 To conclude, Monarchia constitutes a scandal that disrupts the revisionary order, and the hierarchical system of textual value that sustains it, within the Dantean oeuvre. The undecidability of its chronological position in Dante's writerly itinerary, along with its urgent need both to engage and to suppress the political-historical order, reveal to us both the contingency and rhetoricity of the palinode, its status as, among other things, a narrative trope. More than that, they confirm for us that Dante is, as Mazzotta has argued concerning the Commedia itself, always a poet of history and of exile, at once inside and outside of his troubled times at once interpreting master and determinate consequence of the 'secular world' - but in any case and in every way, a 'historical subject.' Notes An earlier version of this essay appeared in Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies, ed. Theodore J. Cachey, Jr (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 155-86; it is reprinted here with permission. 1 By 'rhetorical reading' I loosely refer to a practice of close textual analysis that stretches from New Criticism to Deconstruction. By 'historical reading' I

40 Albert Russell Ascoli mean the loose collection of practices commonly referred to as 'New Historicism.' As I hope will be clear, my relationship to both of these already very broad trends is eclectic and strategic - in the mode of 'bricolage.' 2 On the resurgence of interest in these texts on the Anglo-American critical scene, see the review essay of Botterill, as well as look's introduction to them; on the 'rime petrose,' see Durling and Martinez; on the Vita nuova, see Harrison and Stillinger; on the De vulgari eloquentia, see Shapiro, Cestaro, and Ascoli 1991a; on Convivio, Trovato 1990b and Ascoli 1989. See also, from the Italian side, the fundamental recent contributions of Corti (1981,1983) and of Mengaldo. 3 The term was coined by Kristeva. See the discussion by Segre (103-18). To this should be added much of the work of Roland Barthes. Operating with different terminology but related interests are Bloom and Bakhtin. An important alternative theorizing/ instantiation of intertextuality as a cultural-ideological phenomenon, with specific reference to Dante, is Corti 1983: 38-71. Corti's emphasis, fostered by a confluence of philological method with formalist-structuralist theory, on the historical evolution of 'culture' and 'ideology' in language is a useful complement and corrective to the basically 'psychological' and individual focus of intertextual, palinodic criticism of Dante on the North American scene. 4 For example: Greene, Quint, Ferguson, and Barkan. See also Shearman, for a programmatic attempt to bring literary models of intertextual criticism to bear on Renaissance art. 5 For a recent interesting comparativist discussion of the palinode in the Renaissance, beginning with Petrarch and Boccaccio, see Phillippy. 6 For example, the problem of the slippage from Beatrice no. 1 (the B. of Vita nuova) to the 'donna gentile' or Lady Philosophy of Convivio to Beatrice no. 2 (the B. of the Commedia) was the subject of an acrimonious debate between Luigi Pietrobono (1938) and Michele Barbi over most of the first half of this century. See also Nardi 1944: 3-20 and 1960: 2-7,127-31 et passim. More recently the question has been reviewed by Corti 1983: esp. 146-55; and Barolini 1984:15-23. It is now undergoing significant reconsideration by Trovato, in forthcoming work. 7 The Vita nuova is broadly 'palinodic' in at least three different ways: (1) by recontextualizing separately written lyrics within the structure of prose narrative and critical 'divisions' it clearly assigns new meaning to those poems individually; (2) by the episode of the 'donna gentile' and the vague promise of a future work to be dedicated to Beatrice, the book anticipates its own later, 'palinodic' supercession; (3) by ordering the poems chronologically, it creates the impression that the modes of love represented successively

Palinode and History in the Oeuvre of Dante 41 through the 'libro della memoria' are constantly revising and superseding earlier lyric experiences. To elaborate on the third of these: the Vita nuova's individual lyrics and discrete episodes are organized, Symposium-like, as an upwardly hierarchical series (1) of objects and pseudo-objects of desire (the 'donna-schermo/ the 'donna gentile/ and Beatrice herself) and (2) of types of desire for Beatrice (love dependent on the 'salute/ love independent of the 'salute/ love independent of a living object). The case of the Vita nuova thus makes it clear that any distinction between 'external' palinode (recantation of an earlier work) and 'internal' palinode (recantation of an earlier part of the same work) in Dante's oeuvre is of heuristic value only - a fact whose importance for reading the Commedia I return to at the end of this essay. I am grateful to Tom Stillinger for starting me on this train of thought. Cf. Barolini 1984:15; Harrison 150. Durling and Martinez (164-7) see a similarly revisionary pattern at work in what they take to be the clear sequence among the four 'rime petrose' composed after the Vita nuova but before Dante's exile. 8 For example, Nardi 1967:297-310 and 1966: 70-2. The need for these chronological gymnastics can be found in Nardi's desire to ground his overall account of 'dualistic' and ' Averroistic' tendencies of the philosophical works (notably the Monarchia's reference to the 'possible intellect' [1.3.6-7; 1.4.1] and to the 'two beatitudes' of humanity [3.15.7]) then overcome in the Commedia (1960: 83-120, and esp. 309-13). The debate over which was composed first, De vulgari eloquentia or Convivio, and even the controversy over the authenticity of the so-called Epistle to Cangrande, depend heavily on speculative chronologies. 9 Pietrobono 1932: 25-98. Cf. Corti 1983:146-55; Harrison 144-51. Pietrobono's conclusions are not now widely accepted. 10 Cf. Barolini 1984: 29: 'Dante's poetic career achieves such absolute retrospective coherence ... that we are perhaps tempted to endow his earlier poetic shifts with too much teleological coherence.' 11 The position is already sketched in Contini 1938: 'una costante della personalita dantesca [e] questo perpetuo sopraggiungere della riflessione tecnica accanto alia poesia, quest'associazione di concrete poetare e d'intelligenza stilistica' (4). On the Dantean narrator-character, see Contini 1958. The essays collected in Un'idea di Dante are, with the work of Auerbach (cf. note 18 below), inspiring precedents for attempting a 'historicist' reading of the Dantean oeuvre. 12 A related argument is made in Hollander 1975 and recently reiterated in Hollander 1990. Scott offers a specific critique of the palinodic hypothesis as applied to Purgatorio 2, particularly in Hollander's version thereof. His basic

42 Albert Russell Ascoli position is drawn from Kenelm Foster's insistence on the peaceable coexistence of two very different perspectives within the Dantean oeuvre. Scott denies the presence of the palinode even as rhetorical strategy, something he is able to do by sticking entirely to philosophical argumentation rather than attempting to account for the by now incontrovertible evidence that the Commedia systematically changes and contradicts passages from the Convivio and other texts. For a survey of some of the many, many revisions of the Convivio in the Commedia, see Nardi 1966: 75-9 and Ascoli 1989: 42 and n47. 13 lannucci 1990: 42 suggests that the episode also refers us back to Dante's discussion of 'Amor che nella mente mi ragiona' in De vulgari eloquentia 2.6.6. In Ascoli 1991a: 216 and n43,1 suggest that the relationship between Casella and Dante draws on and inverts the distinction between active and passive authors made in book 2.8 of De vulgari (the poet-writer being 'active/ the singer-performer 'passive'), as Dante, the 'active' author of 'Amor che nella mente mi ragiona,' sinks into the role of passive listener. 14 See also lannucci 1981; Shoaf's study of Narcissus in the thirtieth canto of each canticle (21-100); and Fido. 15 For the most comprehensive study of Dante's treatment of precursor poets, including himself, in the Commedia, see Barolini 1984. For the near contemporary vernacular poets, see Contini's seminal essays (1958 and 1965b) as well as Boyde, Barolini 1984, and Mazzotta 1979 (the chapter entitled 'Literary History'). For Cavalcanti, see Jacoff 1977 and Harrison, esp. 69-90; as well as Corti 1983: 3-37. On Arnaut Daniel, see Martinez 1991. For the classical poets generally, see Barolini 1984 and the overview in Brownlee 1993. For Ovid in particular, see, for example, Hawkins, Brownlee 1986, as well as two recent collections of essays edited by Sowell and by Jacoff and Schnapp. For Virgil, important examples are Hollander 1968, Mazzotta 1979 (the chapter entitled 'Virgil and Augustine'), Chiarenza, Schnapp, Cornish, and the essays collected in Jacoff and Schnapp. For Statius, see Martinez 1977, as well as Wetherbee 1984 and 1988. 16 Among many possible examples of critics who have explored the palinode in Convivio, in addition to Freccero and Hollander (note 12 above), see Ransom, Jacoff 1980, and Barolini 1984: 24-40,57-84. On the palinode of the 'rime petrose,' see Freccero 1972, and Sturm-Maddox; for De vulgari eloquentia, see Brownlee 1984. See also Ascoli 1989: 42-3 and n47; and 1991a: 192-3 and n!2. 17 On Dante's relation to the typological tradition more generally, see Charity. 18 Auerbach 1944 and 1945. See Freccero 1986:103-4,196-7, for an important critique of Auerbach; see also Ascoli 1992: 377-97.

Palinode and History in the Oeuvre of Dante 43 19 This is to extend Auerbach's concept of the Commedia's figural relationship to history, as well as Freccero's more refined understanding of the narrative perspective of the Commedia: 'The view from paradise is a spatial translation of what may be called a memory of universal history. The coherence of the poem may be grasped with a view to its totality, a view from the ending, just as the coherence of the poet's life could be grasped only in retrospect, from the perspective of totality in death. Clearly the same may be said of universal history, whose coherence may be perceived only from the perspective of eschatology ...' (Freccero 1966: 26). Cf. Mazzotta 1979: The palinode constitutes the temporal ground which sustains the possibility of dramatizing history's renewal' (17). 20 Other efforts, such as those of Mastrobuono and Schnapp, enter more directly into the typical palinodic scheme: Dante's theological perspective, which places the world sub specie aeternitatis, allows him to dominate the realm of history from outside and from above. 21 Cf. Ascoli 1991a: 187-92. Contini certainly treats Dante in this way, at least as far as linguistic historicity is concerned. One interesting current version of this sort of approach is the criticism that has followed the work of A.J. Minnis on developing notions of the author (see also the anthology of Minnis and Scott). Another, related trend has focused attention on developments in medieval genre theory that subtend Dante's use of the terms 'comedia' and 'tragedia' in the Comedy, the De vulgari eloquentia, and, if it is indeed his, the Letter to Cangrande (see Fertile and Baranski 1991 a and 1991b, as well as lannucci 1973). Mazzotta's placement of Dante in relation to the encyclopaedic tradition at least implicitly constructs a generative intellectual, if not political and social, context for the Commedia (1993:15-33), although the focus is on Dante's masterful synthesis and critique of the various texts and intellectual trends available to him. Also noteworthy are Corti 1981 and 1983, but also 1978. 22 For the case of Scott, see note 12 above. Durling and Martinez, who stress throughout the importance of the 'rime petrose' in the development of the 'microcosmic poetics' of the Commedia, make the important point that by reading the 'minor works,' in particular the 'rime petrose/ exclusively through the filter of a presumed palinode in the Commedia, and not on 'their own terms,' significant interpretive opportunities are lost and a reductive image of Dante's development is reinforced (esp. 2-6). 23 In this sense at least I share with Barolini 1992 the project of reading Dante 'rhetorically.' 24 See notes 7-8 above.

44 Albert Russell Ascoli 25 On the question of 'unfinishedness/ see Ascoli 1993: 49-50. 26 The Monarchia also plays an important role in Scott's critique of the theory of the palinode as applied to the Convivio. 27 For Nardi, see note 8 above. For the other positions, see Ricci; Shaw Qames]; and Took 147-51 and n8. See Scott for a succinct and cogent review of the question (270-2 and nn). 28 On the so-called 'double truth' espoused by the followers of Averroes, see Gilson 1938: esp. 54-63. On scholastic practices from Abelard on for the resolution of logical conflicts between various texts and auctores, see Panofsky, esp. 65-70 (I am indebted to my friend Ron Martinez for directing me to this work). 29 Cf. Ascoli 1993: 56; the relevant lines from the sonnet are cited in the notes of Vasoli to 4.3.6 in Dante Alighieri 1988: 544. 30 Quotations are from Dante Alighieri 1965. Translations are my own. 31 This is Nardi's opinion (1967:299), reinforced by Gilbert. See the entry under Tolitica' in the Enciclopedia dantesca, 585-6, for a convincing refutation. I have previously reviewed the question in Ascoli 1989: 38 and n39. 32 For historical background on Frederick, see Kantorowicz 1931; Van Cleve; and Abulafia. 33 Quotations are from Dante Alighieri 1979. Translations are my own. 34 All quotations and translations are from Dante Alighieri 1970-76. 35 Freccero (1961) offers an example of this type of argument, alternative to the palinodic hypothesis, in his discussion of apparent contradictions between Inferno 34 and the Quaestio de aqua et terra. 36 Scott (272) anticipates this point, though he sees no contradiction whatsoever between the Monarchia and the Commedia, which I have suggested is not strictly speaking the case.

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Palinode and History in the Oeuvre of Dante 47 Ferguson, Margaret. Trials of Desire: Renaissance Defenses of Poetry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Fido, Franco. 'Writing like God, or Better? - Symmetries in Dante's 26th and 27th Cantos.' Mica 63 (1986): 250-64. Foster, Kenelm. 'The Two Dantes.' In The Two Dantes and Other Studies. London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1977. Freccero, John. 1961. 'Satan's Fall and the Quaestio de aqua et terra.' Italica 38: 99-115. - 1966. 'Dante's Prologue Scene.' In Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, 1-28. First published 1966. - 1972. 'Medusa: The Letter and the Spirit.' In Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, 119-35. - 1973. 'Casella's Song (Purg. 11.112).' In Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, 186-94. First published 1973. - 1986. Dante: The Poetics of Conversion. Ed. Rachel Jacoff. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Gilbert, Allen. 'Had Dante Read the Politics of Aristotle?' PMLA 43 (1928): 606-13. Gilson, Etienne. 1938. Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner's. - 1949. Dante and Philosophy. Trans. D. Moore. New York: Harper and Row. Greene, Thomas M. The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. Harrison, Robert P. The Body of Beatrice. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988. Hawkins, Peter. Transfiguring the Text: Ovid, Scripture, and the Dynamics of Allusion.' Stanford Italian Review 5 (1985): 115-40. Hollander, Robert. 1968. 'Dante's Use of Aeneid I in Inferno I and II.' Comparative Literature 20:142-56. Rpt. in // Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella 'Commedia.' Florence: Olschki, 1983.117-54. - 1975. 'Purgatorio II: Cato's Rebuke and Dante's "Scoglio."' Studies in Dante. In the series LTnterprete, 16. Ravenna: Longo, 1980. 91-105. First published 1975. - 1990. 'Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old.' Lectura Dantis 6: 28-45. lannucci, Amilcare A. 1973. 'Dante's Theories of Genres and the Divine Comedy.' Dante Studies 91:1-25. - 1981. 'Autoesegesi dantesca: la tecnica dell' "episodio parallelo" (Inferno XV-Purgatorio XI).' In Forma ed evento nella 'Divina Commedia.' Rome: Bulzoni, 1984. 83-114. First published 1981. - 1990. 'Casella's Song and the Tuning of the Soul.' Thought 65: 27-46.

48 Albert Russell Ascoli Jacoff, Rachel. 1977. The Poetry of Guido Cavalcanti.' Diss. Yale University. Abstract in DAI 39 (1978): 1620A. - 1980. 'The Post-Palinodic Smile: Paradiso VIII and IX.' Dante Studies 98: 111-22. - ed. 1993. The Cambridge Companion to Dante. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jacoff, Rachel, and Jeffrey T. Schnapp, eds. The Poetics of Allusion: Virgil and Ovid in Dante's 'Commedia.' Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991. Kantorowicz, Ernst. 1931. Frederick the Second, 1194-1250. New York: Richard Smith. - 1957. The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kristeva, Julia. Semeiotike: recherches pour une semanalyse. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1969. Leo, Ulrich. 'The Unfinished Convivio and Dante's Rereading of the Aeneid.' Medieval Studies 13 (1951): 41-64. Martinez, Ronald L. 1977. 'Dante, Statius, and the Earthly City.' Diss. University of California at Santa Cruz. Abstract in DAI 38 (1978): 6707A. - 1991. 'Dante Embarks Arnaut.' NEMLA Italian Studies 15: 5-28. Mastrobuono, Antonio. Essays on Dante's Philosophy of History. Florence: Olschki, 1979. Mazzotta, Giuseppe. 1972. 'Dante's Literary Typology.' MLN 87:1-19. - 1979. Dante, Poet of the Desert: History and Allegory in the 'Divine Comedy.' Princeton: Princeton University Press. - 1993. Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mengaldo, Pier Vincenzo. Linguistica e retorica di Dante. Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1978. Minnis, A.J. Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984. Minnis, A.J., and A.B. Scott. Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism, c. 1100-c. 1375: The Commentary Tradition. Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1988. Nardi, Bruno. 1942. Dante e la cultura medioevale. Bari: Laterza. - 1944. 'Dalla prima alia seconda Vita nuova.' In Nel mondo di Dante. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. 3-20. First published 1942 as 'S'ha da credere a Dante o ai suoi critici.' - 1960. Dal 'Convivio' alia 'Commedia.' Fasc. 35-9 in the series Studi Storici. Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano. - 1966. 'Filosofia e teologia ai tempi di Dante.' Saggi e note difilosofia dantesca. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi.

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1967. Saggi difilosofia dantesca. 2nd ed. Florence: La Nuova Italia. 1st ed. 1930. Panofsky, Erwin. Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism. Cleveland and New York: Meridian Books, 1957. Fertile, Lino.''Canto-cantica-Comedla e 1'Epistola a Cangrande.' Lectura Dantis 9 (1991): 105-23. Phillippy, Patricia . 'Love's Remedies: Palinodic Discourse in Renaissance Literature.' Diss. Yale 1990. Abstract in DAI 51 (1990): 843A. Pietrobono, Luigi. 1932. 'II rifacimento della Vita nuova e le due fasi del pensiero dantesco.' In Saggi danteschi. Turin: Nuova Biblioteca Italiana, 1954. First published 1932. - 1938. 'Filosofia e teologia nel Convivio e nella Commedia.' Giornale dantesco 41: 13-71. Quint, David. Origin and Originality in Renaissance Literature: Versions of the Source. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Ransom, Daniel J. 'Panis Angelorum: A Palinode in the Paradiso.' Dante Studies 95 (1977): 81-94. Ricci, Pier Giorgio. 'Introduzione.' Monarchia. Vol. 5 of Le opere di Dante Alighieri. Verona: Mondadori, 1965. Schnapp, Jeffrey T. The Transfiguration of History at the Center of Dante's 'Paradise.' Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986 Scott, John. 'Dante and Philosophy.' Annali d'italianistica 8 (1990): 258-77. Segre, Cesare. 'Intertestualita e interdiscorsivita nel romanzo e nella poesia.' In Romanzo e teatro: due tipi di comunicazione letteraria. Turin: Einaudi, 1984. 103-18. First published 1979. Shapiro, Marianne. 'De vulgari eloquentia': Dante's Book of Exile. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Shaw [James], Prudence. 'Sul testo della Monarchia.' Studi danteschi 53 (1981): 181-217. Shearman, John. Always Connect: Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Shoaf, R.A. Dante, Chaucer, and the Currency of the Word. Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1983. Singleton, Charles S. 1949. An Essay on the 'Vita Nuova.' Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. - 1954. Dante Studies 1: Elements of Structure. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. - 1956. Dante Studies 2: Journey to Beatrice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. - 1966. The Vistas in Retrospect.' MLN 81: 55-80.

50 Albert Russell Ascoli Sowell, Madison, ed. Dante and Ovid: Essays in Intertextuality. Binghamton, N.Y.: MRTS, 1991. Stillinger, Thomas Clifford. The Song ofTroilus: Lyric Authority in the Medieval Book. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. Sturm-Maddox, Sara. "The Rime Petrose and the Purgatorial Palinode.' Studies in Philology 84 (1987): 119-31. Tambling, Jeremy. Dante and Difference: Writing in the 'Commedia.' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Took, John. Dante, Lyric Poet and Philosopher: An Introduction to the Minor Works. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Trovato, Mario. 1988. "Dante and the Tradition of the Two Beatitudes/ In Cherchi and Mastrobuono, eds., Lectura Dantis Newberryana, 19-36. - 1990a. 'Dante's Poetics of Good: From Phenomenology to Integral Realism.' Annali d'italianistica 8: 231-56. - 1990b. 'Dante's Stand against "errore de 1'umana bontade": Bonum, Nobility and the Rational Soul in the Fourth Treatise of the Convivio.' Dante Studies 108: 79-96. Van Cleve, Thomas Curtis. The Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen: Immutator Mundi. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. Wetherbee, Winthrop. 1984. '"Per te poeta fui, per te cristiano": Dante, Statius, and the Narrator of Chaucer's Troilus.' In Vernacular Poetics in the Middle Ages. Ed. Lois Ebin. Vol. 16 in the series Studies in Medieval Culture. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications. 153-76. - 1988. 'Dante and the Thebaid of Statius.' In Cherchi and Mastrobuono, eds., Lectura Dantis Newberryana, 71-92.

Dante and the Classics MICHELANGELO PICONE

i The first canto of the Inferno could well serve as the starting point of our discussion of Dante and the classical tradition, since it is the canto which performs the essential macrotextual function of acting as prologue to the entire Commedia. The scene described in this canto is one which also opens many allegorical narratives and tales of chivalry: the protagonist, the character who says T,' finds himself in a 'dark wood' [selva oscura] after having lost the 'straight path' [diritta via]. Attempting to find a way out of this dolorous place, the T reaches the slopes of a 'hill' [colle], illuminated by the light of the sun. Reassured at having found the 'straight path/ which is shown to him by the sun ([il] 'pianeta / che mena dritto altrui per ogni calle') [that same planet / which serves to lead men straight along all roads (Inf. 1.17-18)], the T begins his ascent of the hill. However, his upward progress is suddenly blocked by the menacing presence of three savage beasts, which drive him back in the direction of the wood from which he has just extricated himself with such difficulty. At this moment of high drama for the T - who seems to have lost the 'straight path' and despairs of being able to reach the top of the hill - something unexpected happens. In the terminology of romance, we could say that the T embarks on an adventure: Mentre ch'i' rovinava in basso loco, dinanzi a li occhi mi si fu offerto chi per lungo silenzio parea fioco. (Inf. 1.61-3) [While I retreated down to lower ground,

52 Michelangelo Picone before my eyes there suddenly appeared one who seemed faint because of the long silence.l

The adventure of this T is thus an encounter on the lonely slope' [piaggia diserta] (i.e., the place between the wood and the hill) with someone who will help him to escape from the impasse, someone who will enable him to overcome the obstacle of the three savage beasts and to begin his journey to salvation. This saviour and helper introduces himself a moment later, saying: Poeta fui, e cantai di quel giusto figliuol d'Anchise che venne di Troia, poi ch '1 superbo Ilion fu combusto. (Inf. 1.73-5) [I was a poet, and I sang the righteous son of Anchises who had come from Troy when flames destroyed the pride of Ilium.]

The saviour is thus a poet, more precisely, the poet who recounted the heroic adventures of Aeneas after the destruction of Troy. It is important here to notice that Virgil is evoked through the allusion to the proem of the Aeneid: 'Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris / Italiam ... venit' [Arms I sing and the man who first from the coasts of Troy... came to Italy (Aeneid 1.1-2)]. In this way. the romanesque epiphany is transformed into cultural echo. In other words, the Dantesque text suddenly conjures up the Virgilian intertext: the author (auctor) of the modern comedia suddenly establishes a privileged dialogue with the author of the Aeneid, of the classical 'alta tragedia' [high tragedy]. At this point it is necessary to make one thing clear. Dante's encounter with Virgil in the first canto of the Inferno is not accidental, but rather the consequence of a literary rapport. This becomes very clear in the following verses, where Dante reveals some details of his own cultural formation in response to the earlier revelation by the Latin author: 'O de li altri poeti onore e lume, vagliami '1 lungo studio e '1 grande amore che m'ha fatto cercar lo tuo volume. Tu se' lo mio maestro e '1 mio autore, tu se' solo colui da cu' io tolsi lo bello stilo che m'ha fatto onore. (Inf. 1. 82-7)

Dante and the Classics 53 ['O light and honor of all other poets, may my long study and the intense love that made me search your volume serve me now. You are my master and my author, you the only one from whom my writing drew the noble style for which I have been honored.]

This is a crucial moment if one is to understand the relationship not just between Dante and Virgil but between Dante and the entire classical tradition. In fact, the T seems to recognize in Virgil the only source of inspiration ('tu se' solo colui da cu' io tolsi / lo bello stilo') for his literary production up to the year 1300. Thus Virgil becomes the classical poet under whose exclusive auctoritas (authority) is placed that part of Dante's early work which is most stylistically elevated. Clearly we are dealing with the deliberate historical manipulation of a literary career since Dante's most serious early work, the Vita nuova, is not influenced by Virgil, but, as we shall see, by Ovid. This problematic substitution of Virgil for Ovid is not to be explained with a narrow interpretation of verse 87, the sort of interpretation which links 'lo bello stilo che m'ha fatto onore/ not so much with the love poetry of the Vita nuova, as with the allegorical-moral poetry of the great doctrinal canzoni which gathered around the encyclopaedic project of the Convivio. In effect, Dante always attributes the cultural substratum underlying the T's choice to undertake a journey into the afterlife, and therefore the reason which justifies his encounter with Virgil (at least from Inferno 2 to the Earthly Paradise), to the writing of the Vita nuova and never to the Convivio. In this way the Commedia, which from one perspective can be seen as the fulfilment of the Vita nuova, the definitive exaltation of Beatrice, from another can be construed as the palinode of the Convivio, a recantation of the philosophical journey governed solely by human reason. I think the solution to this problem should be sought instead in the change of poetic direction, and of literary genre, which took place between the Vita nuova and the Commedia: with the poema sacro Dante moves from the style of autobiography and of instruction in love to that of heroic epic. He passes therefore from the Ovidian model he followed in the Vita nuova to the Virgilian model demanded by the Commedia. It is a rhetorical and stylistic evolution sufficient to provoke the eclipse of Ovid as an authoritative figure in the Commedia, and to mark the emergence of Virgil.1 The verses we have just read also demonstrate how aware Dante was of the fact that the appearance of Virgil at the beginning of the Commedia

54 Michelangelo Picone would come as a complete surprise to his readers. In verse 63, in fact, Virgil is described as a person surrounded by silence ('chi per lungo silenzio parea fioco' [one who seemed faint because of the long silence]), as one who, through habitual silence, seems to have lost the ability to speak to others. Nowadays, as has been justly observed (in an important article by G.C. Alessio and C. Villa),2 this verse is comprehensible only in historico-cultural terms: Virgil is 'faint' [fioco] because his work was unknown in the thirteenth century, because in the century which ended with Dante's voyage his poetry was effectively dead. The auctor who made Virgil silent in the course of the thirteenth century is, naturally, Ovid. However, in the spring of 1300 Dante undertook to restore to Virgil his lost voice, and he did so in a way which was revolutionary for his time. As his guide on the journey which would take him to the top of the 'sacro monte' [sacred mountain] of Purgatory, Dante chose not the expected Ovid (whom his master Brunetto Latini had already selected in the Tesoretto),3 but the improbable Virgil. As a result, the year 1300 should have signalled, according to Dante, the moment of passage from the reading of Ovid to the reading of Virgil, a historical distinction between the age of Ovid (aetas ovidiana), which was coming to an end, and the age of Virgil (aetas virgiliana), which was just dawning. Though certainly valid on the level of literary theory, this observation does need qualification on the level of textual practice. I mean that the passage from Ovid to Virgil in terms of poetic program does not imply a marginalization of the Ovidian model, when it comes to literary composition. Quite the contrary, Ovid, dethroned as guide and almost absent as a character in the Commedia, obtains his revenge by becoming the secret but continual inspiration of Dante's new epic style. Even more than the Aeneid, in fact, the Metamorphoses is the privileged classical intertext with which the Commedia finds itself continuously in dialogue.4 II

The relations between Dante and the classical tradition, to the extent that we have been able to establish them through an analysis of the prologue of the Commedia, now need to be studied in their diachronic dimension, that is, in terms of their complex historical development. The perspective from which we shall examine this development is that of the canon of auctoresf the changes Dante introduced into the canon in the course of his literary career, from the Vita nuova through the De vulgari eloquentia and the Convivio to the Commedia, will be important evidence in our attempt

Dante and the Classics 55 to understand the new and different judgment which he passed on the classical world and the different function which from time to time he attributed to it. We find the first Dantean canon of auctores formulated in chapter 25 of the Vita nuova in an important 'digression' in which the question of the nature and representation of love6 is broached. In the course of the book, Love is treated not as an 'accident' but as a 'substance.' Love is seen walking, laughing, and talking: that is, it performs actions typical of a person. However, such personification seems contrary to the philosophic truth that love is not in itself a substance at all, but an accident in a substance' [che Amore non e per se si come sustanzia, ma e uno accidente in sustanzia (VN 25.1)]. Why has the author of the Vita nuova committed this infraction against truth? The answer is to be found in the word tradition: he has treated Love as a substance because such licence is supported by literary tradition. In chapter 25.3 Dante makes a distinction within the tradition: he distinguishes between those who speak in the vulgar language ('dicitori in lingua volgare') and those who speak of love in the Latin language ('dicitori d'amore in lingua latina'), between the Romance tradition and the classical one. There are numerous differences between the two traditions, differences of time, language, and culture,7 but the decisive difference for settling the question under discussion is that presented in chapter 25.7. Here Dante openly acknowledges that the classical poets were used as models by their vernacular descendants. This means that if the classical poets availed themselves of rhetorical devices (and, in particular, personification) in their work, then it is permissible for writers in the vulgar tongue to do the same. They too can use personification ('onde, se alcuna figura o colore rettorico e conceduto a li poete [classici], conceduto e a li rimatori [romanzi]') [therefore if any figure of speech or rhetorical colour is permitted to Latin poets it is permitted also to those who write in rhyme (VN 25.7)]. We find here clearly stated the principle of imitatio (imitation) of classical poetry on the part of modern poetry. Modern poets can use all the many types of rhetorical personification (those which are discussed in chapter 25.8) because the classical poets did so before them. It is important to remember, however, the point which Dante adds to the end of this same chapter: Romance poets may have recourse, like their classical forebears, to personification, 'ma non sanza ragione alcuna, ma con ragione la quale poi sia possibile d'aprire per prosa' [not, of course, without some justification, but with a reason that can later be made clear in prose (VN 25.8)]. The recourse to personification must therefore be

56 Michelangelo Picone motivated by a reason which can be clearly expressed in prose: since, as is confirmed in chapter 25.10, 'ne li poete [classici] parlavano cosi sanza ragione, ne quelli che rimano deono parlare cosi non avendo alcuno ragionamento in loro di quello che dicono' [the Latin poets did not write in this manner without good reason, nor should those who compose in rhyme, if they cannot justify what they say]. Thus the classical poets used personification implicitly, without openly acknowledging the reason for its use; the moderns, however, must show explicit knowledge of the reason underlying their employment of the same rhetorical figure. In fact, unlike the ancient poets, who did not have access to Christian revelation, and could not therefore declare openly the true significance of their fictions - a significance which was later made clear by the prose glosses of their Christian commentators - modern poets have an obligation to express the profound meaning of their creations, to reveal the 'ragione' hidden in the rhetorical figures they have used ('pero che grande vergogna sarebbe a colui che rimasse cose sotto vesta di figura o di colore rettorico, e poscia, domandato, non sapesse denudare le sue parole da cotale vesta, in guisa che avessero verace intendimento') [for it would be a disgrace if someone composing in rhyme introduced a figure of speech or rhetorical ornament, and then on being asked could not divest his words of such covering so as to reveal a true meaning (VN 25.10)]. Chapter 25 of the Vita nuova closes with a polemic against the literary practices of some Italian poets (the reference is directed above all against Guittone and his followers), who are called 'stolti' [clumsy]; they are limited precisely because they are incapable of providing an ideological framework for their poetic images. Elsewhere I have tried to demonstrate the fundamental importance of this passage, especially for the purpose of determining the cultural model in terms of which the prosimetrum, the alternating of prose and poetry, of the Vita nuova is constructed.8 This model is not, as most critics maintain, supplied by Boethius's .Consolation of Philosophy. Neither is it the Liederbucher of the troubadours, where the songs (cansos) of a given troubadour are accompanied by a biography and by razos (explanation). Rather this prestigious model, to which the young author of the Vita nuova turned, is to be identified with the classical liber: a book in which the poetic text of the author is accompanied by the necessary prose gloss of the Christian exegete. But who is the author Dante means to imitate in the Vita nuova? What is the classical 'book' that Dante wants to rewrite in his own little book'?

Dante and the Classics 57 To respond to this question we must analyse chapter 25.9, where Dante presents the first of the various lists of authors that punctuate his literary career. In this section Dante sets out the names of four classical authors, plus a fifth who is referred to indirectly. The first name is that of Virgil, from whose Aeneid he cites two passages to justify two different kinds of personification. The second is Lucan; a line from his Pharsalia is quoted as an example of political personification. Horace is the third; a verse from the Ars poetica - the invocation to the Muse which Horace took from Homer's Odyssey - exemplifies the metaliterary type of personification. The fourth and last name is that of Ovid; Dante cites the second line of the Remedia amoris, where a personified Love complains to the poet that he is writing a treatise against love: 'Per Ovidio parla Amore, si come se fosse persona umana, ne lo principio de lo Libro c'ha nome Libro di Remedio d'Amore, quivi: Bella michi, video, bella parantur, ait' [In Ovid, love speaks as though it were a human being, at the beginning of his book entitled De Remediis Amoris, where he says: 'Some fine things, I see, some really fine things are being cooked up here/ said he]. Thus Ovid is the specific author who justifies the use Dante makes of rhetorical figures in the Vita nuova. The Remedia amoris is the book which justifies Dante's personification of love in his own 'little book.'9 The classical intertext which the Vita nuova would rewrite in accordance with a modern ideological perspective is thus taken from the Remedia amoris. Two points need to be made here (in the light also of what I have said above). First of all, Dante's rewriting of Ovid is based on a reading of the classical author which is quite different from our reading of him today. That is, Dante read the Remedia in a manuscript which displayed the Ovidian text in the centre of the page, surrounded in all four margins by the prose text of the Christian commentators.10 The word book thus becomes for Dante a concept which encompasses poetic space and prose space, rhetorical imagining and exegetical-allegorical commentary. The second clarification concerns instead the imitatio of Ovid, which is transformed in the Vita nuova into full-fledged aemulatio (emulation). While the Ovidian Remedia must be accompanied by an exegetical apparatus (later in time and integrative in spirit) in order to bring out its latent Christian spirit, the Vita nuova, on the other hand, encompasses within it perfection of form as well as significance of content, classical beauty as well as Christian truth. But this is precisely the theory which Dante intended to illustrate by writing the Vita nuova; the modern 'little book' on the nature of Love has

58 Michelangelo Picone displaced the classical 'book' on the remedies of Love. That is to say, the Romance poet has fulfilled and validated that which the Latin poet had only intuited. The imitatio which Dante exhibits with regard to Ovid is therefore inserted into a perspective which we call figural or typological. At the end of the Vita nuova Dante proves to have discussed in a definitive manner the central theme of Western poetry. He has integrated the theory of pagan love (eros) into the vision of Christian charity (caritas). Ill

In the De vulgari eloquentia too the classical poets are indicated as masters of rhetoric and as peerless stylistic models. In short, they are perfect paradigms which the modern poet must follow if he is to acquire his own measure of authority, his own auctoritas.11 In the Latin treatise, however, Dante insists on imitatio of the classical poets rather than on aemulatio. He concentrates more on the need of the modern poets to model their work formally on that of their classical predecessors than on the ideological superiority of the former over the latter. Thus we find in Dante an attitude we could characterize as 'classicist'; it is an attitude which will make its way into the Convivio too, but which will be rejected in the Commedia. In the course of the De vulgari eloquentia, Dante mentions Virgil three times, Ovid twice, and Lucan, Horace, and Statius once each. Let us note at once that while Virgil seems to enjoy a slight advantage over Ovid, a new name - that of Statius - has been introduced into the canon of auctores. Both of these facts will be decisive in Dante's later elaboration of the canon. Dante sets forth a true and proper canon in the sixth chapter of the second book of the De vulgari eloquentia. In this chapter Dante supplies a list of models worthy of imitation for 'gradum constructionis excellentissimum/ that is, in order to create poetry at the highest possible linguistic and stylistic level. That is why, after mentioning a substantial number of Romance poets (five troubadours, from Giraut de Bornelh to Aimeric de Peguilhan, a trouvere, Thibaut de Champagne, and four Italian poets, including Guido delle Colonne and Cino da Pistoia), and after mentioning himself (the canzone 'Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona'), Dante sets forth a list of Latin auctores: Et fortassis utilissimum foret ad illam habituandam regulates vidisse poetas, Virgilium videlicet, Ovidium Metamorfoseos, Statium atque Lucanum ... (2.6.7)

Dante and the Classics 59 [And, to familiarize oneself with this construction, it would perhaps be most useful to look at the poets who follow the rules [of art], meaning Virgil, Ovid in the Metamorphoses, Statius, and Lucan ...]

Here we have four Latin poets, all masters of the epic form, summoned up to support the suprema constructio of the canzone. The lyric Romance canzone is thus projected against the backdrop of classical epic; it is an impulse which will reach fruition in the Commedia. After listing a smaller number of prose auctores (including writers on universal history such as Titus Livius, Frontinus, and Paulus Orosius, and an encyclopaedic writer, Pliny the Elder), Dante concludes this chapter of the De vulgari eloquentia in exactly the same way as he concluded chapter 25 of the Vita nuova with a polemic directed against Guittone and his followers, whom he accuses of 'plebescere.' That is, these poets have never tried to imitate the classics, and therefore they have never overcome their own parochial culture. When we go on to analyse the Convivio, we realize very quickly that the number of classical auctores referred to has risen significantly. Contrary to what critics often maintain, this broadening of the canon is a consequence, not so much of the mature Dante's greater familiarity with the classics, as of the encyclopaedic nature of the undertaking, which necessitated a larger structure of authoritative sources.12 In the Convivio all the classical authors cited in the earlier works reappear, with the addition of the satiric poet Juvenal. In the Convivio, however, the poets have become a small minority in comparison to the philosophers and scientists of the ancient world. Against the seven classical poets we can set the names of twenty or so prose writers. Among them are pure philosophers (Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, and Cicero) and philosopher-scientists (Ptolemy, Pythagoras, Euclid, and Democritus). For the purpose of this analysis it is sufficient to examine a single passage of the Convivio. It is, however, a passage particularly useful in demonstrating the evolution of the canon of auctores in Dante. We are referring to chapters 25 to 28 of the fourth book, where Dante puts forward a canon limited to four Latin poets, each of whom examines a different stage in human life. The first stage is adolescence, whose characteristic virtues (wonder, modesty, and shyness) are exemplified in an episode which the 'sweet poet' Statius recounts in the first book of the Thebaid (the presentation of Polynices and Tydeus to King Adrastus). The second is youth, which is placed under the auctoritas of 'our major poet,' Virgil: the virtues of this

60 Michelangelo Picone age (love, courtesy, loyalty, strength, and temperance) are emblazoned in the character of Aeneas, as presented to us in the fourth, fifth, and sixth books of the Aeneid. The third stage is old age, 'senettute/ of which the characteristic virtues are prudence, justice, generosity, and affability. The magister who is summoned to offer pertinent examples of these virtues is Ovid in his myth of Aeacus and Cephalus, contained in the 'settimo Metamorfoseos/ The last stage is 'senio,' senility. To describe the virtues of this period of life Dante calls on the 'grande poeta' Lucan, and in particular the episode in the second book of the Pharsalia, where he tells of the return of Marcia, after the death of Hortensius, to her first husband, Cato. (This return prefigures allegorically the return of the soul to God at the end of life.)13 In this canon one senses that a certain pre-eminence is accorded to Virgil, since he is the poet of the formative period of man's life, and to Ovid, as the poet of full human maturity. At a lower level on the authorial scale, we find Statius and Lucan, poets linked to the marginal periods of a man's life, adolescence and senility respectively. But there is another important element which emerges from this canon in the Convivio, and it has to do with the way in which Dante uses the classical authoritative texts. Here Dante does not challenge his auctores but limits himself to ranking the quotations from their works within an encyclopaedic Christian system. For him there does not seem to be a rupture between pagan truth and Christian truth, but continuity. Thus the classical fables and myths are fully capable of being restored to modern learning. IV

The passage from the Convivio to the Commedia, or rather, the interruption of the Convivio for the composition of the Commedia, allows for the refusal of the encyclopaedic-philosophical mentality underlying the treatise and the acceptance of the encyclopaedic-stylistic mentality in terms of which the sacred poem is articulated. The compiler of rational truth is succeeded by the diffuser of poetic truth, directly inspired by the divine source. Further, the classicism of the De vulgari eloquentia and of the Convivio is followed by an anti-classical perspective, in the sense that the recovery of classical poetry is conditional on its complete translation and total rewriting in the language of Christianity. The idea of continuity between the ancient world and the modern world, advanced in the Convivio, gives way to the idea of discontinuity and rupture, as is manifested in the Commedia.14 As a consequence, in the Commedia Dante returns to the typological

Dante and the Classics 61 vision already developed in the Vita nuova: a vision which puts into perspective the poetic values articulated by the ancients and the moderns, and which shows the ideological limitations of classical poetry, and the necessity of its completion and validation by Romance poetry. The essential function of the canon of auctores in the Commedia seems therefore to be that of demonstrating the incompleteness of the classical world - the absence of full meaning, which can only be granted by the Christian world. This incompleteness is manifested in an emblematic manner in the figure of Virgil. The Latin poet, chosen as a guide for the protagonist precisely because of his high literary style, cannot go beyond certain limits of human and earthly knowledge. Beyond that point, he must be replaced by a guide who is better equipped from an ideological point of view. This incompleteness reveals a more tragic side in the character of Ulysses. The quest which the hero par excellence of the classical world undertakes is destined to conclude, not with the return to the true celestial homeland, but with shipwreck on the island of full human identification.15 In reality the Commedia sets out two groups of auctores: the canon contained in canto 4 of the Inferno has in fact a continuation in the canon presented in canto 22 of the Purgatorio. Such a division of the canon, which elsewhere is always undivided, and its dislocation into two different cantiche, is certainly part of a macrotextual strategy, and not an anecdotal exhibition of new literary awareness (which would have been garnered between the composition of the two works). In effect, we have here a typical example of the 'parallel episode/16 whereby the first canon is completed by the second, not from the point of view of cultural information but rather from the point of view of narrative structure and ideological significance. The encounter with the classical past in Limbo is thus replayed, but at a higher cognitive level, in the fifth circle of Purgatory, at which point the revealing encounter with Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise is imminent. Hence the two episodes correlate - the first announces the theme of the relation between classical poetry and Christian truth, between auctoritas and salvation, which is only brought to fruition in the second. The parallels between the two episodes are obvious: thus the close fit between the two canons. On the one hand, the episode in Limbo allows the agens to encounter the greatest poets of antiquity, who constitute the ^ella scola' led by Homer. It is an exclusive poetry club, which includes, in addition to Homer, and to Virgil, who makes the introductions, four other Latin poets:

62 Michelangelo Picone 'Mira colui con quella spada in mano, che vien dinanzi ai tre si come sire. Quelli e Omero poeta sovrano; 1'altro e Orazio satire che vene; Ovidio e '1 terzo, e 1'ultimo Lucano.' (Inf. 4.86-90) ['Look well at him who holds that sword in hand, who moves before the other three as lord. That shade is Homer, the consummate poet; the other one is Horace, satirist; the third is Ovid, and the last is Lucan.']

On the other hand, the episode in Purgatory permits the agens to justify a grave omission and to fill a striking lacuna in the preceding canon, that of the 'poeta regolato/ Statius. Not just the unspoken question concerning the fate of Statius in the afterlife, but also the question which lies buried in all the cantos which separate the first from the second canon finally can receive their surprising answer: Statius is saved. Not only is he saved, but he is also in itinere, like the protagonist, towards Paradise.17 The episode in Purgatory thus satisfies an immediate structural requirement, namely, that of closing the canon of auctores left open by the episode in Limbo. There is, however, a deeper requirement implied by the composition of this episode - the necessity of placing in perspective the poetic values represented by the auctores. With the five classical poets of the 'bella scola/ we are faced with incomplete values, but with Statius we find ourselves dealing with an absolute value. Statius is, in fact, the only classical writer who was capable of seeing the light of Christian revelation in poetic fiction, and who therefore succeeded in overcoming the tragic limitations of the classical world. In this connection it might be appropriate to mention how Statius managed to discover Christian faith. Perhaps here we have the key to the new significance which the Commedia attributes to the canon of auctores. It is after reading Virgil's fourth eclogue that Statius is converted to Christianity: Tacesti come quei che va di notte, che porta il lume dietro e se non giova, ma dopo se fa le persone dotte, quando dicesti: "Secol si rinova;

Dante and the Classics 63 torna giustizia e primo tempo umano, e progenie scende da ciel nova."' (Purg. 22.67-72) ['You did as he who goes by night and carries the light behind him - he is of no help to his own self but teaches those who follow when you declared: "The ages are renewed; justice and man's first time on earth return; from Heaven a new progeny descends."']

It is in the poetry of Virgil that Statius found the light which illuminated for him the way of returning to God, while Virgil, the torch-bearer, the guardian and bringer of the light, has not himself discovered the true way. This is the reason why Statius is saved and Virgil is not. Accompanied by the poet-pilgrim, Statius can reach the summit of Purgatory, Eden, while Virgil must remain in Limbo, a pale shadow of Eden. The encounter with Statius thus serves to make sense of the initial meeting with Virgil, and the episode in Purgatory allows us to better comprehend the episode in Limbo. There is another fundamental correspondence between the canon in the Inferno and the one in the Purgatorio; both canons close with the name of the modern poet, with the exaltation of Dante himself. This theme of selfglorification was already clearly articulated in canto 4 of the Inferno, where we see the group of five classical poets enlarged to include the poetpilgrim: e piu d'onore ancora assai mi fenno, ch'e' si mi fecer de la loro schiera, si ch'io fui sesto tra cotanto senno. (Inf. 4.100-2) [and even greater honour then was mine, for they invited me to join their ranks I was the sixth among such intellects.]

Such an inclusion of the Romance poet in the list of Greek and Latin poets can be explained fully only at the moment of the encounter with Statius. In fact, it is only through this meeting with the pagan author turned Christian through a poetic reading of Virgil - a reading enhanced by allegorical hermeneutics - that Dante can gauge the distance that

64 Michelangelo Picone separates modern poetry from classical, and in particular Virgilian, poetry. It is not an accident that this crucial encounter with Statius constitutes the prelude to the separation of Dante from Virgil, and to the substitution of Beatrice for Virgil as guide for the voyage to Paradise. Canto 22 of the Purgatorio, along with the preceding one, contains not just the addition of Statius to the canon of auctores but also a small canon of its own. This one is put forward as an alternative to the main canon suggested in canto 4 of the Inferno and completed here in cantos 21 and 22 of the Purgatorio. Statius is interested in learning from Virgil the exact location in Hell of the four Latin auctores: 'dimmi dov'e Terrenzio nostro antico, Cecilio e Plauto e Varro, se lo sai: dimmi se son dannati, ed in qual vico.' (Purg. 22.97-9) ['where is our ancient Terence, and Caecilius and Plautus, where is Varius, if you know; tell me if they are damned, and in what quarter.']

Virgil responds, telling Statius of the resting place in Limbo of not just the four poets mentioned, but also countless other figures from ancient poetry, whether authors or characters: 'Costoro e Persio e io e altri assai/ rispuose il duca mio, 'siam con quel Greco che le Muse lattar piu ch'altri mai, nel primo cinghio del carcere cieco; spesse fiate ragioniam del monte che sempre ha le nutrici nostre seco. Euripide v'e nosco e Antifonte, Simonide, Agatone e altri piue Greci che gia di lauro ornar la fronte.' (Purg. 22.100-8) ['All these and Persius, I, and many others/ my guide replied, 'are with that Greek to whom the Muses gave their gifts in greatest measure. Our place is the blind prison, its first circle; and there we often talk about the mountain where those who were our nurses always dwell. Euripides is with us, Antiphon,

Dante and the Classics 65 Simonides, and Agathon, as well as many other Greeks who once wore laurel.']

Thus Virgil reiterates, for the exclusive benefit of Statius, the life of the 'spiriti rnagni' of Limbo; that is, he repeats a situation which has already been described in canto 4 of the Inferno. All are repeated here - the list of auctores and heroes (even though the names are different); the 'poeta sovrano/ Homer; the discussions on poetic themes. However, the thematic repetition of superficial things conceals a profound ideological difference. Dante explores the same theme as he did in Limbo, but in a completely new way. This new attitude is immediately discernible in the canon of auctores. The canon in canto 4 of the Inferno focused on the genre of tragedy, and was dominated by Virgil. The canon in canto 22 of the Purgatorio is based on comedy, and is dominated by Terence. Virgil and Terence are therefore representative of tragic and comic poetry respectively. The compositional strategy which Dante unfolds here is clear. On the one hand, he assigns to the 'tragic' cantica of lost souls the task of illustrating the classical models of high style, both epic (Virgil, Lucan, and Ovid) and satiric (Horace). On the other, he uses the 'comic' cantica of souls who have been saved to illustrate the models of the low style, both comic (Terence, Caecilius, and Plautus) and satiric (Persius, a follower of Horace, and Juvenal, who appeared a little earlier in the canto). A similar dislocation of the comic auctores with respect to the tragic holds obvious macrotextual value; its purpose is to direct the reader's attention towards the genre of narrative to which the poema sacro belongs. The Commedia itself is therefore implied in this catalogue. In the Commedia one detects not just the imitatio of classical models but also the aemulatio, the overcoming of the limits of ancient Latin comedy: the modern comic poet, Dante, has overcome 'Terrenzio nostro antico.' In this way the purgatorial canon takes part in the literary challenge which circulates in other areas of the poema sacro. It is a challenge launched by the modern auctor against the classical auctores for supremacy in the field of poetic experimentation. V

To conclude my analysis I shall attempt to better establish the place which the various classical poets occupy within the Commedia. That is, I shall try to define the system of auctores and the hierarchy of authorial values put forward by Dante in his poem.

66 Michelangelo Picone Even before Dante there had been attempts, within the sphere of scholastic enterprises and elsewhere, to elaborate orderly and comprehensive catalogues of ancient authors - catalogues which assigned to each writer pre-eminence in a literary genre and style, or which identified the work of an author with a certain phase of man's life. (It was a trend which, as we have seen, led to the Convivio.)18 However, the Middle Ages had also set out an analogical relationship between the classical poets and the prophets of the Old Testament. Just as the prophets had foretold the words of Christ, so classical writers had a certain premonition of Christian truth. (Typical in this regard was the reception of Virgil's fourth eclogue.) In the Commedia Dante returns to and develops precisely this hermeneutical tendency. Further, we can say that in his poema sacro Dante inserts the usual analogical relationship between poets and prophets into a complex typological vision which is uniquely his own. For Dante, that is, the auctores are not just similar to the prophets; in the field of poetic experience, they fulfil a function identical to that of the prophets. The role carried out by the auctores in the literary tradition is exactly parallel to the role carried out by the prophets in the religious tradition, in the sense that the word of the ancient auctor anticipates the true poetic word, which only the modern auctor (to be specific, the poet of the Commedia) can articulate. To sum up, Dante subjects his canon of: auctores, both ancient and modern, to the same interpretative grid as the Church Fathers did when they read and commented on Holy Scripture.19 Poet of the mythic origins of Roman civilization, which later became Christian, Virgil represents the pivot in Dante's system of auctores. If the Middle Ages read the Aeneid above all in an allegorical-moral light, Dante read it in a typological light. This explains why Virgil appears in the first canto of the Inferno as the harbinger of Dante's voyage, as the voice of the ancient poet who opens the door to the modern poet.20 This also explains the fact that in the Commedia Aeneas is no longer an abstract moral type but rather a 'figura/ a personage who finds in the protagonist his completion, his definitive significance. When Dante has the words 'Io non Enea, io non Paulo sono' [For I am not Aeneas, am not Paul (32)] pronounced by his protagonist in the second canto of the Inferno, he wants to point out the necessity of subjoining the definition of the modern hero to that of the ancient hero. The protagonist of the Commedia is not Aeneas or even Paul, because he is both at the same time. He is Aeneas validated and completed by Saint Paul. In this manner the voyage which the protagonist undertakes through the other world is the point of intersection of Aeneas's journey to Hades and the voyage of Saint Paul to the third heaven. Thus

Dante and the Classics 67 the classical epic is rewritten from the perspective of Christian epic, and the Commedia definitively surpasses the Aeneid. It is the task of the historians, a label attached to Lucan by his reception in the Middle Ages, to determine Lucan's position in the Dantean canon ofauctores.21 In effect, in the Commedia Virgil and Lucan represent opposite poles of classical epic. If the Aeneid recounts the mythic origins of Rome, the Pharsalia describes rather the true history of Rome up to the moment of passage from republic to empire. On the one hand, there is \hefictio of Virgil, on which is modelled the otherworldly adventure of the agens; on the other hand, there is the historical truth of Lucan, to which Dante turns in order to represent the degraded reality of contemporary politics. While the Aeneid is the model for the Dantean voyage, the Pharsalia is the model for the tragic historical situation which is the cause of that voyage. The civil war between Caesar and the defenders of the republic thus becomes the scenery on which Dante can project contemporary history, characterized equally by divisions in society and the absence of political will. The Commedia does not limit itself, however, to presenting a modernized version of the Pharsalia; above all it tries to convey a profound sense of a historical condition which was prefigured by the Latin poet, rather than any final resolution. This allows the modern auctor to demonstrate his superiority over the ancient auctor. The place reserved for Ovid in the mosaic of auctores created in the Commedia turns out to be of great strategic importance.22 Ovid is called in to bridge the historical and cultural gap which separates the poem about origins, the Aeneid, from the poem about the historic achievement of Rome, the Pharsalia. Obviously the Ovid who is evoked here is no longer the poet of the corpus eroticum, but the poet of the Metamorphoses; it is 'Ovidio maggiore/ the greater Ovid. Dante attributes to the Metamorphoses, which opens with a pagan version of Genesis and closes with the deification of Caesar, a function which is radically different from the one assigned to it by other medieval readers. He no longer uses the poem as a dictionary of mythology, a complete but lifeless repertoire of stereotypical images, but rather as a vibrant tale to which one can turn for inspiration in describing the reality of the underworld. Thus the Metamorphoses becomes the classical intertext which is privileged in representing the characters and situations of Dante's vision. To begin with, it provides the model for the protagonist, whose complex personality is not reducible to the single dimension of the Virgilian hero (so we see the poet-pilgrim in the guise not just of the new Aeneas, but also of the new Icarus, the new Narcissus, the new Jason, etc.); then for the people he meets and the

68 Michelangelo Picone situations, no longer subjective but objective, offered by the voyage into the underworld; and finally for the formative course of the work, with its poetic myths (the Muses, Apollo, Orpheus, etc.), all of which follow the suggestion of the Ovidian poem. The placing of Horace in the Dantean canon of auctores (and in a position of honour, right after Homer and Virgil) has been the subject of discussion and the source of more than a little perplexity.23 We have already seen how, in the Vita nuova, Horace is presented as the greatest authority in the field of poetics and rhetoric. In the Commedia, on the other hand, Horace is no longer venerated for his competence as a theoretician but for his paradigms in the treatment of satiric material, in the poetic genre which takes as its purpose the castigation of human vices. This image of 'Horace the satirist' was certainly the most common way for the Latin auctor to be presented in the Middle Ages, and it is as a master of the low style that Dante lauds him in canto 4 of the Inferno. However, we must remember the second purgatorial canon, where the 'old' satire of Horace is displaced by the 'new' satire of Persius and Juvenal, and both are superseded by the 'newest' satire of Dante's Commedia. The work of Horace thus constitutes the first classical manifestation of the low style in which the poema sacro is written. We have already mentioned the exceptional position occupied by Statius in the canon of auctores put forward in the Commedia.24 Statius is, in fact, the mediator between the pagan world and the Christian world. He is the classical poet who, through his conversion to Christianity, shows the other classical poets (notably Virgil) the path that leads to revealed truth. The mediating role attributed to Statius has at least two important consequences. The first has to do with the ancient auctores. Statius is the proof for Dante that the classical world had in it the spiritual means to reach the threshold of revelation. The second consequence has to do with the modern auctor, Dante himself. For the poet of the Commedia, Statius becomes the reflecting mirror in which Dante sees his own poetic personality, his ultimate authorial stature. In effect, the appearance of Statius near the summit of Purgatory marks the beginning of the history of Romance poetry, a history which stretches from Bonagiunta da Lucca through Guido Guinizzelli to the poetic coronation of Dante, first through the words of Virgil and then in those of Beatrice. The Christianity of Statius, though hidden, becomes in this way the first step of a long journey which leads Western poetry to recognize in Dante its most authentic and fully realized auctor.

Dante and the Classics 69 Notes This essay was translated from the Italian by Susan lannucci. 1 For a more detailed discussion of this problem, and for a bibliography, see my essay 'L'Ovidio di Dante.' On the relations between Dante and classical authors, apart from the entry 'classica (cultura)' in the Enciclopedia dantesca, which was written by M. Pastore Stocchi, see the works of Moore, Ronconi, Gmelin, Renucci, Paratore, Padoan, and Barolini, and Hollander's 'Dante's Commedia and the Classical Tradition.' For the dissemination of works by classical authors in the thirteenth century, see the essays by Rand and Wieruszowski, and Bruni's 'Boncompagno da Signa.' 2 For the reception of Virgil in the Middle Ages, besides the classic study by Comparetti, consult the very recent essay by C. Leonardi under 'Medioevo' in the Enciclopedia virgiliana. 3 'Poi mi tornai da canto, / e in un ricco manto / vidi Ovidio maggiore, / che gli atti dell'amore, / che son cosi diversi, / rasembra 'n motti e versi' [Then I turned from all this, / And in a rich mantle / I saw great Ovid, / Who collected and put into verse / The acts of love, / Which are so diverse] (vv. 2357-62). 4 My paper 'L'Ovidio di Dante,' cited in the first note, discusses this issue. 5 On the canon of auctores in the Middle Ages, Curtius's seminal book, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, 18-19,48-54, and 260-4 especially, remains invaluable. For the Dantean canon, besides the essays cited in the following notes, see Mazzoni 136-41, Brugnoli 49-53, and Alessio and Villa 19-21. 6 For the problems of the Vita nuova in general, see De Robertis in Dante Alighieri, Opere minori, vol. 1, part 1,171-8; for a more detailed analysis of the cultural context of the chapter, see Tateo 51-75, and Trevi. 7 The first difference has to do with epoch: while the classical tradition is ancient ('anticamente [...] erano dicitori d'amore certi poeti in lingua latina') [there were authors who wrote on love, namely, certain poets who composed in Latin (VN 25.3)], the Romance tradition is more recent. It dates from 'one hundred and fifty years' before the Vita nuova (25.4). The second difference is one of language: the classical tradition is expressed in 'grammatical language' (Latin), while the Romance tradition uses the vernacular ('in lingua d'oco e in quella di si') [in the langue d'oc and in the lingua del si (VN 25.4)]. The third difference is socio-cultural: the classical tradition is clerical and the Romance tradition is not, as can be seen in the fact that it is

70 Michelangelo Picone directed to a feminine public: 'e lo primo che comincio a dire si come poeta volgare, si mosse pero che voile fare intendere le sue parole a donna, a la quale era malagevole d'intendere li versi latini' [the first to write as a vernacular poet was moved to do so because he wished to make his verses intelligible to a lady who found it difficult to understand Latin (VN 25.5)]. 8 See Dante e le forme dell'allegoresi, 59-69. 9 For the diffusion of the Remedia amoris in medieval culture, see Pellegrin. 10 Pare-Brunet-Tremblay's work is crucial to an understanding of medieval reading of the classics. For the reading of Scripture, which functions as a kind of model for the reading of the classics, Smalley's book is most important; for the reading of the philosophers, Jeauneau's work is indispensable. 11 For the problems of interpretation of the De vulgari eloquentia, see the commentary by Mengaldo, in Dante Alighieri, Opere minori, vol. 2; on the value of imitatio in this work, see Schiaffini. 12 For the problem of cultural formation, and of the literary and philosophical sources of the Convivio, see the important commentary by Vasoli, in Dante Alighieri, Opere minori, vol. 1, part 2. 13 Dante will take up this episode at a crucial moment in the Commedia, in canto 1 of the Purgatorio, this time giving it not an allegorical-moral reading but rather a typological one; on this point, see Auerbach, 218-20. 14 It is significant that the same opposition of continuity and discontinuity characterizes the modern critical debate about medieval culture. If Curtius, in his book on European literature and the Latin Middle Ages, maintains (on the basis of the theory of iopoi) the idea of uninterrupted continuity between ancient civilization and medieval civilization, Auerbach, on the other hand, upholds the opposite idea in his essays on Dante. He believes that the coming of Christ radically altered the destiny of mankind and the traditional ways of describing that destiny. 15 For Dante's reading of the myth of Ulysses, see Picone, 'Dante, Ovidio, e il mito di Ulisse/ 16 On the value and use of this hermeneutic technique in the Commedia, see lannucci, 83-114. 17 For a typological reading of canto 22 of the Purgatorio, see my lectura in Dante's 'Divine Comedy': Introductory Readings: 'Purgatorio/ edited by T. Wlassics. 18 In addition to Curtius's book, cited above, for the medieval canon of auctores, see Glauche (including the bibliography); Bruni's 'Modelli in contrasto' is also important. 19 Most important is Auerbach's essay, Tigura/ in Studi su Dante, 174-226. On

Dante and the Classics 71 Dante's typological reading of the auctores, Pepin is also important. (A synthesis of this work is included in the entry on 'allegoria' in the Enciclopedia dantesca.) 20 In addition to the essays already indicated in note 2, see Hollander, // Virgilio dantesco, and Jacoff and Schnapp, The Poetry of Allusion. 21 For the reception of Lucan in the Middle Ages, the work of von Moos is indispensable. 22 For information, including bibliographical information, on the connections between Dante and Ovid, see my article cited in note 1. For a more recent bibliography, see, in addition to The Poetry of Allusion, Dante and Ovid, edited by Sowell. 23 See the entry on 'Orazio' in the Enciclopedia dantesca. 24 See my article cited in note 17.

Bibliography Alessio, Gian Carlo, and Claudia Villa. 'Per Inferno I, 67-87.' Vestigia: studi in onore di Giuseppe Billanovich. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1984. 1-21. Alighieri, Dante. La Commedia secondo I'antica vulgata. Ed. G. Petrocchi. 4 vols. Milano: Mondadori, 1966-7. - The Divine Comedy. Trans. Allan Mandelbaum. New York: Bantam, 1986. - // Convivio (The Banquet). Trans. Richard H. Lansing. New York: Garland, 1990. - De Vulgari Eloquentia (On Eloquence in the Vernacular). Trans. Robert S. Haller. In Literary Criticism of Dante Alighieri. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1977. - Opere minori. Ed. P.V. Mengaldo et al. Vol. 2. Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi, 1979. - Opere minori. Ed. D. De Robertis and G. Contini. Vol. 1, part 1. MilanoNapoli: Ricciardi, 1984. - Opere minori. Ed. C. Vasoli and D. De Robertis. Vol. 1, part 2. Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi, 1988. - La Vita Nuova (Poems of Youth). Trans, and introd. Barbara Reynolds. London: Penguin, 1969. Auerbach, Eric. Studi su Dante. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1963. Barolini, Teodolinda. Dante's Poets: Textuality and Truth in the Comedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Brugnoli, Giorgio. Per suo richiamo. Pisa: Opera Universitaria, 1981. Bruni, Francesco. 'Modelli in contrasto e modelli settoriali nella cultura medie-

72 Michelangelo Picone vale.' Strumenti critici 14 (1980): 1-59. Rpt. in Testi e chierid del Medievo. Geneva: Marietti, 1991. 43-70. - 'Boncompagno da Signa, Guido delle Colonne, Jean de Meung: metamorfosi del classic! nel Duecento.' Medioevo romanzo 12 (1987): 103-28. Rpt. in Testi e chierid del Medioevo. Geneva: Marietti, 1991.135-201. Comparetti, Domenico. Virgilio nel Medio Evo. 1872. Ed. G. Pasquali. 2 vols. Firenze: Nuova Italia, 1943-6. Curtius, Ernst Robert. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Trans. W.R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953. Enddopedia dantesca. 6 vols. Roma: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970-8. Enddopedia virgiliana. 5 vols. Roma: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 1984-90. Glauche, Giinter. Schullektiire im Mittelalter: Entstehung und Wandlungen des Lekturekanons bis 1200 nach den Quellen dargestellt. Miichen: Bei der ArbeoGesellschaft, 1970. Gmelin, Hermann. 'Dante und die romischen Dichter.' Deutsches Dante Jahrbuch 31-2 (1953): 42-70. Hollander, Robert. 71 Virgilio dantesco. Firenze: Olschki, 1983. - 'Dante's Commedia and the Classical Tradition: The Case of Virgil.' In The 'Divine Comedy' and the Encyclopedia of Arts and Sdences. Ed. G. Di Scipio and A. Scaglione. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1988.15-25. lannucci, Amilcare A. Forma ed evento nella 'Divina Commedia.' Roma: Bulzoni, 1984. Jacoff, Rachel, and Jeffrey T. Schnapp, eds. The Poetry of Allusion: Virgil and Ovid in Dante's 'Commedia.' Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991. Jeauneau, Edouard. Lectio Philosophorum: recherches sur I'Ecole de Chartres. Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1973. Latini, Brunette. II Tesoretto (The Little Treasure). Trans, and ed. Julia Bolton Holloway. New York: Garland, 1981. Martellotti, Guido. 'Dante e i classici.' Cultura e scuola 4 (1965): 125-37. Rpt. in Dante e Boccacdo. Firenze: Olschki, 1983.15-38. - 'La difesa della poesia nel Boccaccio e un giudizio su Lucano/ Studi sul Boccacdo 4 (1967): 265-79. Rpt. in Dante e Boccacdo. Firenze: Olschki, 1983. 165-83. Mazzoni, Francesco. 'Saggio di un nuovo commento alia Commedia: il canto IV dell'Inferno.' Studi danteschi 42 (1965): 29-206. Moore, Edward. Scripture and Classical Authors in Dante. Oxford: Clarendon, 1896. Vol. 1 of Studies in Dante. 4 vols. Padoan, Giorgio. II pio Enea, I'empio Ulisse: tradizione dassica e intendimento medievale in Dante. Ravenna: Longo, 1977. Paratore, Ettore. Tradizione e struttura in Dante. Firenze: Sansoni, 1968.

Dante and the Classics 73 Pare, Gerard Marie, Adrien M. Brunet, and Pierre Tremblay. La Renaissance du Xllsiede: les ecoles et I'enseignement. Paris-Ottawa: Vrin-Institut d'Etudes medievales d'Ottawa, 1933. Pellegrin, Elisabeth. 'Les Remedia amoris d'Ovide, texte scolaire medieval.' Bibliotheque de VEcole nationale des Charles 115 (1957): 172-9. Pepin, Jean. 'Dante et la tradition de 1'allegorie.' La Tradition de 1'allegorie: de Philon d'Alexandrie a Dante. Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1987. 251-320. Picone, Michelangelo, ed. Dante e le forme dell'allegoresi. Ravenna: Longo, 1987. - 'Dante, Ovidio e il mito di Ulisse.' Lettere italiane 43 (1991): 500-16. - 'L'Ovidio di Dante.' Dante e la 'bella scola' della poesia. Ed. A.A. lannucci. Ravenna: Longo, 1993.107-44. - 'Purgatorio XXII.' In Dante's 'Divine Comedy'. Introductory Readings: 'Purgatorio.' Ed. T. Wlassics. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1993. 321-35. Rand, Edward Kennard. The Classics in the Thirteenth Century.' Speculum 4 (1929): 249-69. Renucci, Paul. Dante, disciple etjuge du monde greco-latin. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1954. Ronconi, Alessandro. 'Per Dante interprete dei poeti classici.' Studi danteschi 16 (1932): 105-25. Rpt. in Filologia e linguistica. Roma: Ateneo, 1968. 201-32. Schiaffini, Alfredo. 'Poesis e poeta in Dante e nel Medioevo.' In Studia philologica et literaria in honorem Leo Spitzer. Bern: Francke, 1958. 379-88. Rpt. in Mercanti, poeti, un maestro. Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi, 1969. 38-58. Smalley, Beryl. The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Blackwell and Mott, 1952. Sowell, Madison U., ed. Dante and Ovid: Essays in Intertextuality. Binghamton, N.Y.: MRTS, 1991. Tateo, Francesco. Questioni di poetica dantesca. Bari: Adriatica, 1972. Trevi, Emanuele. 'Amore, figura e intendimento: osservazioni sull'allegoria in Cavalcanti e nella Vita Nuova.' La Cultura 27 (1989): 143-54. von Moos, Peter. 'Poeta und Historicus im Mittelalter.' Beitrage zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 98 (1976): 93-130, Wieruszowski, Helene. 'Rhetoric and the Classics in Italian Education of the Thirteenth Century.' Studia Gratiana 11 (1967): 169-208. Rpt. in Politics and Culture in Medieval Spain and Italy. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1971. 589-627.

Dante and the Bible: Biblical Citation in the Divine Comedy CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ

A fairly recent Peanuts comic strip has a story line that is pertinent to the subject of this essay. As the scene opens, Charlie Brown is sitting in a beanbag chair watching the television set; Sally, his younger sister, enters the room and observes: 'Watching a football game, I see ../ She begins to watch the program, and suddenly something on the screen catches her eye, which prompts her to ask, 'Why does someone always hang a sign over the railing that says "John 3:16"?' The unperturbed and seemingly omniscient Charlie answers this query in a very matter of fact fashion: 'It's a scriptural reference'; to which Sally, in her inimitably naive way, replies: 'Really? Then I was wrong ... I always thought it had something to do with John Madden/ The expression on Charlie Brown's face as he peers over the edge of the chair conveys the full force of his dismay and disbelief. In this comic strip we may observe the conflation of several symbols and phenomena typical of American popular culture: television, sports, popular religion, and the cult of personality. The benign ignorance of Charlie Brown's younger sister Sally leads her to draw an erroneous, but humorous, conclusion. Her reading of the sign draped over the railing, of the printed message flashed on the television screen to a nationwide audience, triggered a response which accords perfectly with her media/pop-culture-oriented perception of the 'real world.' John Madden, indeed! There is, of course, another side to the issue. If Sally were a biblically oriented viewer-reader like her knowledgeable, recumbent brother, she would be able to grasp immediately and completely the general nature of the reference to the Gospel of John and perhaps even to recall the precise verse: 'For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting.' Nevertheless, even if she did possess all this Bible

Dante and the Bible 75 learning, Sally might still be perplexed. What purpose does this particular biblical citation serve? What kind of a message is it? Is this an example of proselytizing? Is it a condemnation of pagan rites in the arena? Or is it simply a telegraphic message of hope, faith, and charity broadcast to a vast public through the miracle of television? When he wrote the Divine Comedy, Dante did not - indeed, he could not - imagine a reader as biblically illiterate as Sally Brown. The reference to the Gospel of John would never have been in doubt. The Florentine poet expected his readers to have the appropriate knowledge and preparation to understand the poem within the larger context of the Judeo-Christian/ Graeco-Roman literary, historical, and intellectual tradition. He constructed his vast and symmetrical poetic edifice with the expectation that his readers would pick up on those references and allusions to other texts and would profit from the light which they could shed on his text. In the past few years my research has focused on the general relationship between the Divine Comedy and the Bible and, particularly, on the use Dante makes of the Bible in his poem through the process I prefer to call 'biblical citation' or the 'poetics of citation.' The rich and complex relationship between Dante and the Bible has been studied by numerous critics over the last century, and even the earliest commentators on the poem (e.g., Guide da Pisa, Pietro di Dante, Boccaccio) were sensitive to those passages which displayed scriptural origin or influence. It is, of course, impossible to work on the Divine Comedy without acknowledging one's indebtedness to the long and distinguished tradition of Dante scholarship, and, acutely aware of the vast amount of criticism that has accumulated over the centuries, I readily admit that my own work necessarily builds on firm foundations laid by numerous scholars. Earlier studies have provided scholars with a catalogue (albeit incomplete) of those passages (some three hundred) in the Comedy which betray definite origin in or parallels with the Bible (Moore, Cavedoni, Groppi), while others have examined, in a more general way, the presence of biblical language in Dante (Marzot). Other critics have treated the general question of Dante and the Bible in excellent and insightful studies directed towards the elucidation of other, though no lees pertinent, matters, such as allegory (Singleton, Hollander, Mazzotta, Giannantonio, Pepin, Sarolli), figural realism (Auerbach), typology (Charity, Chydenius), prophecy (Mineo), theological poetics (Freccero), church liturgy (Mastrobuono), and iconography (Fallani, Cassell). Many others have dealt with biblical influences on and/or presences in specific episodes in the Comedy (Frankel, Hawkins, lannucci, Jacoff, Kaske, Stephany, et al.). However, in

76 Christopher Kleinhenz my view, these numerous studies do not consider adequately the rich and dynamic interplay between the Divine Comedy and the Bible which Dante so painstakingly established and which we may recapture through an understanding and investigation of his use of biblical citation. While Dante's practice of incorporating another text - classical, biblical, vernacular - within his own is extensive, for the purposes of my investigation, I am limiting myself to those instances of biblical citation. Dante the Poet is in many ways a mediator of other texts - a scribe, a translator, an editor, an interpreter -but more than this he is also a poet and a prophet, drawing inspiration from these other texts and developing and refining through them his own distinctive poetic voice. My investigation focuses primarily on Dante's technique of evoking a particular word, verse, or passage in the Bible through the use of an exact or modified version of the Latin text or an Italian translation or paraphrase of the Vulgate within his own text. However, my understanding of Dante's use of biblical citation goes far beyond these seemingly narrow textual limits; indeed, through use of scriptural reference Dante not only invokes the text of the Bible, but also evokes the written and visual traditions that are attached to that specific text. Thus, while the Florentine poet uses some scriptural citations simply for their immediate evocative value, he employs many others whose function in the text may be fully understood only through a careful consideration of these various sources, analogues and materials, and their associations and interconnections. My research, therefore, is directed towards shedding some light (1) on the inventive process that was at work in Dante's mind when he was writing his masterpiece and (2) on the sort of assimilative process the poet expected on the part of his reader. Biblical citation represents the employment both of direct references that rely on earlier authors (= authorities) and of references which have a certain metaphorical allusiveness that invokes no less directly those same texts. We might well call this technique the 'poetics of citation/ or the "poetics of allusion' or the 'poetics of reference' or even - and this perhaps best expresses the goal towards which Dante was striving - the 'poetics of authority.' However this may be, I prefer to think of this procedure in decidedly textual terms, which, for me at least, the word 'citation' conveys best. It expresses Dante's desire for his text to be a proclamation of his personal, yet universal, vision, an announcement which will serve to correct the 'evil ways of the world,' the "mondo che mal vive' (Purg. 32.103), a message which derives its moral and spiritual force precisely because it is rooted in and appeals to the authority

Dante and the Bible 77 of Holy Scripture, such that the Comedy itself becomes a sort of 'new scripture/ In line with my previous work on this subject, I would like to examine a few specific episodes/passages so that we may begin to understand how Dante uses the biblical text as an integral part of his own text and to discover how meaning in the Comedy maybe either generated or enhanced by a consideration of the larger referential context provided by the biblical tradition. Biblical citations in the Comedy take several forms. They may be exact, modified, or incomplete versions of the Latin text of the Vulgate or Italian translations or paraphrases thereof. Whether they are long or short several lines, an entire verse, or even just a single word - they are enough to trigger a response in the mind of the reader, to evoke that other text and its context and meaning. One example of exact citation from the Vulgate is the verse from Matthew - 'Venite benedicti Patris mei' [Come, ye blessed of my Father (Matt. 25.34)] - with which Christ will summon the blessed at the time of the Last Judgment. Dante incorporates these exact words in Purgatory 27 (v. 58), where the angel addresses them to Dante the Pilgrim, Virgil, and Statius after their passage through the wall of fire on the seventh terrace and prior to their admittance to the earthly paradise at the top of the mountain. Once in the garden, the three wayfarers will witness the triumphal procession of the Church, which culminates in the advent of Beatrice, who comes as Christ will come at the end of time. The use of the verse from Matthew at this crucial juncture - after purification and before entry to Eden - recalls to the reader the final advent and office of Christ, thus setting the stage for the analogous advent of Beatrice and focusing attention on her pronouncement of judgment on Dante the Pilgrim (see Singleton, Journey to Beatrice 72-85). Another example occurs on the Mountain of Purgatory's second terrace, where disembodied voices repeat exempla of the virtue and vice: E verso noi volar furon sentiti, non pero visti, spirit! parlando a la mensa d'amor cortesi inviti. (Purg. 13.25-7) [We heard spirits as they flew toward us, though they could not be seen - spirits pronouncing courteous invitations to love's table.]

With this invitation the Pilgrim and his guide - and we the readers - are guided to think in terms of a nuptial banquet, and then

78 Christopher Kleinhenz La prima voce che passo volando 'Vinum non habent' altamente disse, e dietro a noi 1'ando reiterando. (Purg. 13.28-30) [The first voice that flew by called out aloud: Vinum non habent, and behind us that same voice reiterated its example.]

During the marriage feast in Cana, Mary, noting that the supply of wine is almost exhausted, speaks these words (John 2.3), and Jesus responds with his first miracle, the changing of water into wine. The verse from John - 'Vinum non habent' - is recited as an example of charity, of loving solicitude, the virtue which opposes the vice of envy. Once the biblical citation has been given, we may observe in retrospect the careful manner with which Dante has anticipated it and established its appropriate context: the verses which speak of the 'mensa d'amor' suggest through their passive construction and unusual syntax the selfless, generous attitude of Mary, who is concerned solely for the well-being of those in attendance at the wedding feast. Furthermore, in the exegetical tradition the miracle of changing water into wine is interpreted as a sign of Jesus' conversion of people from the ways of vice to those of virtue (Hugh of St Victor, Allegoriae in Evangelia, in Patrologia Latino. 175:751-3). This essential idea of transformation and renewal has its precise and immediate correlative here in the Purgatorio: it is an apt and effective description of the purgation process which occurs on each terrace of the Mountain. Thus, in addition to its primary function - to signal the virtue of charity - the citation 'Vinum non habent' serves to introduce the larger context of the biblical passage and its interpretative tradition, which further enrich our understanding of the episode in Dante's poem. On at least one occasion Dante clearly points to the glossing function of the biblical citation. During his third night on the Mountain of Purgatory and just before his entry in the earthly paradise, Dante the Pilgrim has his third prophetic dream, in which the allegory of the active and the contemplative life is presented through the traditional Old Testament figures of Leah and Rachel. Leah, who sings and gathers flowers, represents the active life; Rachel, who sits constantly before her mirror meditating upon her own image, symbolizes the contemplative life. In the dream Leah clarifies the meaning by saying: 'she [Rachel] is content with seeing, I with labor' [lei lo vedere, e me 1'ovrare appaga (Purg. 27.108)]. The prophetic potential of this early-morning dream is realized when Dante, taking his first steps in the garden, sees a lady - Matelda -

Dante and the Bible 79 gathering flowers and singing. The garden of Eden is, of course, a place of paradoxes, being at once the place of original sin, man's fall, and a wondrously attractive and desirable locus amoenus. Recognizing that her apparent happiness in this ambiguous place could puzzle the Pilgrim, Matelda advises him to consider the ninety-first Psalm - identified here by the single word 'Delectasti' - to discover the reason: 'Voi siete nuovi, e forse perch' io rido/ comincio ella, 'in questo luogo eletto a 1'umana natura per suo nido, maravigliando tienvi alcun sospetto; ma luce rende il salmo Delectasti, che puote disnebbiar vostro intelletto.' (Purg. 28.76-81) [She began: 'You are new here and may - because I smile in this place, chosen to be mankind's nest - wonder, perplexed, unable to detect the cause; but light to clear your intellect is in the psalm beginning "Delectasti."']

The explicit, telegraphic reference sets in motion the mental process that recalls the precise verses of the Psalm: 5. Quia delectasti me, Domine, in factura tua; Et in operibus manuum tuarum exsultabo. 6. Quam magnificata sunt opera tua, Domine! Nimis profundae factae sunt cogitationes tuae. 7. Vir insipiens non cognoscet, Et stultus non intelliget haec. [5. For thou hast given me, O Lord, a delight in thy doings: and in the works of thy hands I shall rejoice. 6. O Lord, how great are thy works! thy thoughts are exceeding deep. 7. The senseless man shall not know: nor will the fool understand these things.]

We recognize the very precise relationship between the biblical text and the events in the Comedy. As Charles Singleton has carefully noted, "Matelda, by her allusion to the psalm, is telling us that the joy she experiences is the joy of love, and that her song ... is a love song in praise of the Lord who made these things' (Journey to Beatrice 207). Matelda, as the correlative of the figure of Leah in Dante's dream, as the embodiment of the 'active life/ takes special pleasure in God's works, in the works of His hands. The wonders of God's handiwork can, of course, be seen everywhere in Creation, but here, in the garden of Eden, they have a particular

80 Christopher Kleinhenz force and poignancy, for these sights and joys, which were lost to man because of the Fall, represent in consequence the goal of his longing. The return to Eden - Dante the Pilgrim's return - is then the regaining of that original state of justice before the Fall. Matelda's precise reference to Delectasti does not necessarily limit our attention to these specific verses, but rather should invite us to consider the Psalm in its entirety. Significantly, the final verses of Psalm 91 celebrate the just man who 'shall flourish like the palm tree/ the one who 'shall grow up like the cedar of Libanus/ The psalmist continues: 13. lustus ut palma florebit; Sicut cedrus Libani multiplicabitur. 14. Plantati in domo Domini, In atriis domus Dei nostri florebunt. 15. Adhuc multiplicabuntur in senecta uberi Et bene patientes erunt: 16. Ut annuntient quoniam rectus Dominus Deus noster, Et non est iniquitas in eo. [14. They that are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of the house of our God. 15. They shall still increase in a fruitful old age: and shall be well treated, 16. that they may shew That the Lord our God is righteous, and there is no iniquity in him.]

Matelda's joy is thus twofold, arising from her appreciation of God's works and from her recognition of His promise of salvation to the just man. In the present context Dante the Pilgrim has just returned to Eden, and is, thus, 'planted in the house of the Lord/ Matelda experiences joy in this verification of God's promise in Psalm 91; and thus her song is also a celebration of the 'just man' - the Pilgrim - who is newly arrived in the garden. Sometimes Dante slightly modifies a direct citation from the Vulgate. One such example occurs in Purgatory 30, where with the words 'Benedictus qui venis' [Blessed are you who come (19)] all of the participants in the triumphal procession announce the advent of Beatrice. The verse in the gospel on which this one is modelled - 'Benedictus qui venit' [Blessed is he who comes (Matt. 21.9)] - signals the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Through his slight but significant modification - venis for venit - Dante makes the phrase more direct and personal, and, even more importantly, by retaining the masculine inflection of benedictus, he stresses the important analogy between Christ and Beatrice, which is present throughout the entire episode and which lies at the heart of Dante's conception of Beatrice.

Dante and the Bible 81 A few cantos earlier in Purgatory 17 we find another example of modified citation. As Dante the Pilgrim prepares to leave the terrace of anger, the angel, with a brush of its feathered wing, removes a P from his brow and recites the apposite beatitude: 'Beati / pacifici' (Purg. 17.68-9; Matt. 5.9). On each terrace, Dante incorporates one of the beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount to mark the end of the purgation process and to signal the transition to the next girone. Each beatitude serves as a meditation on and a celebration of the particular virtue which has triumphed over its sinful opposite and which now reigns in the newly purified soul: humility over pride, chastity over lust, etc. Here on the terrace of anger Dante appropriately invokes the beatitude of the peacemakers; however, while retaining the Latin incipit (Beati pacifici), he replaces the more general conclusion in the Gospel - "quoniam filii Dei vocabuntur' [for they shall be called the children of God] - with the very particularized Italian phrase 'che son sanz'ira mala' [those free of evil anger (69)]. Through this modification Dante is able to focus attention on the specifics of the sin 'ira mala' - using the scholastic terminology of St Thomas (Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 158, a. 2, resp.). Some citations are purposefully 'incomplete/ for Dante gives only part - generally the first line - of the Latin text and expects the reader to fill in the missing portion. One well-known example occurs near the beginning of the Purgatory (2.46-8). As the ship guided by the angel approaches the shore of the Mountain, the souls In exitu Israel de Aegypto cantavano tutti insieme ad una voce

and, as Dante specifies, con quanto di quel salmo e poscia scrip to. ['When Israel went out of Egypt' with what is written after of that psalm, all of those spirits sang as with one voice.]

Although presenting only the first verse of Psalm 113, Dante the Poet makes it clear that the entire psalm was sung, and consequently the reader must fill in the omitted text for himself and consider, therefore, the meaning and implications of the entire psalm in both the immediate and the more general context of the poem. As Charles Singleton notes in his

82 Christopher Kleinhenz commentary to this passage in Purgatorio, 'the song is appropriate to the time of the journey, since this is Easter Sunday morning, and Exodus signifies ... Passover and Easter' (31). Moreover, in the Letter to Cangrande, which serves as an introduction to the poem as a whole, Dante employs Psalm 113 to illustrate the polysemous nature of the Bible, and this psalm presents best the notion of liberation and thus provides the most succinct statement of the movement of the poem as a whole: Qui modus tractandi, ut melius pateat, potest considerari in his versibus: 'In exitu Israel de Aegypto, domus lacob de populo barbaro, facta est ludaea sanctificatio eius, Israel potestas eius.' Nam si ad literam solam inspiciamus, significatur nobis exitus filiorum Israel de Aegypto, tempore Moysis; si ad allegoriam, nobis significatur nostra redemptio facta per Christum; si ad moralem sensum, significatur nobis conversio animae de luctu et miseria peccati ad statum gratiae; si ad anagogicum, significatur exitus animae sanctae ab huius corruptionis servitute ad aeternae gloriae libertatem. (10.7.108-19) [And for the better illustration of this method of exposition we may apply it to the following verses: 'When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language; Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion.' For if we consider the letter alone, the thing signified to us is the going out of the children of Israel from Egypt in the time of Moses; if the allegory, our redemption through Christ is signified; if the moral sense, the conversion of the soul from the sorrow and misery of sin to a state of grace is signified; if the anagogical, the passing of the sanctified soul from the bondage of the corruption of this world to the liberty of everlasting glory is signified.]

Another example of this practice occurs in the tenth canto of Purgatory, where Dante and Virgil observe three relief sculptures representing the virtue of humility. The first portrays the Annunciation to Mary and so lifelike is the marble carving that it 'speaks' to them in the language of the Gospel of Luke (1.28-38): Giurato si saria ch'el dicesse 'AveV; perche iv' era imaginata quella ch'ad aprir 1'alto amor volse la chiave; e avea in atto impressa esta favella 'Ecce ancilla Dei,' propriamente come figura in cera si suggella. (Purg. 10.40-5)

Dante and the Bible 83 [One would have sworn that he was saying 'Ave'; for in that scene there was the effigy of one who turned the key that had unlocked the highest love; and in her stance there were impressed these words, 'Ecce ancilla Dei,' precisely like a figure stamped in wax.]

Gabriel's initial address - 'Ave' - and Mary's eventual response - 'Ecce ancilla Dei' - define the boundaries of the biblical citation. The rapid succession of the two phrases as heard by Dante the Pilgrim in his mind is in part a function of the artistic medium that enables the observer to see the scene in its entirety and to 'hear' the words in a virtually simultaneous fashion. Readers of Dante's text are invited to consider not only the two specified fragments of the biblical text but to fill in the missing portion some ten verses - in which the angel explains to Mary the cause of this miraculous event in order to allay her fears and doubts. Just as the artistic representation evokes the immediate scene and its multifold ramifications, so do the spare words quoted evoke the entire passage in the Gospel (Luke 1): 28. Et ingressus angelus ad earn dixit: Ave gratia pleta: Dominus tecum: benedicta tu in mulieribus... 38. Dixit autem Maria: Ecce ancilla Domini, fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum. Et discessit ab ilia angelus. [28. And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women... 38. And Mary said: Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word, And the angel departed from her.]

In some instances a Latin phrase is so charged with biblical echoes that its mere use is sufficient to evoke this larger context. In his narration of the life of St Francis in Paradiso 11, Thomas Aquinas at one point uses the Latin phrase 'et coram patre' [and before the father (62)] to refer to Francis's meeting with his father in the episcopal court of Assisi. In this dramatic scene, Francis, stripping himself naked, renounces his earthly father and all worldly possessions to wed, as it were, Lady Poverty with the blessing of the bishop and before the assembled people: che per tal donna, giovinetto, in guerra del padre corse, a cui, come a la morte, la porta del piacer nessun diserra;

84 Christopher Kleinhenz e dinanzi a la sua spirital corte et coram poire le si fece unito. (Par. 11.58-62) [For even as a youth, he ran to war against his father, on behalf of her - the lady unto whom, just as to death, none willingly unlocks the door; before his spiritual court et coram patre, he wed her.]

By using the phrase 'et coram patre/ Dante evokes the passage in Matthew 10, where 'patre' refers to God: 32. Omnis ergo qui confitebitur me coram hominibus, confitebor et ego eum coram Patre meo, qui in caelis est. 33. Qui autem negaverit me coram hominibus, negabo et ego eum coram Patre meo, qui in caelis est. [32. Every one therefore that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven. 33. But he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven.]

Francis's life was in many respects an imitatio Christi, and these wellknown similarities form the basis for Dante's presentation of the saint. Thus, the use in Paradise 11 of the phrase 'coram patre' would appear to serve a dual - indeed, a pivotal - function, first describing Francis's appearance before his carnal father, and secondly, and more importantly, referring to his mystical marriage with Lady Poverty before the bishop and God, his spiritual father. This transfer of allegiance from his earthly to his heavenly father is the beginning of Francis's own special mission on earth, one that accords in important ways with that of Christ. Citations from the Vulgate have their vernacular counterparts, and the text of the Comedy is studded with examples of Italian translations and paraphrases of biblical words, phrases, or entire verses. In Inferno 10, for example, Farinata degli Uberti, the great Ghibelline warlord, addresses Dante as a fellow citizen of Florence, stating that he has recognized him through his Tuscan speech: 'La tua loquela ti fa manifesto' [Your speech betrays you (25)]. As most commentators on the poem indicate, this phrase translates the words spoken to Peter after he has denied Christ for the third time - 'Loquela tua manifestum te facit' [Your speech betrays you (Matt. 26.73)]. However, these same commentators do not generally provide any further gloss. In an earlier essay ('Poetics of Citation'), I have attempted to demonstrate how meaning in this canto is generated by a re-

Dante and the Bible 85 markable conjunction of individual words, complete phrases, and images, through which Dante is able to draw our attention to the specific biblical text and its larger referential context of the Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection. We are first led to these considerations by the poet's insistence on the biblical citation - 'la tua loquela ti fa manifesto' - which sets in motion the entire series of intertextual connections. Another example of this sort of exact, but allusive, citation is Dante's use in Inferno 31 of the word 'perizoma' [an apron (61)] to describe the covering afforded the giant Nimrod by the side of the pit of Hell, in which he stands. The term 'perizoma' is a hapax in the poem and has its direct source in the passage from Genesis (3.7), in which perizomata designates the 'aprons' Adam and Eve fashioned to hide their nakedness after the Fall. Through this particular use of perizoma, Dante is able to link in the verbal construct of the Comedy Nimrod to Adam and to suggest that the fall of man is analogous to the loss of a single and pure language. Just as Adam and Eve's trangression resulted in banishment from the Garden of Eden, a punishment charged with both individual significance and universal consequences, the effect of Nimrod's insubordination in building the Tower of Babel was the confusion of his own speech and that of the world's languages. Pride then has made the creature rebel against his Creator with the result being the double loss of innocence and a single, divine language (see Kleinhenz, "Dante's Towering Giants'). Another example of Dante's Italian adaptation of biblical phraseology occurs in Paradiso 29. In the midst of her diatribe against philosophers and false preachers, Beatrice evokes the passage at the end of the Gospel of Mark - 'Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature' [Euntes in mundum universum praedicate Evangelium omni creaturae (16.15)]- and adapts it to her immediate purpose by substituting the word 'ciance' ('idle stories' or even 'garbage') for 'Evangelium': Non disse Cristo al suo primo convento: 'Andate, e predicate al mondo ciance' (Par. 29.109-10) [Christ did not say to his first company: 'Go and preach idle stories to the world.']

The irony and bitter sarcasm of this distorted Gospel verse sums up the several points she is making about the lack of spiritual guidance on the part of the clergy. For example, the faithful, who are described typically

86 Christopher Kleinhenz as the flock of innocent lambs, are continually fed with the idle talk, the insubstantial hot air of the preachers: ... le pecorelle, che non sanno, tornan dal pasco pasciute di vento (Par. 29.106-7) [the wretched sheep, in ignorance, return from pasture, having fed on wind]

The movement in the verse cited almostly completely from Mark - 'Andate, e predicate al mondo ciance' - is like that used in the first verse of Inferno 34, where the ringing incipit of the hymn by Venantius Fortunatus, 'Vexilla Regis prodeunt' [the banners of the King advance] is distorted, transformed, to good infernal effect by the addition of the genitive 'inferni' [of Hell]. Thus, the first three words in the verse lead us to think of the triumph of Christ on the Cross, of death being overcome by life. However, when we read the fourth word - inferni - we realize, suddenly and with surprise, that these Vexilla' are the "banners' that belong to the king of Hell, Lucifer, who is immobile in the icy grip of Cocytus. His banners, the grotesque bat-like wings, as Lucifer himself, cannot advance; they can only move to generate an icy wind that maintains the frigid conditions in this lowest region of Hell. In Paradise 29 the initial movement of the phrase suggests that it will be a direct citation of the Gospel -' Andate, e predicate al mondo' - but the use of 'ciance,' which belongs to a decidedly lower lexical register, exerts a great effect on the reader/listener, one that shocks and clarifies at the same moment. To the power of the biblical citation is added the vigorous and dynamic force of a common, indeed crude, word that does not sidestep the issue. In much the same way, Cacciaguida in Paradise 17 instructed Dante to 'let all that [he has] seen be manifest' [tutta tua vision fa manifesta (Par. 17.128)] and to let those afflicted 'scratch wherever it may itch' [e lascia pur grattar dov' e la rogna (Par. 17.129)]. Cacciaguida continues by expanding on the metaphor of nourishment: Che se la voce tua sara molesta nel prime gusto, vital nodrimento lascera poi, quando sara digesta (Par. 17.130-2) [For if, at the first taste, your words molest, they will, when they have been digested, end as living nourishment]

Dante and the Bible 87 Dante's voice is like that of the Old Testament prophets who inveigh against corruption and cry out for justice. His words - his poem - will be the Vital nodrimento' serving Christendom and the cause of justice in the early fourteenth century, as the word of Christ did - and still does, or should do - in the Gospels and through the agency of the disciples, who 'to fight for kindling the faith made shield and lance of the Gospel' [...a pugnar per accender la fede / de 1'Evangelio fero scudo e lance (Par. 29.113-14)]. In addition to these several types of more or less direct verbal citation, there is finally a large and more difficult to define category of biblical reference in the Divine Comedy, namely Dante's imitative prophetic voice which permeates the poem and gives it its special tone and character. On numerous occasions, Dante consciously incorporates biblically inspired language and imagery as an integral part of his prophetic-apocalyptic vision. Paradise 27 is a canto especially rich in this phraseology. Towards the beginning of that canto, St Peter delivers a stinging rebuke of Pope Boniface VIII: Quelli ch'usurp a in terra il luogo mio, il luogo mio, il luogo mio che vaca ne la presenza del Figliuol di Dio, fatt' ha del cimitero mio cloaca del sangue e de la puzza; onde '1 perverso che cadde di qua su, la giu si placa. (Par. 27.22-7) [He who on earth usurps my place, my place, my place that in the sight of God's own Son is vacant now, has made my burial ground a sewer of blood, a sewer of stench, so that the perverse one who fell from Heaven, here above, can find contentment there below.]

While some commentators have understood these verses - and particularly the phrase Vaca' [is vacant] - to mean that Boniface's election to the papacy was not legally valid, it is perhaps more accurate to see them as a further indictment of the general corruption wreaked upon the church by Boniface. The extent of St Peter's outrage is reflected in his threefold repetition of the phrase 'il luogo mio' [my place], which increases the intensity of the invective. Critics have noted, generally without commentary, the similarity between this triple repetition and that found in

88 Christopher Kleinhenz Jeremiah 7.4: Trust not in lying words, saying: The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, it is the temple of the Lord' [Nolite confidere in verbis mendacii, dicentes: Templum Domini, templum Domini, templum Domini est!]. The similarity, however, goes beyond the simple fact of threefold repetition. In both cases the holy place has been defiled: in the Comedy by Boniface's greedy usurpation and prostitution of the church; in Jeremiah by a sinful people who would wish to achieve holiness by mere virtue of being within the sacred precinct of the temple and by invoking its protective aura. Moreover, the passage in Jeremiah reiterates the importance of the holy place - Dante's 'luogo' - by referring to the temple with phrases such as 'in loco hoc' [in this place (7.7)] and 'in domo hac' [in this house (7.10)]. The third reference to the temple ('domus ista') occurs in the climactic eleventh verse of Jeremiah 7, which combines mention of the 'den of robbers' (cf. St Benedict's reference to 'spelonche' in Par. 22.77) and the triple repetition of 'Ego': Numquid ergo spelunca latronum facta est domus ista, In qua invocatum est nomen meum in oculis vestris? Ego, ego sum; ego vidi, dicit Dominus. [Is this house, then, in which my name hath been called upon, in your eyes become a den of robbers? I, I am he: I have seen it, saith the Lord.]

God's personal denunciation of the violation of his temple is a direct and forceful parallel to St Peter's personal diatribe - "il luogo mio' {my place] - against clerical corruption. Jeremiah's language, rhetorical devices, and imagery provide an excellent model for Dante's passage; indeed, these carefully constructed passages build to a dramatic intensity which the triple repetition and the more general context both convey and confirm. St Peter's invective against the corrupt clergy is studded with words and images that have their source in the Bible. The characterization of evil clerics as rapacious wolves In vesta di pastor lupi rapaci si veggion di qua su per tutti i paschi (Par. 27.55-6) [From here on high one sees rapacious wolves clothed in the cloaks of shepherds.]

- reflects Matthew 7.15:

Dante and the Bible 89 Attendite a falsis prophetis, qui veniunt ad vos in vestimentis ovium, intrinsecus autem sunt lupi rapaces. [Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.] And the question of why Divine castigation has not yet taken place O difesa di Dio, perche pur giaci? (Par. 27.57) [You, the vengeance of God, oh, why do you still lie concealed?] - appears to be modelled on similar biblical outcries, as, for example, in Psalm 43: 23. Exsurge; quare obdormis, Domine? Exsurge, et ne repellas in finem. 24. Quare faciem tuam avertis? [23. Awake! Why are you asleep, O Lord? Arise! Cast us not off forever! 24. Why do you hide your face?] These and similar passages have the cumulative effect of enhancing the Comedy's distinctive biblical tone and of helping it to become a new Scripture. At the end of that same canto, Beatrice inveighs against the evils wrought by cupidigia and refers to the deleterious effect of the continual rain: la pioggia continua converte in bozzacchioni le sosine vere (Par. 27.125-6) [The never-ending downpours turn the sound plums into rotten, empty skins.] She concludes her diatribe on the errant condition of humanity with the vague prophecy of redemption which will follow the storm: Ma prima che gennaio tutto si sverni per la centesma ch'e la giu negletta,

90 Christopher Kleinhenz raggeran si quest! cerchi superni, che la fortuna che tanto s'aspetta, le poppe volgera u' son le prore, si che la classe correra diretta; e vero frutto verra dopo '1 fiore. (Par. 27.142-8) [But well before a thousand years have passed (and January is unwintered by day's hundredth part, which they neglect below), this high sphere shall shine so, that Providence, long waited for, will turn the sterns to where the prows are now, so that the fleet runs straight; and then fine fruit shall follow on the flower.]

With the advent and assistance of a powerful temporal ruler, mankind will be able to set itself on the proper course which will lead to a state of justice. Present in the language of this prophecy is the image of the Flood, that cleansing force which alternately punishes the wicked and spares the just. As Noah found refuge in the ark, so will just humanity find salvation in the redirection of their seaworthy vessels - the classe - which become the modern equivalents of the ark. By delving more deeply into the Bible, that other text which Dante subtly conjures and carefully evokes through the technique of biblical citation, we are able to appreciate the Divine Comedy more fully and to understand at least in part how the poem has achieved its place of prominence and authority in the Western literary tradition. Through his subtle use of biblical citation, Dante has truly enabled the Comedy to become a new Scripture, that 'poema sacro / al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra' [sacred poem - this work so shared by heaven and by earth (Par. 25.1-2)]. Note Research for this essay was accomplished, in part, during a period of fellowship support provided by Newberry Library (Chicago) and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The material in this essay has previously appeared in Kleinhenz, 'Biblical Citation' and 'Poetics of Citation' (see below). All passages from the Bible follow the Vulgate: Biblia vulgata iuxta Vulgatam Clementinam, 6th ed., ed. Alberto Colunga and Laurentio Turrado (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1982), and translations are from the Douay version. All passages from the Comedy follow the text established by Giorgio Petrocchi, ed., La Commedia secondo I 'antica vulgata (see below). The translation I

Dante and the Bible 91 have used for Dante is that of Allen Mandelbaum: Inferno (New York: Bantam Books, 1982); Purgatorio (New York: Bantam Books, 1984); Pamdiso (New York: Bantam Books, 1986). The text and translation of the Letter to Can Grande follows that in Epistolae. The Letters of Dante (see below).

Bibliography Alighieri, Dante. La Commedia secondo I'antica vulgata. 4 vols. Ed. Giorgio Petrocchi. Societa Dantesca Italiana, Edizione Nazionale. Milano: Mondadori, 1966-7. - II Convivio. 2 vols. 2nd ed. Ed. G. Busnelli, G. Vandelli, and Antonio Enzo Quaglio. Firenze: Le Monnier, 1964. - The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio: 2. Commentary. Trans. Charles S. Singleton. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973. - Epistolae. The Letters of Dante. Emended text with Introduction, Translation, Notes, and Indices, and Appendix on the Curs us, by Paget Toynbee. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966. Auerbach, Erich. Tarinata and Cavalcante.' In Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Trans. Willard Trask. Garden City: Doubleday, 1957.151-77. - '"Figura."' In Scenes from the Drama of European Literature: Six Essays. New York: Meridian Books, 1959.11-76. Cassell, Anthony K. Dante's Fearful Art of Justice. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984. - Inferno I. Foreword by Robert Hollander. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989. Cavedoni, Celestino. Raffronti tra gli autori biblici e sacri e la 'Divina Commedia.' Citta di Castello: Lapi, 1896. Charity, A.C. Events and Their Afterlife: The Dialectics of Christian Typology in the Bible and Dante. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966. Chydenius, Johan. The Typological Problem in Dante. Helsingfors: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1958. Dante e la Bibbia. Atti del Convegno Internazionale promosso da 'Biblia.' Firenze, 26-8 settembre 1986. Ed. Giovanni Barblan. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1988. Fallani, Giovanni. Dante e la cultura figurativa medievale. Bergamo: Minerva Italica, 1971. Frankel, Margherita. 'Biblical Figuration in Dante's Reading of the Aeneid.' Dante Studies 100 (1982): 13-23.

92 Christopher Kleinhenz Freccero, John. Dante: The Poetics of Conversion. Ed. and with an Introduction by Rachel Jacoff. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986. Giannantonio, Pompeo. Dante e I'allegorismo. Firenze: Olschki, 1969. Groppi, Felicina. Dante traduttore. Rome: Herder, 1962. Hawkins, Peter S. 'Scripts for the Pageant: Dante and the Bible.' Stanford Literature Review 5 (1988): 75-92. - Transfiguring the Text: Ovid, Scripture and the Dynamics of Allusion.' Stanford Italian Review 5 (1985): 115-39. Hollander, Robert. Allegory in Dante's 'Commedia.' Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969. Hugh of St Victor. Allegoriae in Evangelia. In Patrologia Latina. Ed. J.-P. Migne. Vol. 175: 751-3. lannucci, Amilcare A. Forma ed evento nella 'Divina Commedia.' Roma: Bulzoni, 1984. Jacoff, Rachel, and William A. Stephany. Inferno II. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989. Kaske, Robert E. 'Dante's "DXV" and "Veltro."' Traditio 17 (1961): 185-254. Kleinhenz, Christopher. 'Biblical Citation in Dante's Divine Comedy.' Annali d'italianistica 8 (1990): 346-59 - 'Dante and the Bible: Intertextual Approaches to the Divine Comedy.' Italica 63 (1986): 225-36. - 'Dante's Towering Giants: Inferno XXXI.' Romance Philology 27 (1974): 269-85. - The Poetics of Citation: Dante's Divina Commedia and the Bible.' In Italiana 1988: Selected Papers from the Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Conference of the American Association of Teachers of Italian, November 18-20,1988, Monterey, CA. Ed. Albert N. Mancini, Paolo A. Giordano, and Anthony J. Tamburri. River Forest, 111.: Rosary College, 1990.1-21. Marzot, Giulio. II linguaggio biblico nella 'Divina Commedia.' Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1956. Mastrobuono, Antonio C. Dante's Journey ofSanctification. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1990. - Essays on Dante's Philosophy of History. Firenze: Olschki, 1979. Mazzotta, Giuseppe. Dante, Poet of the Desert: History and Allegory in the 'Divine Comedy.' Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. Mineo, Nicolo. Profetismo e apocalittica in Dante. Catania: Universita di Catania, 1968. Moore, Edward. Studies in Dante, First Series: Scripture and Classical Authors in Dante. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896. Pepin, Jean. Dante et la tradition de I'allegorie. Montreal: Institut d'etudes medievales, 1970.

Dante and the Bible 93 Sarolli, Gian Roberto. Prolegomena alia 'Divina commedia.' Firenze: Olschki, 1971. Singleton, Charles S. Dante Studies 1: Commedia: Elements of Structure. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954. - Dante Studies 2: Journey to Beatrice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958. Stephany, William A. 'Biblical Allusions to Conversion in Purgatorio XXI.' Stanford Italian Review 3 (1983): 141-62.

Forbidden Love: Metaphor and History (Inferno 5) AMILCARE A. IANNUCCI

In book 8 of the Odyssey, Homer tells of the illicit love affair between Ares and Aphrodite. As the lovers lay together secretly in Aphrodite's house, Apollo saw their adulterous embrace and informed the wronged husband, Hephaestus. Saddened and angered, the crippled smith of Olympus went to his workshop and constructed a net so fine that not even the gods could see it. He suspended it from the posts of his bed, and then pretended to go on a journey. When the lovers got into bed, they were captured in the net. In his rage, Hephaestus called the other immortals to come and witness the spectacle. The male gods gathered round, and gusts of laughter swept Olympus. Poseidon, however, was not amused, but instead pleaded with Hephaestus to set the lovers free. At first he refused, but eventually he relented and released Ares and Aphrodite (Odyssey 8.266-369). The myth records the joining of two irrational and destructive forces, love and war, personified as Aphrodite and Ares. Although their union is unlawful, Aphrodite and Ares complement one another; both are beautiful and impetuous, in contrast with the crippled and calculating Hephaestus. But their lawless love brings about destruction, not on Olympus but on earth. Their liaison is, as the Troy story in which the myth is embedded illustrates, a metaphor for the violence and madness of history. Indeed, the myth may be taken as an implicit commentary on the larger frame story. The beating of the heart is the same for love and war. Love and war - these are two of the great themes of Western literature. (In the De vulgari eloquentia, Dante adds a third - virtue.) In this light, it is significant that Apollo, the god of poetry, should be the informer. Without his intervention, the illicit love of Ares and Aphrodite would never have been revealed. It is the poet's task to observe and record the deeds of gods and men. Unfortunately, more often than not those deeds are motivated

Forbidden Love: Metaphor and History (Inferno 5) 95 by passion rather than virtue and reason. Of all the gods, Apollo comes closest to personifying the Greek ideal of rationality. As reason, it is he who sees and condemns the love of Ares and Aphrodite. On the other hand, Poseidon represents the oceanic mind, which inspires oceanic feelings - fluidity and violence, the crashing of the waves against the unmoving rocks. Of Chronos's three sons, Poseidon alone inhabits the realm of men - of flux, change, and time. Thus it is fitting that Poseidon should demand the lovers' release, for the passions they incarnate belong to his realm. Although they are released physically at his request, in spirit they remain indissolubly bound. Furthermore, once freed, they are ready to rejoin forces. One of the first recorded instances of their alliance in Poseidon's realm is the battle of Troy. In its essential form, the Troy story resembles the myth I have just outlined. Both stories unfold in three major phases. The first phase is characterized by balance and harmony, reflected in the concept of marriage. Aphrodite is married to Hephaestus and Helen to Menelaus: domestic harmony prevails in heaven and on earth. Poetically this phase is the least interesting; hence it is usually presupposed rather than represented. The stuff poetry is made of is supplied by the subsequent two phases. In the second, the balance and harmony which existed in the marriages and in the community is shattered by adulterous love: Ares and Aphrodite, Paris and Helen. The result is emotional and social upheaval on Olympus and on earth. Passion overwhelms reason, and the law is broken. In the last phase, order and harmony are re-established through the violent action of the wronged husband and his allies. To be sure, in the myth this final phase is, to a large extent, suppressed. The lovers are freed; humiliation is their only punishment. There is little justice in the heaven of pagan myth. The fate of Troy is different. Harmony is restored, but only after violence, destruction, and death. Menelaus regains Helen, but Troy itself is razed. What is resolved through laughter in heaven must be purged through violence on earth. The tragedy of Troy, that is, of history, is articulated in terms of forbidden love - of the adulterous kind. In Homer we have the germ of fole amor in epic form.1 The lawless erotic impulse, because it offers such dramatic potential, becomes the natural metaphor for irrational action which leads to the violation of both social and religious law and the destruction of war. In this paper, I shall argue that Dante too uses forbidden love as a device both to portray history and to reflect on its mad course. That Dante did not know Homer directly does not concern me. I use the Homeric pas-

96 Amilcare A. lannucci sage simply as a convenient point of reference. This paper is not about sources, but rather the dynamics of appropriation and reformulation in Dante. Rarely is the appropriation from a single source: instead it is (as in Inferno 5) from a wide range of material, both near and remote. His immediate reference in this episode is, obviously, to the courtly love tradition. His attitude towards this body of literature is complex, but ultimately unambiguous. The code of romance clashes with the Christian code of charity. Moreover, it undermines communal stability and must, therefore, be overcome. However, Dante's expression of the subject is both more embracing and more problematic than this formulation would suggest, containing as it does a reflective dimension which encourages (indeed demands) a constant shifting from one plane to another: from the personal to the collective, from the literary to the historical, from epic to chronicle and back. This leads me back to Troy and the fact that Dante was certainly well acquainted with the main lines of the Troy story, which he could piece together from various classical sources as well as read in medieval accounts of that story, from Dictys and Dares to Benoit de Sainte-Maure and Guido delle Colonne (lannucci, Forma ed evento 147-8). It was, as Benvenuto remarks in his commentary on the Ulysses episode, 'something that even children and the illiterate knew/ And it is primarily the Trojan catastrophe which seems to provoke his studied meditation on the mad and tragic circularity of history in Inferno 5. Dante knew Aphrodite and Ares as Venus and Mars, and their sexual misadventures from Ovid, who relates them with obvious delight in Ars amatoria 2.561-92 and then again in Metamorphoses 4.167-89. These Ovidian texts were both familiar to him (Paratore). Ovid calls the pair's adultery and Vulcan's subsequent revenge 'the best-known story in all heaven/ It was also one of the best-known stories in the Middle Ages. It made its way into the Romance of the Rose (13847-14186) and was later summarized by Boccaccio in book 9 of the Genealogy of the Gods, just a few years before he glossed Dante's poem. Dante refers more than once to Pyramus and Thisbe (e.g., Purg. 27.37-9, 33.69-70; De Mon. 2.8.3-4), whose sad story Ovid tells (Met. 4.55-166) immediately before turning to the exploits of Venus and Mars. However, Dante makes no explicit reference to the love of Venus and Mars. His silence on the subject has led some commentators to claim that he was not interested in the story (Padoan, Vanossi). This is not entirely true: the myth of Venus and Mars is present, albeit implicitly, in Inferno 5. Boccaccio, ever sensitive to the presence of myth in literature, realized this. He recognized in Francesca's story (left largely untold) the typical

Forbidden Love: Metaphor and History (Inferno 5) 97 plot structure of the medieval 'contes d'adultere' and traced the pattern to its classical archetype.2 In his commentary on Dante's episode/ he thus tells a curious tale, the details of which I summarize for you: After a bitter war between two rival Italian families and cities - the Polenta of Ravenna and the Malatesta of Rimini - a peace treaty was concluded. It was to be sealed with a marriage between Francesca, the young and beautiful daughter of Guido da Polenta, and Gianciotto, the capable but ugly and deformed son of Malatesta da Verrucchio, lord of Rimini. Paolo, Gianciotto's handsome younger brother, was sent to Ravenna to participate in the marriage by proxy. Francesca, believing that she was marrying Paolo, fell in love with him, and was dismayed to learn she was actually Gianciotto's wife. In the meantime, Paolo too had fallen prey to love. When Gianciotto went off on a trip, the lovers began to meet. One of Gianciotto's servants realized what was happening and informed his master. Gianciotto returned to Rimini secretly and set a trap. He waited until Paolo and Francesca were together and then burst in, sword in hand. Paolo tried to escape through a trap door, but his chain mail got caught on an iron spike. As Gianciotto lunged at him, Francesca stepped between them and was killed. Gianciotto then killed Paolo too. The next day the two lovers were buried in a single tomb. (314-17)

Boccaccio probably invented the whole thing and admits as much, raising the possibility that even Dante's account of the affair is, in part, a 'fiction.'3 The marriage by proxy and single tomb he borrowed from the story of Tristan and Iseult, the medieval example par excellence offole amor. The rest (the figure of the informer, the deformed husband, the imagery of the netlike trap, etc.) he took from the adultery of Venus and Mars. Like Vulcan, Gianciotto is lame, and like him he devises a subtle stratagem to ensnare the adulterers. Even when Boccaccio dons the mantle of the commentator, he remains a teller of tales.4 I have dwelt on Boccaccio's elaboration of Francesca's bare account of her tragic downfall because, in the absence of documentary sources, it is his more generous version which has prevailed. However, there are other, more compelling interpretative reasons for doing so. Boccaccio's extraordinary gesture brings into focus Dante's diametrically opposed approach to the same cultural material, as it were. Boccaccio 'fictionalizes' or 'mythologizes' Paolo and Francesca's story. He recognizes in it an archetypal pattern and proceeds to reproduce it through narrative amplification and embellishment. His approach is structural; Dante's is moral, and proceeds through extreme reduction and intensification of the

98 Amilcare A. lannucci material at hand. The fictional or mythic pattern is 'historicized,' reduced to its essential and defining form, and cast into a moral framework, literally the Christian afterlife. Within Dante's typological scheme, Paolo and Francesca are not simply the culmination of two literary and mythic types. They are also the fulfilment (Auerbach) or postfiguration (Charity) of their earthly selves. Literature becomes life, and both are condemned from an eschatological point of view. All this is brought into focus through the romance motif of the single tomb. Like Tristan and Iseult, Paolo and Francesca are buried together, but their tomb opens into Hell. Unlike Boccaccio, Dante is not interested in plot. Rather he is concerned with the nature of unregulated passion and its inevitable tragic consequences, not only at the level of the individual soul, but also at the collective, societal level. Surprisingly, the latter aspect of the episode - the societal implications of unchecked passion - has not attracted much critical attention.5 Perhaps a reason for this neglect is that the Francesca segment of the episode, on which most commentators focus, is usually severed from its immediate context and considered from a literary or metaliterary perspective.6 Inevitably this means that Inferno 5 is read in connection with other episodes (mostly in the Purgatorio and the Paradiso) which treat the themes of love and poetry. My reading attempts to reintegrate the canto's two parts and to link the whole more closely to the preceding episode - Limbo - with which it is, I believe, thematically bound. Significantly, Inferno 5 is surrounded by two cantos which are both explicitly political in nature, used by Dante to articulate a vision of history which is Christian and hence ultimately comic in structure. But Dante's vision does not exclude tragedy.7 Inferno 5, through the metaphor of lawless passion, projects an aspect of the tragic component of Dante's complex historical vision. It is this aspect of the canto which I shall stress in this paper. Seen from this perspective, it becomes even clearer that the subject of Inferno 5 is not lust, pure and simple. Through a procedure typical of Dante, the first of the seven deadly sins is 'epically extended' and comes to symbolize, in its emblematic form oifole amor, all irrational impulses which violate the law and lead to death, spiritual or otherwise. In a more general sense, it is used to symbolize that affection of the mind which St Augustine calls cupidity and contrasts with charity in the De doctrina Christiana (3.10).8 It is important to note that this complex symbolic operation occurs at a very significant moment in the poem. Inferno 5 is situated at the beginning of the Hell of personal sin and, therefore, represents Dante the pilgrim's first real encounter with sin. Dante the poet uses this structurally privileged position both to articulate

Forbidden Love: Metaphor and History (Inferno 5) 99 a tragic vision of history using fole amor as metaphor and to reflect on it. The reflection becomes a stimulus to seek, in Augustine's words, 'an interpretation of history contributing to the reign of charity' (3.15). By the end of the poem, he has found such an interpretation. Let us now turn to Inferno 5 and consider it in these terms. Reason and passion: these are the subjects of the first two circles of Dante's Inferno. Limbo celebrates reason, incarnated in the virtuous pagans whose words and deeds are responsible for the foundation and orderly evolution of civilization. Appropriately, they are segregated from the chaos of Hell in a nobile castello, illuminated by the light of reason. The castle symbolizes harmonious and civilized life based on virtue and reason. It is also a projection of pagan Rome and the pax romana, which prepared for the coming of Christ and the establishment of the Church. Rome's role in God's providential plan is stated early in the poem (Inf. 2.13-24) and repeated time and again (implicitly in Inferno 4) during the course of the Commedia. Dante thus radically revises the Augustinian paradigm of the two cities.9 He dissociates Rome from Babylon and assimilates it to Jerusalem: 'quella Roma onde Cristo e romano' [the "Rome in which Christ is / Roman' (Purg. 32.102; cf. Par.31.31^10)]. If Inferno 4 is associated with Rome and a vision of peace, Inferno 5, in contrast, is linked explicitly with the confusion of Babylon. The canto deals with' coloro che la ragion sommettono al talento' [those 'subjecting reason to the rule of lust' (Inf. 5.39)], those whose unchecked passion leads to their own destruction and that of others. The emotional and social upheaval caused by their illicit passion is reflected in their punishment: they are buffeted by an infernal storm. Here the light of reason is extinguished: we are in 'loco d'ogne luce muto' [a place where every light is muted (Inf. 5.28)]. Inferno 5 opens with a symbol of law, a notion on which Dante insists throughout the canto. At the threshold of the Hell of personal sin stands Minos, the great king and legislator of Crete, who, in both Homer and Virgil, holds the office of judge of the dead. In Dante's Inferno he retains this office, but he has been turned into a hideous monster who dispenses justice with a switch of his tail. He is the arbiter of the damned, who have violated the laws of both man and God, especially the law of love proclaimed in the New Testament. Instead of establishing the realm of charity, the condemned souls have forged on earth the realm of cupidity. Instead of the order of Jerusalem, they have perpetuated the chaos of Babylon. They have thus lost 'il ben de 1'intelletto' [the good of the intellect (Inf. 3.18)] and the peace that goes with it. They are reminded of this fact when they reach the 'ruina/ which is the symbol of God's charity,

100 Amilcare A. lannucci of His spontaneous and gratuitous love for mankind. The 'ruina/ as we learn later (Inf. 12.31-45), was created by the earthquake when Christ died on the cross to free mankind from sin. Unrepentant, the souls of the lustful defy God, wailing and blaspheming against 'la virtu divina' (Inf. 5.34-6), as they are blown over the landslide. Within this symbolic universe, it is no coincidence that the first real sinner Dante should encounter in Hell is Semiramis, 'imperadrice di molte favelle' [empress over many nations (Inf. 5.54)], Queen of Assyria and Babylon. Dante's principal source for Semiramis, as all of the commentators point out, is Paulus Orosius (Hist. 1.4.7-8), but there are two other sources which are equally important from our point of view. One is Ovid's allusion to her in the story of Pyramis and Thisbe (Met. 4.58), recalled explicitly in De Monarchia 2.8.3-4. This reference, coming as it does so close to Ovid's telling of the adultery of Venus and Mars, locates the Assyrian queen within the context of the structural pattern which underpins the whole canto. The other source is Augustine's De civitate Dei 18.2, and is even more significant for our purposes. Here Semiramis is seen in terms of the contrast between the city of man and the city of God. Augustine attributes to her (as does Orosius) the restoration of Babylon, the archetypal corrupt earthly city. At one level, of course, Semiramis is, within the poem's typological signifying system, simply a fulfilment of her earthly self. We may say of her and of all the other souls of Hell, for that matter - famous or otherwise - what Capaneus says of himself: 'Qual io fui vivo, tal son morto' [That which I was in life, I am in death (Inf. 14.51)]. She is in Hell because of the adulterous and incestuous passion which defined her life and drives her still in the wind-blown landscape of Inferno 5. However, her queenly status cannot be ignored, nor can the highly symbolic Ovidian and Augustinian contexts from which she emerges. At another level, therefore, Semiramis represents the civitas mundi, the corrupt, degenerate society which Augustine opposes to the civitas Dei. More specifically, Semiramis typifies lawlessness, or better, how passion creates its own laws. In order to justify her lust, she made it legal: A vizio di lussuria fu si rotta, che libito fe licito in sua legge, per torre il biasmo in che era condotta. (Inf. 5.55-7) [Her vice of lust became so customary that she made license licit in her laws to free her from the scandal she had caused.]

Forbidden Love: Metaphor and History (Inferno 5) 101 The result is Babylon. Dante's Hell, containing all the generations of the unrighteous, is the typological fulfilment of the earthly city of Babylon, represented synecdochically in Inferno 5 by the realm's first named sinner. Like Semiramis, the other condemned lovers who are swept before Dante by the infernal storm are all of high station: kings and queens, great warriors and ladies. In fine, they are exemplary figures who represent their doomed civilizations as much as they represent themselves. Dido, 'colei che s'ancise amorosa, / e ruppe fede al cener di Sicheo' [she who 'killed herself for love, and betrayed the ashes of Sychaeus' (Inf. 5.61-2)], captures Dante's attention next. In the sphere of Venus, Dante associates Dido's fatal passion for Aeneas with the myth of Venus and refers to it using the medieval technical term, 'folle amore' (Par. 8.1-9). Dido's personal tragedy is a metaphor for Carthage's tragic destiny and perhaps prefigures the city's destruction by Rome. In the Convivio 4.26, Dante had opposed the two cities in his allegorization of the Aeneid along the Neoplatonic lines of Fulgentius and Bernardus Silvestris. In this scheme, Dido's city represents the sin of lust, from which Aeneas must depart 'per seguire onesta e laudabile via e fruttuosa' (Conv. 4.26) [to follow an honorable, praiseworthy and profitable path (Lansing 226)]. In the person of Aeneas, reason overcomes passion. Unlike Carthage, Rome is founded not on lust but on pietas and labor. This abstract allegory is given figural depth in the Commedia. Aeneas is housed in the noble castle of Limbo, a symbol of civilization. On the other hand, Dido is in the circle of the lustful, an emblem of historical confusion and degeneration. In the figure of 'Cleopatras lussuriosa/ the fate of queen and city are again linked. In this epic catalogue of the downfall of cities, Troy occupies a special place. As I indicated in the introductory portion of this paper, the particular metaphor of forbidden love which Dante uses both to portray and to reflect on history is clearest in the Homeric model. Consequently, three of the seven examples of lust punished are taken from the Trojan disaster.10 Helen, 'per cui tanto reo tempo si volse' [for whose sake so many years / of evil had to pass (Inf. 5.64-5)], is the central figure. Dante's attribution of blame to Helen is consistent with his pro-Trojan, anti-Greek stance (a Virgilian legacy, of course), visible throughout the poem.11 Benoit de Sainte-Maure had also blamed Helen: Par cui li monz a trait tel peine, Par cui Grece est si apovrie De la noble chevalerie, Par cui li siegles est peior, Par cui li riche e li meillor

102 Amilcare A. lannucci Son mort, vencu e detrenchie, Par cui sont li regne eissillie, Par cui Troie est arse e fondue. (Roman de Troie 28426-33)12 [Because of her, the world had had such trouble; because of her, Greece is so impoverished of her noble knighthood; because of her, the world is worse; beause of her, the rich and best are dead, vanquished, and cut to pieces; because of her, kingdoms have been devastated; because of her, Troy is burned and destroyed.]

However, the economy of Dante's phrase and the context confer a power on Dante's accusation totally absent in Benoit's apostrophe. Two illustrious victims of Troy follow Helen. First comes Achilles, the great Greek warrior, who, according to Dictys and Dares,13 was murdered by Paris in the temple of Apollo. He had been lured there by the prospect of meeting Polyxena, with whom he was in love. However, Paris (as Benvenuto points out) was a soldier more of Venus than of Mars. His awarding of the golden apple to Venus rather than to Pallas or Juno started the chain of events which culminated in his abduction of Helen and its aftermath, the Trojan War. Tristan completes the group and brings us to the contemporary era. His lawless passion -fole amor - for Iseult, the young wife of his uncle, King Mark, brought turmoil to Cornwall and finally destroyed him. As these souls, along with more than a thousand others, glide before Dante, he is overcome by sorrow and almost faints (vv. 70-2). He pities their individual tragic plight, but his reaction seems to signal a more profound reflection about history and its tragic pattern of death and destruction. Poetically, this pattern is expressed in terms of sexual transgression and aggression, a violation which undermines spiritual and social stability. The beating of the heart seems to be the same for love and war. Babylon, Troy, Carthage, Egypt, Cornwall... even the political strife in Florence is defined by Dante in these metaphorical terms.14 He traces the origin of the communal conflict to the feud that arose after Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti jilted his betrothed - an Amidei woman - on their wedding day. To avenge the slight, her family killed him on Easter morning 1215 at the foot of the Ponte Vecchio under the broken statue of Mars, which once stood there. From that moment on, Mars (the former patron of Florence) was to afflict the city with his art, the art of war, in this case civil war, represented by his mutilated statue (Par. 16.136-47; cf. Inf. 13.143-51).15

Forbidden Love: Metaphor and History (Inferno 5) 103 As Dante contemplates the tragic spectacle of history at the end of the first part of Inferno 5, he realizes that 'la maggiore parte de li uomini vivono secondo senso e non secondo ragione ... essi hanno chiusi li occhi de la ragione' (Conv. 1.4.3) [the majority of men live according to the senses and not according to reason ... They keep shut the eyes of reason (Lansing 10-11)]. Man seems to have learned little or nothing from the lesson of Troy. Why should there have been another war after Troy? The experience of past generations seems to mean nothing. Venus and Mars continue to meet regularly. Inferno 5 both expresses and challenges this idea, and does so in Christian terms. Christ made salvation possible, but He did not make damnation impossible. In the Christian era, tragedy is possible, but no longer necessary. Dante's reflection on the tragedy of history in Inferno 5 is profoundly Christian in vision. Totally absent is the Greek tragic notion of necessity. The feeling the spectacle arouses in the pilgrim and us is not 'what a pity it had to be this way/ but rather 'what a pity it was this way when it might have been otherwise.'16 This feeling is even stronger by the end of Dante's encounter with Francesca because by then he is already much closer to 'an interpretation of history contributing to the reign of charity.' To be sure, in the second part of the canto the style and tone change radically. Epic gives way to chronicle, which in turn yields to romance. Romance is brought into the foreground and certainly becomes the subject of Dante's writing and an object of his reflection (Poggioli). But I would argue that it is also a vehicle, as were the exempla in the first part, for a more far-reaching reflection about the nature of lawless passion and its violent consequences. If anything, the reflection becomes more precise and intense here. From this perspective, there is no radical break between the first and second part of the episode. Paolo and Francesca's story authenticates at the level of chronicle a pattern inherent in both literature and history. Perhaps that is why Dante chose the story of two relatively unknown contemporaries as the chief exemplum of adulterous love. Dante meets Francesca, not Iseult or Dido: Francesca - bourgeois, Italian, contemporary. A series of 'distances' - social, spatial, and temporal - are thus removed. Moreover, all narrative details extraneous to his purpose are eliminated. (Boccaccio will provide them for us later in his commentary.) The romance paradigm otfole amor is reduced to its quintessential form and intensified dramatically through the choice of contemporary historical figures. Dante is interested in the psychological process which brought the lovers to ruin, not in external events. In order to attract the lovers wrapped in one another's arms, Dante

104 Amilcare A. lannucci must summon them, as Virgil instructs, in the name of love, the passion that defined their earthly existence and which still binds them together in the afterlife (Inf. 5.73-8). Dante does and 'like doves in flight' they drift forward. The simile is of Virgilian derivation (Aen. 5.213-17), as all commentators note, but the birds belong to Venus, and serve to remind us of the paradigm at work.17 And Francesca accordingly responds to the pilgrim's call in the language of love poetry, with which she is thoroughly imbued. This led Contini to refer to her as an 'intellettuale di provincia' [intellectual from the provinces (42)], and Sanguineti to call her 'una Bovary del Duecento' [a Madame Bovary of the thirteenth century (28)]. Her speech draws from both the lyric and romance stylistic registers (Poggioli). In verse 100 (as the commentators duly note),18 she echoes one of Dante's own poems, 'Amore e '1 cor gentil sono una cosa' [Love and the noble heart are but one thing], which in turn is a caique of the first line of Guido Guinizzelli's famous canzone, "Al cor gentil rempaira sempre Amore' [Love always repairs to the noble heart]. Later on, in the Lancelot speech, her language takes on the more realistic tone of prose romance. Thus, it is only natural that when Francesca comes to justify her adulterous love, she should appeal to the code of courtly love. Indeed, some of her words are even taken, it seems, from Andreas Capellanus's rules in the De amore (Contini 46): Amor, ch'al cor gentil ratto s'apprende, prese costui de la bella persona che mi fu tolta; e '1 modo ancor m'offende. Amor, ch'a nullo amato amar perdona, mi prese del costui placer si forte, che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona. Amor condusse noi ad una morte. (Inf. 5.100-6) [Love, that can quickly seize the gentle heart, took hold of him because of the fair body taken from me - how that was done still wounds me. Love that releases no beloved from loving, took hold of me so strongly through his beauty that, as you see, it has not left me yet. Love led the two of us unto one death.]

Of Francesca we may say what Maurice Valency says of the medieval poet: 'In the thirteenth century no poet sang from the heart. This was reserved for birds.' Yet Dante the pilgrim is moved to pity by her story

Forbidden Love: Metaphor and History (Inferno 5) 105 and so are we. And how could it be otherwise? Francesca is so courteous and her words so seductive. What we find especially attractive in the lovers is the exclusiveness of their passion. De Sanctis suggests that it is this quality of their love which 'redeems' them, but, in fact, they are damned precisely because of it. They loved each other more than they loved God. Indeed, they idolized another god, Cupid, the offspring of the illicit union of Venus and Mars. In the Secretum, St Augustine accuses Petrarch of loving the creature more than the Creator. Francesca's love suffers from the same disorder as Francesco's. Unrenounced, it leads inexorably to death. The triple anaphora triumphantly proclaiming the laws of love ends abruptly with the word 'death': 'Amor... Amor... Amor ... morte' [Love / ... / Love / ... / Love / ... / death]. Love becomes a demon when it becomes a god.19 Paolo and Francesca made of love a god. Like Semiramis, they changed the rules to accommodate their lust, replacing the laws of charity with those of courtly love: 'they made lust licit in their law.' In the process, they completely undermined the Christian notion of free will. In the courtly code, responsibility is cast to the wind, attributed to an arbitrary force outside the self, to Cupid, and the literature which celebrates him. This is the poet's point, and it provokes the pilgrim to ask one final question: he wants to know how love first seduced them. Francesca answers: 'Ma s'a conoscer la prima radice del nostro amor tu hai cotanto affetto, diro come colui che piange e dice. Noi leggiavamo un giorno per diletto di Lancialotto come amor lo strinse; soli eravamo e sanza alcun sospetto. Per piu fiate li occhi ci sospinse quella lettura, e scolorocci il viso; ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse. Quando leggemmo il disiato riso esser basciato da cotanto amante, questi, che mai da me non fia diviso, la bocca mi bascio tutto tremante. Galeotto fu '1 libro e chi lo scrisse: quel giorno piu non vi leggemmo avante.' (Inf. 5.124-38) ['Yet if you long so much to understand the first root of our love, then I shall tell my tale to you as one who weeps and speaks.

106 Amilcare A. lannucci One day, to pass the time away, we read of Lancelot - how love had overcome him. We were alone, and we suspected nothing. And time and time again that reading led our eyes to meet, and made our faces pale, and yet one point alone defeated us. When we had read how the desired smile was kissed by one who was so true a lover, this one, who never shall be parted from me, while all his body trembled, kissed my mouth. A Gallehault indeed, that book and he who wrote it, too; that day we read no more.']

Completely overcome by pity and more, this time Dante does faint. Here the episode ends. Obviously, Dante identifies very strongly with Francesca. He sees in her an image of himself. She is what he could have become and might still, unless he manages to move beyond her seductive rhetoric. Her words are his words. To justify her deed, she cites him as an authority in verse 100 and espouses a code which he himself had once espoused, and must now reject if he is to escape her fate. From the autobiographical perspective, the episode may be seen as an example and a condemnation of courtly literature,20 but it is also more. Within Dante's signifying system, the collective is always anchored in the personal, and often the ordinary, as it is here. It is Francesca who steps forward and tells her story of love and death, not Helen, Dido, or Iseult. This makes the story more immediate and accessible: the nature and consequences of unrestrained passion are thus exemplified in a zone - that of the individual human soul - familiar to us all. The drama of life and history (through the mediation of literature) may be played out in the individual soul, but the larger pattern is never absent. It is always there to claim a superior meaning, superior not because it is more intense but simply because it is more embracing, and affects more people. Because of Helen, according to Dante, a civilization was destroyed. Paolo and Francesca's personal tragedy reflects the epic pattern encapsulated in the exempla of the first part. The two parts of the canto the personal and the collective - impinge on one another. Their tragedy, like that of history, is compelling because, in Dante's Christian vision, it could have been avoided. The pilgrim's response indicates a way out of the mad circularity of history. Paolo and Francesca's last trembling kiss, inspired by their reading of the romance of Lancelot du Lac, repeats at the level of chronicle a pattern

Forbidden Love: Metaphor and History (Inferno 5) 107 inherent not only in literature but in history itself - a pattern whereby passion overwhelms reason and leads to self-destruction and social upheaval. Because of Lancelot's guilty love for Guinevere, he failed in his quest for the Holy Grail. Moreover, the pair's adultery divided Camelot and destroyed King Arthur's dream of a just and ordered Christian society. Seen in this epic frame, Dante's swoon signals not only the death of the old poet and birth of the new in a Pauline sense, but also suggests an alternative to the mad course of history. In the Vita nuova the young Dante had read the book of his memory and had identified Beatrice, metaphorically, with love.21 In the Commedia, as he reads from the book of the universe (Par. 33.85-93), he rediscovers and reaffirms that analogy. Dante has found an interpretation of history which will lead to the reign of charity. His poema sacro celebrates noifole amor but caritas, not Francesca but Beatrice. Indeed, it is Beatrice who, in a gesture like Christ's, descends into Limbo to seek Virgil's aid in order to 'harrow' Dante from his selfmade hell in the dark forest of despair (lannucci, Forma ed evento 51-81). It is Beatrice who leads Dante and everyman, inasmuch as Dante represents all of humanity, from the chaos and disorder of Babylon to the celestial Jerusalem and a vision of God. The beating of the heart may be the same for love and war, but through Beatrice the heart can be made to beat in harmony with the will of God and the music of the spheres. Notes An earlier version of this essay was presented as part of the proceedings of the conference 'Antioco Malato: Forbidden Love from Antiquity to Rossini/ Siena, 18-20 May 1989. It was published in the Annali della Facolta di Lettere e Filosofia dell'Universita di Siena 11 (1990): 341-58, and is reprinted with permission. 1 Onfole amor, see Avalle's seminal study, to which the present essay owes a great deal. Avalle treats the subject from a semiological perspective and within the strict context of medieval vernacular literature. 2 The 'legend' of Paolo and Francesca begins in the Ottimo commento, whose author added a couple of details to Dante's sparse account: (1) the marriage between Francesca and Gianciotto was arranged to reconcile two rival families; and (2) that Gianciotto was informed of the adultery 'per alcuno familiare' [by someone from the household]. Boccaccio took up and amplified these details but, as Avalle has demonstrated conclusively, in doing so he was guided by the plot structure of the medieval 'contes d'adultere'

108 Amilcare A. lannucci [stories of adultery], a popular variant of the forbidden love theme. In this paper, I suggest that Boccaccio was probably also guided by the myth of Venus and Mars, which he associated (along with Jean de Meun in Le Roman de la rose) with the Troy story. 3 Part way through his story, Boccaccio breaks the narrative and makes the following revealing observation: 'Col quale [Paolo] come ella [Francesca] poi si giugnesse, mai non udi dire se non quello che 1'autore ne scrive; il che possibile e che cosi fosse; ma io credo quello essere piu tosto finzione formata sopra quello che era possibile ad essere avvenuto, che io non credo che 1'autore sapese che cosi fosse' [How she (Francesca) later came to be with him (Paolo), I never heard say except for what the author writes; it is possible that it happened this way, but I believe rather this account to be a fiction based on what was possible, for I do not think that the author knew for certain it to be this way (316)]. 4 If I am not mistaken, Francesco Torraca was the first to state explicitly that Boccaccio's account of the Paolo and Francesca story was nothing more than an elaborate literary fabrication: 'Al racconto del Boccaccio si e fatto troppo onore attribuendogli valore storico; e una novella, 1'ultima novella composta dal grande certaldese' [One has given too much importance to Boccaccio's tale, attributing to it historical value; it is a story, the last story written by the great writer from Certaldo (416)]. 5 Mazzotta broaches the subject in part in his analysis of Dante's reading of Virgil's Aeneid through Augustine in chapter 4 of Dante, Poet of the Desert 147-91, but his approach and concerns are substantially different from mine. More recently, Ferrante, in The Political Vision of the 'Divine Comedy' 141-2, acknowledges this dimension of the episode but does not explore it in any detail. 6 Even a casual perusal of the vast body of critical literature on this canto confirms that this is indeed the dominant perspective from which the canto has been viewed. Indispensable in this regard are the essays by Contini and Poggioli. For a useful survey of this critical literature, see Quaglio and Mazzoni. The major contributions in English are listed by Barolini 4-5. 7 For the tragic dimension of Inferno 4, see lannucci, 'Limbo: The Emptiness of Time.' 8 I quote from Robertson's translation: 'I call "charity" the motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of God for His own sake, and the enjoyment of one's self and of one's neighbor for the sake of God; but "cupidity" is a motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of one's self, one's neighbor, or any corporal thing for the sake of something other than God.' In 'The Doctrine of Charity

Forbidden Love: Metaphor and History (Inferno 5) 109 in Mediaeval Literary Gardens/ Robertson notes that it was traditional to use idolatrous sexual love as a symbol for extreme cupidity. 9 For the intricacies of the Augustinian paradigm of the two cities, see Gilson's 'Foreword' (13-35) to the English translation by Gerald G. Walsh et al. of the De civiiate Dei. 10 There are nine examples of lust, if we add Paolo and Francesca to the catalogue. On the possible numerological significance of this fact, see Sarolli: 'il cui numero [di personaggi lussuriosi], nove, e certo simbolo antitrinitario nella "distinctio in malo," sottolineato dalla triplice anafora incentrata su Amore, nei w. 100-9 (e quindi clamorosa perche allusiva antitesi nella "distinctio in bono" della Beatrice-nove della Vita Nuova)' [the number (of lustful figures), nine, is certainly an anti-trinitarian symbol in the 'distinctio in malo,' underscored by the triple anaphora centred on Amore in verses 100-9 (and therefore it is especially striking because it alludes antithetically in the 'distinctio in bono' to Beatrice - the number nine in the Vita nuova)]. 11 Dante's pro-Trojan, anti-Greek bias is especially obvious in the Ulysses episode, on which see lannucci, Forma ed evento 145-88. 12 Cf. Singleton 79-80. 13 See Ephemeris belli Troiani 4.11 and De excidio Troiae 34. 14 Dante's working of the erotic metaphor into the Florentine material has gone largely unexplored, which is remarkable in light of the fact that the Augustinian paradigm of the two cities takes essentially the form of a Florence-Rome dichotomy in Dante. See, however, Ferrante 280-7. 15 On the many faces of Mars in Dante, see Schnapp. 16 For this audience-response approach to distinguish Greek tragedy from Christian tragedy, see Auden. 17 A distinction is in order here: Venus's birds are the white doves, known for their lust, not the chaste and faithful turtle doves, associated with the Holy Ghost. The distinction is between cupiditas and caritas. In the iconographical tradition, Venus's chariot is often shown drawn by white doves. I have tried to express this distinction visually in my television program on Inferno 5, which is composed mostly of manuscript illuminations, which are all (broadly speaking) part of Dante's cultural patrimony. See lannucci, 'Vulcan's Net.' 18 Most recently, see Barolini 3-14 and Clay, both of whom attempt, in different ways, to bring into sharper focus the 'autobiographical' dimension of Dante's bold gesture of embedded intertextuality. 19 Cf. C.S. Lewis 11-12, who, in turn, is echoing Denis de Rougemont. Lewis goes on to state: 'Every human love, at its height, has a tendency to claim for

110 Amilcare A. lannucci itself a divine authority. Its voice tends to sound as if it were the will of God Himself (12). 20 On this aspect of the episode - autobiographical and metaliterary both - see especially Poggioli: 'the "romance" of Paolo and Francesca becomes in Dante's hands an "antiromance," or rather, both things at once. As such, it is able to express and to judge romantic love at the same time' (358). 21 In the Vita nuova 24 .5, Dante has Amore say to the lover-protagonist: 'E chi volesse sottilmente considerare, quella Beatrice chiamerebbe Amore, per molta simiglianza che ha meco' [Anyone who thought carefully about this would call Beatrice Love because of the great resemblance she bears to me].

Bibliography Alighieri, Dante. La Commedia secondo I'antica vulgata. A cura di Giorgio Petrocchi. 4 voll. Milano: Mondadori, 1966-7. - // Convivio (The Banquet). Trans. Richard H. Lansing. New York and London: Garland, 1990. - The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. With an English Translation and Commentary by Allen Mandelbaum. 3 vols. New York: Bantam, 1982. - Le Opere di Dante. A cura di M. Barbi et al. 2a ed. Firenze: Nella Sede della Societa Dantesca, 1960. - Vita Nuova. Trans. Barbara Reynolds. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969. Auden, W.H. The Christian Tragic Hero/ In W.K. Wimsatt, Jr, and C. Brooks. Literary Criticism: A Short History. New York: Vintage Books, 1957. 55-6. Auerbach, Erich. 'Figura.' 1944. Studi su Dante. 10a ed. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1981. 174-221. Augustine. City of God. Trans. Gerald G. Walsh, S.J., et al. Foreword by Etienne Gilson. 1950. Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1958. - On Christian Doctrine. Trans. D.W. Robertson, Jr. Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1958. Avalle, d'Arco Silvio.'... de fole amor.' Modelli semiologid nella 'Commedia' di Dante. Milano: Bompiani, 1975. 97-121; 137-73. Barolini, Teodolinda. Dante's Poets: Textuality and Truth in the 'Comedy.' Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984. Benoit de Sainte-Maure. Le Roman de Troie. Ed. Leopold Constans. Vol. 4. Paris, 1908. Benvenuti de Rambaldis de Imola. Comentum super Dantis Aldigherij Comoediam. A cura di J.P. Lacaita. Firenze: Tipografia G. Barbera, 1887.

Forbidden Love: Metaphor and History (Inferno 5) 111 Boccaccio, Giovanni. Esposizioni sopra la 'Comedia' di Dante. A cura di Giorgio Padoan. Milano: Mondadori, 1965. Charity, A.C. Events and Their Afterlife: The Dialectics of Christian Typology in the Bible and Dante. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966. Clay, Diskin. 'Dante's Broken Faith: The Sin of the Second Circle.' In Dante Today. Ed. Amilcare A. lannucci. Quaderni d'italianistica 10.1-2 (1989): 91-108. Contini, Gianfranco. 'Dante come personaggio-poeta della Commedia.' 1958. Un'idea di Dante. Torino: Einaudi, 1976. 33-62. Dares Phrygius. De exridio Troiae historia. In The Trojan War: The Chronicles of Dictys of Crete and Dares the Phrygian. Trans. R.M. Frazer, Jr. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1966. de Rougemont, Denis. L'Amour et I'occident. Paris: Union Generate d'Editions, 1939. De Sanctis, Francesco. 'Francesca da Rimini.' 1869. Nuovi saggi critici. Napoli, 1873.1-19. Dictys Cretensis. Ephemeris belli Troiani. In The Trojan War: The Chronicles of Dictys of Crete and Dares the Phrygian. Trans. R.M. Frazer, Jr. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1966. Ferrante, Joan M. The Political Vision of the 'Divine Comedy.' Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. Le Roman de la rose. Ed. Ernest Langlois. 5 vols. Paris: Societe des anciens textes frangais, 1914-24. Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Richard Lattimore. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1968. lannucci, Amilcare A. Forma ed evento nella 'Divina Commedia.' Roma: Bulzoni, 1984. - 'Limbo: The Emptiness of Time.' Studi danteschi 52 (1979-80): 69-128. - 'Vulcan's Net: Passion and Punishment. Inferno 5.' Video. Prod, and dir. Michael Edmunds. University of Toronto Media Centre. Toronto, 1987. Lewis, C.S. The Four Loves. I960. Glasgow: Collins, 1977. Mazzoni, Francesco. 'II canto V dell'Inferno.' Inferno. Letture degli anni 1973-6, tenuta alia Casa di Dante di Roma. Roma: Bonacci Editore, 1977. 97-143. Mazzotta, Giuseppe. Dante, Poet of the Desert: History and Allegory in the 'Divine Comedy.' Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979. L'Ottimo commento della 'Divina Commedia.' A cura di A. Torri. Pisa: Presso Niccolo Capurro, 1827-9. Ovid. Ars amatoria. Ed. E.J. Kenney. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961. - Metamorphoses. Trans. Frank Justus Miller. 2 vols. The Loeb Classical Library. London: William Heinemann; New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1916.

112 Amilcare A. lannucci Padoan, Giorgio. 'Venere.' Enciclopedia dantesca 5 (1976): 919. Paratore, Ettore. 'Ovidio/ Enciclopedia dantesca 4 (1973): 225-36. Petrarca, Francesco. Secretum. A cura di Enrico Carrara. In Prose. A cura di G. Martellotti et al. Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi, 1955. Poggioli, Renato. Tragedy or Romance? A Reading of the Paolo and Francesca Episode in Dante's Inferno.' PMLA 72 (1957): 313-58. Quaglio, Antonio Enzo. 'Francesca da Rimini.' Enciclopedia dantesca 3 (1971): 1-13. Robertson, D.W., Jr. The Doctrine of Charity in Mediaeval Literary Gardens: A Topical Approach through Symbolism and Allegory.' Speculum 26 (1951): 24-49. Sanguineti, Edoardo. // realismo di Dante. Firenze: Sansoni, 1966. 23-30. Sarolli, Gian Roberto. 'Semiramide.' Enciclopedia dantesca 5 (1976): 151-2. Schnapp, Jeffery T. The Transfiguration of History at the Center of Dante's Paradise. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986. Singleton, Charles S., trans, and commentary. Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy: Inferno. 2. Commentary. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970. Torraca, Francesco. 'II canto V dell'Inferno.' 1902. Studi danteschi. Napoli: Francesco Perrella e C., 1912. Valency, Maurice. In Praise of Love. 1958. New York: Schocken Books, 1982. Vanossi, Luigi. 'Venere. II personaggio del Fiore e del Detto.' Enciclopedia dantesca 5 (1976): 919-21.

Dante's Ulysses: Narrative and Transgression1 TEODOLINDA BAROLINI

Dante criticism has been divided on the subject of Ulysses essentially since its inception. Among the early commentators, Buti takes a moralizing position critical of the Homeric hero, while Benvenuto sees him as exciting Dante's admiration.2 We could sketch the positions of various modern critics around the same polarity: there is a pro-Ulysses group, spearheaded by Fubini, who maintains that Dante feels only admiration for the folk volo, the desire for knowledge it represents, and the oration that justifies it;3 and there is a less unified group which emphasizes the Greek hero's sinfulness and seeks to determine the primary cause for his infernal abode (rendered less clear by the poet's avoidance of the eighth bolgia's label until the end of his colloquy with Guido da Montefeltro in the next canto).4 This second group could be divided into those who see the folk volo itself as the chief of Ulysses' sins, and those who concentrate instead on the sin of fraudulent counsel as described by Guido and the hero's rhetorical deceitfulness as manifested in the orazion picciola.5 Most influential in the first category has been the position of Nardi, who argues that Dante's Ulysses is a new Adam, a new Lucifer, and that his sin is precisely Adam's, namely il trapassar del segno.6 Ulysses is thus a transgressor, whose pride incites him to seek a knowledge that is beyond the limits set for man by God, in the same way that Adam's pride drove him to a similar transgression, also in pursuit of a knowledge that would make him Godlike. Ulysses rebels against the limits marked by the pillars of Hercules, and his rebellion is akin to that of Lucifer and the rebel angels. To account for Ulysses' heroic stature within the poem, Nardi posits a split within Dante himself, whereby the poet is moved by what the theologian condemns.7 Nardi's reading has much in common with that of an earlier critic, Luigi Valli, who also considered Ulysses deeply embedded

114 Teodolinda Barolini within the symbolism of the Commedia and representative of the perilous pride that besets mankind. Valli too sees the sin of Dante's Ulysses as akin to Adam's eating of the tree of knowledge, as a tmpassar del segno analogous to the original sin. The key difference between the two is that Valli relates the figure of Ulysses to Dante's sense of a peril within himself, rather than arguing for an unconsciously divided Dante; indeed, Valli goes so far as to invoke the Convivio as an example of Dante's own propensities towards intellectual pride, thus anticipating the positions of such critics as Freccero, Thompson, and Corti.8 As is frequently the case in Dante criticism, the Ulysses querelle abounds in ironies, which in this instance are centred on the much bandied charge of Romantic reading. Fubini and Sapegno attempt to discredit Nardi by charging him with imposing an anachronistically Promethean shape onto Dante's character, with unwittingly falling into a Romantic trap, the non-medieval pitfall of glorifying the quest for knowledge and the rebellious hero who pursues it.9 By invoking antiRomanticism in the name of a purer medievalism, critics who are at pains to demonstrate that Ulysses is not a typical sinner, that he is instead someone for whom Dante feels a special admiration, draw very near to those who originally were at the furthest remove from them on the ideological spectrum, namely the sternest moralists: those, like Anthony Cassell, who deny any special importance to Ulysses at all.10 For, if at one extreme we place those who argue that Dante feels only admiration for Ulysses' voyage and that it has nothing whatever to do with his damnation (and here the hero's crimes as listed by Virgil and the issue of the nature of this bolgia and Ulysses' relation to Guido are brought into play), since his shipwreck cannot be considered a punishment nor the pillars of Hercules to be limits,11 at the other extreme we find those who urge us not to be taken in by the hero's rhetoric, who tell us that the poet feels nothing but scorn for his creature and that to see anything else at work in the canto is to read it through Romantic, DeSanctisian eyes. Ironically, both these extreme positions use an alleged Romanticism as their foil: the proUlysseans by insisting that to make the/o//e volo into a sin is to Romanticize it, and the moralists by claiming that to see anything special or positive about the hero is to invest him with an anachronistic Romantic glamour. These extreme readings have yet more in common: both rob the episode of its tension and deflate it of its energy, on the one hand by making the fact that Ulysses is in Hell irrelevant, and on the other by denying that this particular sinner means more to the poem than do his companions. Fubini's simple admiration fails to deal with the fact that

Dante's Ulysses: Narrative and Transgression 115 Dante places Ulysses in Hell; Cassell's simple condemnation fails to take into account the structural and thematic significance that the Greek hero bears for the whole poem. In a further irony, it should be noted that Nardi and Fubini, despite their critical wrangling, share a major conviction, to wit that Ulysses cannot be entirely defined by the bolgia in which we find him, that he is a thematic pillar of the poem who cannot be reduced but must be understood in his complex integrity. A key sign of Ulysses' irreducibility, of the fact that he is not just any sinner in Malebolge, is his sustained presence in the poem: he is the only single-episode sinner - with the exception of Nimrod, whom I consider an echoing talisman of overweening pride in human endeavour12 - to be named in each canticle. The fact that Ulysses has been invested with a significance that goes beyond one bolgia, or even one cantica, is thus a matter of record, not of impressionistic interpretation: if, to the unique number of episodes in which he is referred to by name (Inf. 26, Purg. 19, Par. 27), we add the many instances in which he is invoked - through surrogate figures like Phaeton and Icarus; through semantic tags, like folk, that Dante has taken care to associate with him; and, most encompassingly, through Ulyssean flight imagery - our sense of his textual weight is confirmed.13 The many readers who have glorified Ulysses (like those who have glorified Francesca, Farinata, Brunetto, and Ugolino) were privileging a figure who is indeed privileged by the poet, not morally or eschatologically, but textually and poetically. Rather than argue against the testimony of centuries of readers who tell us that they react more passionately to this particular narrative, it seems more profitable to ask why the poet confers on some of his characters a greater textual resonance, a more inviolate ability to seduce. Dante deliberately manipulates the level of his poem's textual tension by making it more difficult not to react affectively to some sinners than to others. Moreover, such sinners invariably signify in a 'larger' more metaphoric mode than their fellows (and are frequently coordinated in a textual variatio with souls who signify more simply and literally, as Francesca with Ciacco and Ulysses with Guido): not simply lust, in Francesca's case, but an in malo exploration of the poem's basic premises - the possibility of transcendence through love, and the salvific mission of the word; not simply fraudulent counsel, in Ulysses' case, but the seductive dangers of disobedience and transgression, and a meditation on pride as the sin most capable of bringing the life-voyage to disaster. The textual privileging of these sinners is, accordingly, a way of underlining them, of pointing to the significance they bear - and that love and pride bear - for life and for the

116 Teodolinda Barolini Commedia as a whole. This notion of textual privileging could be seen, moreover, as a reformulation of Croce's fundamental insight. There are indeed narrative highs and lows in the Commedia, but since these are a function of narrative itself - one could not have the one without the other - it makes little sense to accord value as 'poesia' and 'non poesia' to what is all part of the same narrative continuum. In my opinion, then, the folle volo cannot be overlooked in an assessment of Ulysses' role within the poem, and to this extent I follow Nardi, whose reading echoes those of Dante's contemporaries. Dante's Adam explains that his banishment was caused by his over-reaching, a trespass the poem has long coded as Ulyssean: 'non il gustar del legno / fu per se la cagion di tanto essilio, / ma solamente il trapassar del segno' [the tasting of the tree was not in itself the cause of so long an exile, but solely the going beyond the bound (Par. 26.115-17)]. Boccaccio echoes the Adamic trapassar del segno in his characterization of the Greek hero, who 'per voler veder trapasso il segno / dal qual nessun pote mai in qua reddire' [in his desire to see went beyond the bound from which no one has ever been able to return (Amorosa visione, Redaction A, 27.86-7)]. For Petrarch, too, Ulysses 'desio del mondo veder troppo' [desired to see too much of the world (Triumphus Fame 2.18)]. Far from being anachronistic, as claimed by Fubini, Nardi is reviving a contemporary insight when he associates Ulysses with Adam.14 I disagree, however, with Nardi's formulation of an unconsciously divided poet, believing instead that Ulysses reflects Dante's conscious concern for himself. The perception of a profound autobiographical alignment between the poet and his creation seems also to have early roots; Umberto Bosco shows that Dante's intransigence in not accepting Florentine terms for repatriation despite the suffering of his family elicited contrasting reactions from Boccaccio, who defended him, and Petrarch, whose criticism implicitly brands him a Ulysses.15 In sum, then, the Dante who is implicated in the figure of Ulysses is not solely the Dante of the Convivio, a Dante of the past, but also the Dante of the Commedia. By the Dante of the Commedia, I refer not to the pilgrim, who, as many studies have shown, is related to Ulysses as an inverse type, his negative double.16 I refer rather to the poet, who has embarked on a voyage whose Ulyssean component he recognizes, fears, and never fully overcomes.17 Ulysses is the lightning rod Dante places in his poem to attract and defuse his own consciousness of the presumption involved in anointing oneself God's scribe. In other words, Ulysses documents Dante's selfawareness: Dante knows that, in constructing a system whose fiction is

Dante's Ulysses: Narrative and Transgression 117 that it is not fictional, he has given himself a licence to write the world, to play God unchecked. In the 'Amor mi spira' passage of Purgatorio 24, Dante establishes a conduit between himself and Love, transcendent authority and poetic dictator, which is precisely analogous to the conduit established in Paradiso 10 between himself and God, also a poetic dictator, the dittatore of 'quella materia ond'io son f atto scriba' [that matter of which I am made the scribe (27)]. As Amor's inspiration gives the poet the vantage to assess the history of the love lyric, so his scribal relation to God - also Amor, indeed '1'amor che move il sole e 1'altre stelle' [the love that moves the sun and the other stars (Par. 33.145)] - permits an assessment of universal history. The vantage of scriba Dei confers a breathtaking advantage. From it the poet is able to claim knowledge of the truth not only with respect to the historical moment but also sub specie aeternitatis, for to know what happens after death, in the context of the Christian afterlife, is to know what every action really accomplished, what every thought really contributed, what every thing, in short, really signifies. 'Vo signif icando' is no exaggeration in this context. I cannot, as none of us can, speak authoritatively regarding what Dante believed he saw; in my opinion, he believed that he was inspired by God with a true vision. However, although I believe that he believed, I do not think Dante was an unconscious visionary; on the contrary, I think he was fully aware of - and afraid of - the implications that follow from believing that what one writes is true. The Ulyssean component of the poem is thus related to the basic representational impresa of the Commedia, which involves transgressing the boundary between life and death: 'che non e impresa da pigliare a gabbo / discriver fondo a tutto 1'universo' [for it is not an enterprise to take in jest, to describe the bottom of all the universe (Inf. 32.7-8)].18 The Ulysses theme, as Dante uses it, is in fact intimately related to the practical exigencies of writing the Commedia, if by practical we refer to the actual praxis of the poet in the construction and composition of a text that claims to tell truth. The Ulysses theme, if looked at from the angle of the poet rather than the pilgrim, forces us to challenge the theological grid with which we read the Commedia (following interpretative guidelines suggested by the text itself), whereby whatever happens in Hell is 'bad,' problematic, and whatever happens in Heaven is 'good,' problem-free. This formulation may be accurate with respect to the text's content, its plot, but it need not be accurate with respect to its form. Critics who have posited the Ulyssean tendencies of the poet have generally been led by the theological grid to a reading that confuses what the poet says he is doing with what he has

118 Teodolinda Barolini actually done, forgetting that how Dante chooses to portray the experience of writing the Commedia - how the poet chooses to describe being a poet - is one thing, while the actual experience of being the Commedia's author, to the extent that it can be reconstructed from the evidence of the poem, is another. Thus, it has been argued that Dante-poet's Ulyssean tendencies are confronted in the Inferno and resolved before we reach the other canticles: Peter Hawkins claims that the Ulyssean virtuosity displayed in the bolgia of the thieves is corrected later in the poem; Karla Taylor, too, while going further than Hawkins in recognizing the hubris that underlies the humility of the terrace of pride, simply postpones the venue of correction, moving it from Purgatorio to Paradiso.19 Giuliana Carugati, who insists on the poet as a Ulyssean maker of menzogna, nonetheless believes that the mendacious texture of Dante's poetic language is progressively frayed as he approaches the redemptive silence of Paradiso (79). The critical assumptions that back up these readings are stated straightforwardly by James T. Chiampi: 'Because it is the key to the poem's immanent typology, the Paradiso is to the Inferno as criticism is to poetry. The Paradiso is the very center of the poem's structure of values because it is the locus of the proper object of representation, the good' (55). Once again, form and content have been conflated, and we have forgotten that a 'good' object of representation does not guarantee a 'good' representation. As Marguerite Mills Chiarenza puts it in her salutary reminder: 'In the Inferno and the Purgatorio the poet's struggle is secondary to the pilgrim's and the danger is essentially in the voyage. In the Paradiso it is the poet who struggles while the pilgrim is safe' (81). The poetic humility of which the later canticles tell cannot simply be taken at face value. Such a procedure constitutes an extrapolation from the content - the declared humility that overwhelms both pilgrim and poet in Paradise - to a conclusion for which there is no textual basis, namely that Dante-poet actually is more humble in writing Paradiso. I see no signs of this oft-imputed humility; indeed, the only real way to have practised humility in writing Paradiso would have been not to write it. By the same token, the silence that the Paradiso will eventually attain cannot be factored in before it occurs, which is not until the entire Paradiso - not incidentally, the longest of the three canticles - has been written. The real story of the Paradiso is in the words that are written, not in the incapacity to find such words of which its author repeatedly writes. Neither Carugati's notion of a mystical passage through linguistic fraudulence to silence, nor Jeremy Tambling's Derridean paraphrasing of Dante's own ineffability topoi, whereby Paradiso has 'given up the possibility of literal

Dante's Ulysses: Narrative and Transgression 119 referentiality' (125), deal with the reality of Dante's struggle with referentiality in the third canticle, where rather than surrendering at the outset he seeks repeatedly to wed the essemplo to the essemplare. Dante himself tells us that he cannot represent his vision; rather than paraphrase him, it seems more worthwhile to try to understand how Dante did what he said could not be done, how he vaults the limits that he was the first to declare. Nor does the intractable problem of self-legitimization, self-investiture, disappear in the Paradiso: again, Dante is aware of a fact that we tend to forget, namely that he is writing what Bonagiunta says, what Beatrice says, what Cacciaguida says, what St Peter says. Far from diminishing as the pilgrim draws nearer to his goal, the poet's problems become ever more acute: if the pilgrim learns to be not like Ulysses, the poet is conscious of having to be ever more like him. The Paradiso, if it is to exist at all, cannot fail to be transgressive; its poet cannot fail to be a Ulysses, since only a trapassar del segno will be able to render the experience of trasumanar. In a context where 'significar per verba / non si poria' [signifying through words cannot be done (Par. 1.70-1)], and where T'essemplo / e 1'essemplare non vanno d'un modo' [the model and the copy do not match (Par. 28.55-6)], a representational process that is avowedly based on the principles of mimesis, on the seamless match of essemplo and essemplare, becomes ever more arduous. In such a context signs must be trespassed, since only a trespass of the sign can render an experience for which no signs are sufficient. If the poet cannot express a thousandth part of the truth of Beatrice's smile ('al millesmo del vero / non si verria, cantando il santo riso' [Par. 23.58-9]), his only solution is a going beyond the sign, the poetic equivalent of the varcare (passing beyond, crossing over) associated with Ulysses and his mad flight: 'il varco / folle d'Ulisse' (Par. 27.82-3). And so the poem is forced to jump - 'convien saltar lo sacrato poema' (Par. 23.62) - saltare being a kind of homely 'comedic' version of varcare; in other words, the poem is forced into a Ulyssean posture. Let us now turn to the canticle where the Ulyssean component of the poem - its transgressive textuality - escalates along with the problems of narrative composition. In answer to Cacciaguida's exhortation to sound forth his will and his desire, the pilgrim responds by explaining the diegetic problems - problems of disequality and difference - that beset all mortals (Par. 15.73-84). The pilgrim cannot adequately give thanks to Cacciaguida because, not yet being a blessed soul in Paradise, his affective and intellective faculties ('L'affetto e '1 senno') have not yet been made equal ('iguali'), of one weight ('d'un peso'), by the first equality ('la prima

120 Teodolinda Barolini equalita'), God. The condition of blessedness is precisely a condition of perfect balance, perfect equality: a balance expressed here by the paired nouns and verbs referring to our two faculties (v'allumb / arse, caldo/luce) and by the chiasmus that links v'allumb with luce and arse with caldo; an equality whose lexicon points forward to the poem's penultimate verse, which features the adverb 'igualmente/ What is absent, of course, from the poem's finale is the corollary that in Paradiso 15 follows the adversative turn ('Ma voglia e argomento ne' mortali') [But will and faculty in mortals (79)] from eternity to mortality and from equality to difference: when dealing with mortali, allowance must be made for imbalance, for difference, for the fact that our wings are diversely ('diversamente') feathered. The pilgrim cannot express his thanks because he is mortal and, being mortal, a creature of difference: 'ond'io, che son mortal, mi sento in questa / disagguaglianza' [so that I, who am mortal, feel myself in this disequality (82-3)]. Never have the disadvantages of mortality been more stunningly expressed than in the simplicity of 'ond'io, che son mortal' followed by the enjambment that isolates and highlights the word that forms a hemistich, the magnificently protracted 'disagguaglianza.' Dante tells us, in the above passage, about mortal disagguaglianza, and - most signficantly for our purposes - he relates this condition of difference that we mortals routinely inhabit to our speech, our diegesis, our narrative: because of the disagguaglianza that is factored into any mortal's natural state, the pilgrim is at a loss for words to treat the super-natural surroundings and events in which he, most unnaturally, finds himself. What obtains for the pilgrim within the possible world of Paradise is, as is frequently the case on Dante's circular scales, precisely the opposite of what obtains for the poet within the reality of praxis and of the written poem: while the pilgrim is blocked by his disequality, the poet is empowered by the very disagguaglianza that he must, in the third canticle, nonetheless forswear. As the poem heads towards the uguaglianza of its ending, as it is deprived of the fuel of disagguaglianza, it stutters; early instances of such stuttering are the first sets of Cristo rhymes, located in the life of Dominic in Paradiso 12 and in the passage, towards the end of Paradiso 14, relating the miraculous appearance of Christ within the cross of Mars. These triple rhymes of Cristo/ Cristo/Cristo signify not only the incommensurability of Christ to anything other than himself but also the inevitable death of terza rima; as difference in the form of three different rhymes gives way to identity, homology, and stasis, the poem begins to die. The passage containing the Cristo rhymes in canto 14 contains one of the poet's most explicit disavowals of his narrative ability; because he

Dante's Ulysses: Narrative and Transgression 121 cannot find an adequate referent, an 'essempro degno' for what he saw, he will leave it untold in the hope that the reader will take up his own cross and achieve his own vision: Qui vince la memoria mia lo 'ngegno; che quella croce lampeggiava Cristo, si ch'io non so trovare essempro degno; ma chi prende sua croce e segue Cristo, ancor mi scusera di quel ch'io lasso, vedendo in quell'albor balenar Cristo. (Par. 14.103-8) [Here my memory overcomes my genius; for that cross so flashed forth Christ that I do not know how to find a worthy referent. But he who takes his cross and follows Christ will yet forgive me for what I leave out when he sees Christ flash in that dawn.]

The lapse in content that occurs at this juncture finds its formal correlative in the triple rhyme that threatens to stop the narrative, puncturing the seamless web of terza rima. The Cristo rhymes speak to us, therefore, of the future of the Commedia: of the point when there will be no more (new) rhymes, no more difference, no more essempri (degni or otherwise), no more poem. The Cristo rhymes are precisely an instance of linguistic and diegetic uguaglianza; as the poem moves towards the equality of its ending, towards that talismanic igualmente, it testifies to the fact that, in life as in language, unity is death and difference is life. I propose that we can chart Dante's handling of his poem's long struggle with closure in terms of the strategic alternation of these two modes, the modes of disagguaglianza and uguaglianza: the former ('narrative') is discursive, logical, linear, 'chronologized,' and (if we form a category based on the Paradise's stress on man's two faculties) intellective; the latter (lyrical') is the opposite, that is, nondiscursive, nonlinear or circular, 'dechronologized,' and affective.20 The former is based on an Aristotelian sense of time as duration and continuum, 'numero di movimento, secondo prima e poi' [number of motion, according to before and after (Conv. 4.2.6)], while the latter is based on an Augustinian sense of time as an indivisible instant: 'In fact the only time that can be called present is an instant, if we can conceive of such, that cannot be divided even into the most minute fractions, and a point of time as small as this passes so rapidly from the future to the past that its duration is without length' (Con/. 11.15). The lyrical or anti-narrative mode, of which canto 23

122 Teodolinda Barolini is a prime example, is resistant to subdivision and hence to logical exposition, and is characterized by apostrophes, exclamations, heavily metaphoric language, and intensely affective similes. It represents nothing less than Dante's attempt - his Ulyssean or transgressive attempt - to forge an oxymoron, an adynaton, a paradox: namely linguistic/diegetic uguaglianza, 'equalized' language. As the Commedia reaches its terminus, the dosage of uguaglianza in the text's narrative admixture is increased, with the upper reaches of Paradiso offering the poem's highest proportion of anti-narrative textuality. Paradiso 23 anticipates Paradiso 33; it is a rehearsal for the beatific vision that in some ways delivers more and frustrates less than the finale, granting us the vision of Christ as man, as lucent being ('lucente sustanza' [Par. 23.32]). With canto 33, it is the Paradise's most extended attempt to deploy the mode of uguaglianza in a sustained fashion, for a space of significant narrative duration, and it displays, perhaps more explicitly than its celebrated successor, all the hallmarks of the Paradise's antinarrative mode. Canto 23 is devoted to subverting linearity and narrativity, which it does both within itself, by fragmenting and absconding what could be called its plot, and also within the macro-narrative of the canticle as a whole, where it performs a key role: Dante aims to take the pressure off his poem's ultimate ending by staging staggered anticipated 'preendings,' multiple endings that work to camouflage the absolute finality of the end. By working to defuse some of the narrative pressure that is accumulated as the reader approaches Paradiso 33, Dante greatly increases his chances of carrying off one of the representational wagers of all time. The anti-narrativity of canto 23 also makes the point that although we humans like stories with beginning, middle, and end, stories composed of disagguaglianza, such is not God's way; to the extent that the narrativity of canto 23 is attempting to participate in what it describes, an excessus menti and a foretaste of the beatific vision, it is obliged to eschew the orderly time-bound narrative structures that would, for instance, represent the Annunciation before the Advent rather than vice versa. Indeed, the hysteron proteron that marks the address to the reader in canto 22, where the poet conflates time by reversing it, telling us that he saw and entered Gemini more speedily than we would draw out and put our finger into a fire ('tu non avresti in tanto tratto e messo / nel foco il dito' [22.109-10]), is carried over at a narrative level to canto 23, whose 'plot' is governed by a kind of hysteron proteron writ large. Not surprisingly, canto 23 is a text that challenges its readers; resistant to subdivision and hence to exposition, it is difficult to teach, because of its lack of linearity,

Dante's Ulysses: Narrative and Transgression 123 and, for the same reason, difficult to read.21 Having by this point built up a certain reservoir of confidence in their ability to tackle the Paradise, and lulled into a sense of mastery by the easy narrativity of canto 22, first-time readers experience canto 23 as a severe set-back: suddenly there is no narrative thread to hold on to, no clearly marked plot segments that allow us to divide the text into its differential components. If 'divide and conquer' is the hegemonic law of reading as well as of geo-politics, then a text like Paradiso 23 is constructed precisely with a view to resisting our attempts to make sense of it, to conquer it. It is forged in such a way as to frustrate division, parsing, and syllabification; it jumps about from one impression, one image, to the next: two tercets for this, three for that, never a sustained narrative line that the reader can grasp. Rather, we are plunged into that textual ocean of which the poet warned us at the outset of Paradiso 2; if at that point our boats were deemed 'picciolette barche/ very likely incapable of following 'dietro al mio legno che cantando varca' [behind my ship that singing leaps (Par. 2.3)], now the poet himself seems potentially under-equipped for his Ulyssean task: Ma chi pensasse il ponderoso tema e 1'omero mortal che se ne carca, nol biasmerebbe se sott'esso trema: non e pareggio da picciola barca quel che fendendo va 1'ardita prora, ne da nocchier ch'a se medesmo parca. (Par. 23.64-9) [But he who thinks of the ponderous theme and the mortal shoulder that is burdened with it will not blame it for trembling beneath the load; it is not a crossing for a little boat, this which my bold prow now cleaves, nor for a helmsman who would spare himself.]

The anti-narrative textual components of Paradiso 23 - apostrophes, exclamations, metaphoric language, and affective similes - are used by the poet to fracture his text;22 moments of plot are interrupted by an apostrophe, exclamation, or lyrical simile, deployed as a means of preventing a narrative line from forming. Canto 23 opens with a simile of attendant desire, the simile of the mother bird, in which Dante demonstrates an ability, arguably never achieved in Italian again, to control a register of dolcezza uncloyed by even the least trace of sentimentality. Love and desire govern all who wait at this dawn, and the language sets a tone of untrammelled affectivity: 'amate fronde' [beloved leaves (1)], 'dolci nati'

124 Teodolinda Barolini [sweet offspring (2)], 'aspetti dis'iati' [desired aspects' (4)], 'ardente affetto' [ardent love (8)], Vaga' [desirous (13)], 'dis'iando' [desiring' (14)]. Onto this backdrop of loving expectancy burst 'the hosts of Christ's triumph' [le schiere / del triunfo di Cristo' (19-20)]; the pilgrim witnesses an Advent of Christ in what could be characterized, with the reader's indulgence, as a brief interlude (three tercets, verses 16-24) of 'plot/ happening, or event. The last verse of this interlude has already left plot in abeyance, confessing that the author must pass over the joy in Beatrice's eyes without finding the language to describe it ('che passarmen convien sanza costrutto' [24]), when we are apparently further derailed by the canto's second great lyrical simile, the mysterious and beautiful comparison of the moon shining among the other stars to a blazing sun: the movement from 'Quale ne' plenilunii sereni / Trivia ride tra le ninfe etterne' [As in clear skies at full moon Trivia laughs among the eternal nymphs (25-6)] to 'un sol che tutte quante 1'accendea' [a sun which lit them all (29)] actually marks the abrupt transition back into plot, as through the living light of the sun-Christ shines the very substance of his resurrected flesh. The pilgrim's intolerance of such a sight is followed by a seeming non sequitur, the exclamatory apostrophe of verse 34, "Oh Beatrice, dolce guida e cara!'; the sweet guide's brief explanation of the force that has overwhelmed him (35-9) is in turn interrupted by a third simile, comparing the lightning burst within a cloud to the dilation of the pilgrim's mind as, nourished by such incomparable spiritual feasts, it expands to the point of leaving itself, in a moment of literal ec-stasis: 'la mente mia cosi, tra quelle dape / fatta piu grande, di se stessa uscio' [my mind thus, having become greater amid those feasts, departed from itself (43-4)]. Ecstasy in turn gives way to the unrecoverability of such an experience by his memory: 'e che si fesse rimembrar non sape' [what it became it does not remember (45)].23 Typical of Dante's fracturing textual tactics in Paradiso 23 is the transition directly from verse 45's confession of the inadequacy of memory, a recurrent theme of Paradiso 33 as well, to Beatrice's direct discourse in verse 46 ('Apri li occhi e riguarda qual son io') [Open your eyes and look at what I am]; only after her spoken tercet does the narrative recount the pilgrim's return to his senses, like that of one who awakens 'di visione oblita e che s'ingegna / indarno di ridurlasi a la mente' [from a forgotten vision and who strives in vain to recall it to memory (50-1)], in a passage that too will find its systematic echo in the poem's finale. With respect to plot, Beatrice has now offered to renew the smile that was suspended at the outset of canto 22, saying that the pilgrim has been rendered capable of withstanding it (46-8). With respect to narrative,

Dante's Ulysses: Narrative and Transgression 125 Beatrice's offer occasions the lengthy (fifteen-verse) metapoetic passage that takes centre-stage in many readers' recollections of canto 23 and by which it is essentially sundered in half: after embarking on the negative invocation in which he claims that not even the sounding forth in unison of all those tongues that were ever fattened by the Muses' milk could help him to sing a thousandth part of the truth of Beatrice's smile (55-60), so that, in figuring Paradise, the sacred poem is forced to jump (61-2), Dante brings his ship to shore with the tercets quoted earlier on his weighty theme and daring prow (64-9). Not only does this passage break the narrative thread, tenuous as it is, that runs through the canto, but it announces that such breaks are programmatic, are indeed required, and that the only way to persist in weaving textuality at this stage of the journey is at the price of occasional holes in the fabric: 'e cosi, figurando il paradiso, / convien saltar lo sacrato poema, / come chi trova suo cammin riciso' [and so, figuring paradise, the sacred poem is forced to jump, like one who finds his path cut off (61-3)]. While much attention has been accorded these lines for their redefinition of the comedia as a sacrato poema, critics have tended to pass over the statement that here the sacred poem must 'jump, like one who finds his path cut off.' And yet these verses make explicit Dante's active pursuit of a new kind of discourse; they express the concerted attempt to abandon straightforward narrativity for a more fractured, less discursive, less linear, ultimately more 'equalized' or 'unified' textuality. The path that is cut off is precisely the narrative path, the path that has faithfully recorded 'le vite spiritali ad una ad una' [the spiritual lives one by one (Par. 33.24)]. We have reached the point where the poet, a wayfarer on a textual cammino of his own, finds his path cut off, so that there is no way forward unless he jumps over the empty space to where the path resumes on the other side. The sacred poem is forced to jump: the saltar that results is the best description we can give - because it is Dante's own - of the antinarrative discourse that characterizes the high Paradiso. Moreover, saltare bears a true comedic pedigree, both as a humble variant of the proud Ulyssean varcare (Dante could have written 'convien varcar lo sacrato poema,' but did not, which is why, in my translation, the sacred poem jumps rather than leaps), and as a term that recalls the biblical sermo humilis of the psalm most linked to the Commedia's poetics. The image of the jumping poem is no more preposterous than that of the skipping mountains in Tn exitu Israel de Aegypto'; this psalm was quoted as recently as the preceding canto, where we find the Tordan volto retrorso' [Jordan turned back (Par. 22.94)] and the sea in flight ('e '1 mar fuggir'

126 Teodolinda Barolini [95]), images that in their original context immediately precede the jumping mountains: Mare vidit, et fugit; lordanis conversus est retrorsum. Montes exsultaverunt ut arietes, Et colles sicut agni ovium. (Psalm 113.3-4)24 [The sea saw it and fled: Jordan was driven back. The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.]

In a divinely defined poetics, the inappropriate becomes paradoxically conveniens: the sacred poem must jump, just as the mountains bizarrely skip, and as David - the divinely inspired cantor of those mountains shames his haughty wife by humbly dancing and leaping before the sacred ark.25 With respect, moreover, to a possible classical source for Dante's saltare, I would suggest the appositeness of the Aristotelian axiom 'Natura non facit saltus/26 If nature does not jump, creating instead a great chain of graded and interlocked being (much like terza rima), it may have occurred to Dante that art, no matter how mimetic, might eventually be constrained to break nature's laws, the better to abide by its own. I noted previously that the mode of uguaglianza represents nothing less than Dante's attempt to forge an oxymoron, an adynaton, a paradox: namely linguistic/diegetic uguaglianza, 'equalized' language. The pilgrim learns not to be a Ulysses, but the poet becomes ever more the transgressor, the one who utters the words that Paul said could not be uttered. Let us have no illusions, as Dante had none: his humble saltar is indeed the Varco / folle d'Ulisse/ In sum, then, the Ulyssean component of the poem is ultimately related to the impresa of the Commedia itself, to the poet's transgressing of the boundary between life and death, between God and man.27 The Ulysses episode is not unique in reflecting Dante's awareness of the dangers of his position: such awareness informs the canto of the false prophets, for instance, which is governed by a need to disavow any connection with what Dante knows he could be considered. But most important from this perspective is Ulysses, most important because the poet makes him so, investing him not only with the unforgettable language of Inferno 26 but making his name a hermeneutic lodestone of the Commedia, associating it with the voyage metaphor that keeps the Ulyssean thematic alive even in the hero's absence. Ulysses is designed as a recurring presence because the issue of the trapassar del segno, of Adam's

Dante's Ulysses: Narrative and Transgression 127 sin conceived not literally as the eating of the tree but metaphorically as a transgression, is one that Dante cannot discount. It is an issue that does not belong safely to the past, like the Convivio and his excessive adoration of Lady Philosophy. No matter how orthodox his theology (and it is not so orthodox), no matter how fervently Dante believes in and claims the status of true prophet, of directly inspired poet, of scriba Dei, the very fibre of the Commedia consists of a going beyond. Thus Ulysses dies, over and over again, for Dante's sins. Notes 1 This essay derives from my book, The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante. 2 The early dichotomy is noted by Natalino Sapegno ('Ulisse'). In what follows I make no attempt to give an exhaustive resume of the Ulysses querelle but rather to highlight those critical writings that have proved most useful to me. Ample references may be found in Anthony K. Cassell, 'Ulisseana.' 3 Much of the material in Fubini's essays is repeated in his 'Ulisse' in the Enciclopedia dantesca (ED). His supporters include Sapegno, Antonino Pagliaro, Fiorenzo Forti, and Lino Fertile. 4 John A. Scott provides a review of the critical issues raised in the debate over Ulysses; his stated goal is to right the balance that had tipped too far towards Ulysses' heroic aspect. On the problems with knowing what sin to ascribe to this bolgia, see John Ahern. 5 Scholars who have emphasized the orazion itself as the manifestation of Ulysses' sinfulness include Giorgio Padoan and Anna Dolfi. 6 Nardi's position is endorsed by Amilcare A. lannucci, who comments that 'it is difficult not to see in Ulysses' "mad flight" a conscious act of rebellion against a divine law, and, more specifically, a re-enactment of the Fall' (426). 7 'Con 1'ammirazione per 1'eroe che scaglia la sua vita nell'ignoto contrasta appunto, nella coscienza di Dante, la riprovazione del folle ardimento, per parte del teologo' (165). 8 For Freccero, Ulysses' voyage is an allegory of Dante's own previous intellectual adventurism, especially as represented by the philosophical detour of the Convivio. The same line of argument is pursued by David Thompson. Maria Corti sees Ulysses as a symbol of the radical Aristotelians, an in malo version of what Siger represents in bono. 9 Fubini writes of 'un certo gusto dannunziano a cui inconsapevolmente ha ceduto il severe studioso' (ED 5:806). 10 For Cassell, 'Ulysses, far from being the exceptional paragon imagined by

128 Teodolinda Barolini romantic-minded critics, was chosen by the Poet as the exemplary ambitious, dissembling pretender to noble counsel, one whose aims and posturing advice were as deceptive as the rest of the "lordura" held in this ditch of Malebolge' (Dante's Fearful Art of Justice 95). 11 Fubini's thesis shows obvious strains as he argues that 'certo Ulisse va incontro a un limite, a un limite che aveva ignorato e che gli s'impone con quella catastrofe, ma non e, ripeto, una punizione' and that 'soprattutto non vi e parola di '"divieto"' (ED 5:807, 808). 12 Virgil is also a sinner who is named in each canticle, but as a major protagonist of the poem, rather than as a figure encountered only once. Nimrod appears in Inferno 31, is listed among the examples of pride in Purgatorio 12, and is invoked by Adam in Paradiso 26. He attests to the indissoluble link between pride and creativity: our creativity leads to the invention and use of language, and our pride is responsible for its disruption. Another figure mentioned in each canticle is Phaeton, not a sinner in the Commedia but a further emblem of the problematic that both Ulysses and Nimrod represent. 13 On Dante's use of folk /follia, associated with excess and intellectual pride, see Umberto Bosco, 'La "follia" di Dante.' For textual recalls of Ulyssean motifs, see Franco Fido. 14 Likewise, vis-a-vis Nardi's alignment of Ulysses with Lucifer, also considered anachronistic, D'Arco Silvio Avalle points out that the Libra de Alexandre's Alexander the Great is explicitly compared to Lucifer (60). 15 See '"Ne dolcezza di figlio.'" 16 I refer the reader to Scott, who demonstrates four fundamental oppositions: Ulysses vs. Aeneas, Ulysses vs. Cato, Ulysses vs. Solomon, and Ulysses vs. Dante. Another way to state the terms of the critical debate would be to divide critics into those who see Ulysses as a precursor of the pilgrim, and those who see him as his antithesis; see Adriano Bozzoli. Jurij M. Lotman writes, 'Ulisse e 1'originale doppio di Dante' (96). 17 Although not elaborated systematically, Giuseppe Mazzotta suggests a similar position: 'He will reappear again, even in Paradiso, as a constant reminder to the poet of the possible treachery of his own language and the madness of his own journey' (105). More explicitly, Giuliana Carugati views Ulysses 'come figura emblematica di un tema che, debordando dai confini del canto XXVI dell'Inferno, assume valore di struttura portante, di metafora centrale della scrittura dantesca' (89). 18 Impresa is a Ulyssean term in the Commedia, appearing twice regarding the pilgrim's undertaking in Inferno 2, once regarding the poet's undertaking in Inferno 32, and in a way calculated to conflate pilgrim and poet in Paradiso 33.

Dante's Ulysses: Narrative and Transgression 129 19 Citing Dante's 'chastening conversation with Oderisi' (12), his humble 'willingness to fly "di retro al dittator"' (13), and the 'redeemed poesis' (14) of Paradiso, Hawkins concludes that 'the story of Ulysses is rewritten by the "tempered" life of the pilgrim and the "tempered" pen of the poet' (15). For Taylor, since the acrostic of Purgatorio 12 'edges dangerously close to Lucifer's presumption/ it 'requires revision' (55), which Dante allegedly provides in the acrostic of Paradiso 19. 20 The word 'lyrical/ effusively bandied about, and in a vague counterpoint with something else, is a hallmark of criticism on the third canticle (see, for instance, the resume provided by Gioacchino Paparelli), which I have tried to revive in more precise fashion, without engaging in too many lyrical effusions of my own. By 'lyrical' I intend to denote certain textual characteristics that, as Aldo Scaglione points out with reference to enjambment, become paramount in the Paradiso: 'It may seem paradoxical that the Paradiso - the Cantica which to Romantic ears sounded inferior to the Inferno because it lacked its dramatic emotionalism - would display more numerous cases of functional, expressive enjambement, because there LYRICAL emotion more frequently runs ahead of the forms' (17). I also mean to denote an authorial intention to dechronologize narrative (see Ricoeur), a project whose roots I trace as far back as the Vita nuova (see '"Cominciandomi dal principio infino a la fine"'). I do not share the desire to stigmatize one type of discourse and laud another that frequently motivates the word 'lyrical'in Paradiso criticism; this tendency is still present, for instance, in Anna M. Chiavacci Leonardi, who suggests that Talta fatica dei discorsi teologici e forse il prezzo che Dante paga per i suoi momenti lirici piu puri' (115). 21 Although Lino Fertile begins his lectura by calling canto 23 'uno dei canti piu semplici di tutta la Commedia' (7), he in fact demonstrates that the canto's apparent 'simplicity' (deriving from its lack of characters and events, its 'vuoto narrative' [14]) 'finisce insomma per essere piu complessa e misteriosa della complessita stessa' (7). Pertile's essay is a detailed rhetoricolinguistic demonstration of canto 23's complex circularity, in which he exhorts us to observe 'come nel testo ogni tentative di narrare si risolva, per la natura stessa della materia, in enunciati consecutivi, comparativi ipotetici, o interrogativi indiretti' (13). 22 Fertile notes the presence of six major similes and three exclamations, as well as commenting on the canto's 'linguaggio fortemente caratterizzato in sense affettivo' (17), 'vera poesia lirica' (22), 'penetrazione affettiva e sentimentale, piu che logica e razionale' (22), and 'linguaggio altamente metaforico' (23). 23 Manuela Colombo ('L'ineffabilita della "visio mystica"') derives verses

130 Teodolinda Barolini 40-51 from Richard of St Victor, while Umberto Bosco cites Gregory the Great on the soul's dilation ('II trionfo di Cristo'). 24 'In exitu' is Psalm 113 in the Vulgate, and Psalm 114 in the King James translation, both cited above. The verb exsultare, rendered 'to skip' in the King James version, means 'to spring vigorously/ 'to leap/ or 'to jump up'; interestingly, the modern Latin version of the Psalms approved by Pius XII in 1945 substitutes saltare: 'Montes saltarunt ut arietes, / Colles ut agnelli.' The apostles are figured as mountains in Paradiso 25.38-9, in language that the commentators derive from the Psalms. 25 With reference to Purgatorio 10.65, 'trescando/ Sapegno comments 'danzando/ pointing out that 'Tresca era un ballo saltato, di origine e di uso popolare'; he also cites Danielle's interpretation of 'trescando alzato' as 'in atto di saltare' (2:110). 26 Patrick Boyde discusses 'a very important axiom in the Aristotelian theory, which was usually stated in the form: Natura nonfacit saltum' (129). And see Marino Barchiesi's elegant comment: 'Come e stato detto giustamente, a differenza della natura (o, almeno, della natura tradizionale), Yartefadt saltus' (141). 27 This view is clearly stated by Jorge Luis Borges: To what do we owe the tragic weight of this episode? I think there is an explanation, the only valid one, and that is that Dante felt, in some way, that he was Ulysses. I don't know if he felt it in a conscious way - it doesn't matter. In some tercet of the Commedia he says that no one is permitted to know the judgments of Providence. We cannot anticipate them; no one can know who will be saved and who condemned. But Dante has dared, through poetry, to do precisely that. He shows us the condemned and the chosen. He must have known that doing so courted danger. He could not ignore that he was anticipating the indecipherable providence of God. For this reason the character of Ulysses has such force, because Ulysses is a mirror of Dante, because Dante felt that perhaps he too deserved this punishment. Writing the poem, whether for good or ill, he was infringing on the mysterious laws of the night, of God, of Divinity' (24). Bibliography Ahern, John. 'Dante's Slyness: The Unnamed Sin of the Eighth Bolgia.' Romanic Review 73 (1982): 275-91. Avalle, D'Arco Silvio. 'L'ultimo viaggio di Ulisse.' Modelli semiologici nella 'Commedia' di Dante. Milano: Bompiani, 1975. Barchiesi, Marino. 'Arte del prologo e arte della transizione.' Studi danteschi 44 (1967): 115-207.

Dante's Ulysses: Narrative and Transgression 131 Barolini, Teodolinda. The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. - '"Cominciandomi dal principle infino a la fine": Forging Anti-Narrative in Dante's Vita Nuova.' In 'Gloriosa donna de la mente': A Commentary on the 'Vita Nuova.' Ed. Vincent Moleta. Firenze: Olschki, 1994.119-40. Borges, Jorge Luis. The Divine Comedy.' In Seven Nights. Trans. Eliot Weinberger. New York: New Directions, 1984. 6-25. Bosco, Umberto. 'La "follia" di Dante.' 1958. Rpt. in Dante vicino. 2nd ed. Caltanisetta-Roma: Sciascia, 1972. 55-75. - Tl trionfo di Cristo (XXIII del Paradise). 1964. Rpt. in Dante vicino. 342-68. - '"Ne dolcezza di figlio.'" 1965. Rept. in Dante Vicino. 173-96. Boyde, Patrick. Dante Philomythes and Philosopher: Man in the Cosmos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Bozzoli, Adriano. 'Ulisse e Dante/ Convivium 34 (1966): 345-53. Carugati, Giuliana. Dalla menzogna al silenzio: La scrittura mistica della 'Commedia' di Dante. Bologna: II Mulino, 1991. Cassell, Anthony K. 'Ulisseana: A Bibliograhy of Dante's Ulysses to 1981.' Italian Culture 3 (1981): 23-45. - Dante's Fearful Art of Justice. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984. Chiampi, James T. The Fate of Writing: The Punishment of Thieves in the Inferno.' Dante Studies 102 (1984): 51-60. Chiarenza, Marguerite Mills. The Imageless Vision and Dante's Paradiso.' Dante Studies 90 (1972): 77-91. Chiavacci Leonardi, Anna M. Lettura del Paradiso dantesco. Firenze: Sansoni, 1963. Colombo, Manuela. 'L'ineffabilita della "visio mystica": IIXXIII canto del Paradiso e il Benjamin Major di Riccardo da San Vittore.' Strumenti critici n.s. 1 (1986): 225-39. Corti, Maria. Dante a un nuovo crocevia. Firenze: Libreria Commissionaria Sansoni, 1981. 85-97. Dolfi, Anna. 'II canto di Ulisse: Occasione per un discorso di esegesi dantesca/ Forum Italicum 7-8 (1973-4): 22-45. Fido, Franco. 'Writing like God - or Better? Symmetries in Dante's 26th and 27th Cantos.' Italica 63 (1986): 250-64. Forti, Fiorenzo. '"Curiositas" o "fol hardement"? In Magnanimitade: Studi su un tema dantesco. Bologna: Patron, 1977.161-206. Freccero, John. The Prologue Scene' and 'Dante's Ulysses: From Epic to Novel.' 1966 and 1975. Rpt. in Dante: The Poetics of Conversion. Ed. Rachel Jacoff. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986.1-28 and 136-51. Fubini, Mario. 'II peccato d'Ulisse' and 'II canto XXVI dell'Inferno.' In // peccato d'Ulisse e altri scritti danteschi. Milano: Ricciardi, 1966.1-76.

132 Teodolinda Barolini - 'Ulisse.' Enciclopedia dantesca. 6 vols. Roma: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970-8. Hawkins, Peter. 'Virtuosity and Virtue: Poetic Self-Reflection in the Commedia.' Dante Studies 98 (1980): 1-18. lannucci, Amilcare A. 'Ulysses' folk volo: The Burden of History/ Medioevo romanzo 3 (1976): 410-45. Lotman, Jurij M. 'II viaggio di Ulisse nella Divina Commedia di Dante.' In Testo e contesto. Bari: Laterza, 1980. 81-102. Mazzotta, Giuseppe. Dante, Poet of the Desert. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. Nardi, Bruno. 'La tragedia di Ulisse.' 1937. Rpt. in Dante e la cultura medievale. 2nd. ed. rev. Bari: Laterza, 1949.153-65. Padoan, Giorgio. 'Ulisse "fandi fictor" e le vie della sapienza.' 1960. Rpt. in II pio Enea, I'empio Ulisse. Ravenna: Longo, 1967.170-99. Pagliaro, Antonino. 'Ulisse.' In Ulisse: Ricerche semantiche sulla 'Divina Commedia.' 2 vols. Messina-Firenze: G. D'Anna, 1967.1:371-432. Paparelli, Gioacchino. 'II Paradiso.' Cultura e scuola 4 (1965): 391-405. Fertile, Lino. 'Dante e 1'ingegno di Ulisse.' Stanford Italian Review 1 (1979): 35-65. - 'Stile e immagini in Paradiso XXIII.' The Italianist 4 (1984): 7-34. Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative. Vol. 1.1983. Trans. Kathleen McLauglin and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Sapegno, Natalino. Comm. La Divina Commedia. 3 vols. Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1968. - 'Ulisse.' Letture dassensi 7 (1979): 93-8. Scaglione, Aldo. 'Periodic Syntax and Flexible Meter in the Divina Commedia.' Romance Philology 21 (1967): 1-22. Scott, John A. 'L'Ulisse dantesco.' In Dante magnanimo. Firenze: Olschki, 1977. 117-93. Tambling, Jeremy. Dante and Difference: Writing in the 'Commedia.' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Taylor, Karla. 'From superbo Ilwn to umile Italia: The Acrostic of Paradiso 19.' Stanford Italian Review 7 (1987): 47-65. Thompson, David. 'Dante's Ulysses and the Allegorical Journey.' 1967. Rpt. in Dante's Epic Journeys. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974. Valli, Luigi. 'Ulisse e la tragedia intellettuale di Dante/ In La struttura morale dell'universo dantesco. Roma: Ausonia, 1935. 26-40.

Narrative Design in Dante's Earthly Paradise1 RICHARD LANSING

From the moment of its appearance it has been universally acknowledged that Dante's Commedia is a highly structured poem whose constituent parts, at every level of formal consideration, display a visual analogue to Aristotelian notions of order under the aegis of Christian theology. Although criticism of very recent vintage, primarily efforts in the deconstructive vein, has attempted to destabilize this age-old view of the poem, claims that assign value and meaning to patterns of correspondence, hierarchy, symmetry, proportion, and teleological purpose, have generally prevailed over notions of deferral and undecidability. Aristotle placed near the heart of his body of narrative principles the notion that a poem ought to have a beginning, middle, and end, believing that these three salient narrative points, if properly related, would ensure a work's formal consistency. His idea of the 'middle' was vague, since by that term he seemed to refer to everything that lay between the beginning and end of a work. In any event, his remarks on the subject, as they have come down to us, were left undeveloped. But the epic tradition in general developed a symbolic sense of the middle and considered the mid-point or central episode of a poem to exemplify the idea of the middle. Events located at the middle accrued special import because of their positioning, so that what was at the centre was deemed 'central' to the meaning of the work and in some way symbolic of its thematic structure. Dante's Commedia, being a complex poem with multiple parts and a double action, may be said to have not one but two middles, a formal middle and a dramatic middle. The formal middle occurs in the interstices between cantos 16 and 17 of Purgatorio, while the climax of the poem and the turning point in the pilgrim's moral consciousness take place in the Earthly Paradise when Dante is rejoined by Beatrice.2 In a way, this

134 Richard Lansing double centre is a natural result of the poem's having two principal actions, the presentation of the state of the souls in the afterlife, and the unfolding of the pilgrim's journey from the selva oscura to the Candida rosa. At the formal centre, Dante showcases in Marco Lombardo's speech the poem's underlying theme of divine justice founded on libero arbitrio, which constitutes the rule by which each of the dead souls is assigned his or her place in the otherworld. The six cantos that make up the final section of Purgatorio, cantos 28 through 33, witness the completion of the moral recovery of the pilgrim under the tutelage of Beatrice and her handmaid Matelda within the realm of the Earthly Paradise, which takes the form, as has often been noted, of a conversion. To call this moment the poem's climax, or turning point, is not meant to sell short all of the Paradise, but simply to acknowledge a narrative fact, namely, that the dramatic action of the pilgrim's mission, taking into view the entire reach of the poem, achieves a major climax in these cantos.3 The poem achieves its rhetorical climax as well in these cantos. Nowhere else do we find such a rich and extraordinary confluence of diverse literary and cultural sources. Dante merges the pagan pastoral myth of the Golden Age with that of the biblical Earthly Paradise, saturates the Procession of the Twenty-four Elders with Ovidian imagery, alternates allusions to classical and sacred scripture with vertiginous speed, blends cosmological mystery with romantic desire, and within the context of Christian sacramental liturgy introduces, in canto 32, an epitome of the historical disasters of the Church. The mood ranges from the pathos of Virgil's disappearance to Beatrice's imperious welcome and to the rapt wonder with which the pilgrim scans the spectacle of the Procession and later the Historical Masque. It is a remarkable literary tour de force, one that Dante marks as a centre in several ways. The Christian concept of conversion symbolizes the definitive moment of separation from a troubled past and entrance into a redemptive future. Hence the Fathers of the Church traditionally speak of Christ's Incarnation as marking the centre of historical time, coming midway between the Fall of Adam and the Second Coming and dividing the age of nature from the age of grace. The subject of my inquiry is the narrative design, or conceptual structure, of the Earthly Paradise, which spans the last six cantos of the Purgatorio. An analysis of events in this part of the poem will not only lead us to a more coherent understanding of the way that Dante has structured the realm of Purgatory and of how tightly he has integrated the Earthly Paradise into the moral paradigm employed on the seven terraces of

Narrative Design in Dante's Earthly Paradise 135 Purgatory proper, it will also help absolve Dante of the unwarranted charge of having unaccountably duplicated his narrative material. When seen in the proper light, the sequence of events surrounding the appearance of Beatrice reveals a unity of structure and an imprint of poetic influence that have not been fully appreciated. The six cantos of the Earthly Paradise can be clearly seen to divide into three pairs, thereby forming a tripartite division. Canto 28 describes the pastoral setting of the Garden of Eden and prepares for the liturgical spectacle of the Procession of the books of the Bible in canto 29, which ends with the appearance of Beatrice. Cantos 30 and 31, shifting to events of a more personal and private nature, delineate the ritual of Dante's contrition and confession under the guidance of Beatrice. And the third pair, comprising cantos 32 and 33, returns to complete the allegorical drama initiated in the first pair by introducing a second, even more mysterious spectacle of historical events in the disasters of the Church. The cantos fall neatly into what one might call the 'sonata' form, or ABA structure, which is to say, into a triptych that contrasts two different orders of human experience, the individual and private world of the interior self, on the one hand, and the broad sweep of history and public world of politics and government, on the other.4 The drama of Dante's individual soul, his struggle to redeem himself of having followed a Via non vera' [a way not true] and of having succumbed to the enticements of 'cose fallaci' [deceitful things] is enclosed within the context of the establishment of the Church on earth, figured in the Procession, and its subsequent humiliation over an extended period of time, delineated in the Masque in canto 32. Linking the individual and interior with the historical and exterior is the theme of the fall: Dante's own personal fall, his abandonment of Beatrice, is tied thematically first to the fall of Adam and later, as a result of both internal forces and also contamination with the Empire, to the fall of the Church, which reaches its greatest degeneration in Philip the Fair's intrigue with Clement V to remove the papacy to Avignon. I want to look more closely now at the historical events depicted in the two 'A' markers, the coming of the Church in canto 29, dramatized as the revelation of the Word in sacred scripture, and its parallel canto, number 32, which displays, as it were, the going of the Church. These two separate but related events, the Procession of the books of the Bible and the Masque of Church disasters, have for some seemed to constitute a repetition of material and an unnecessary redundancy. Robert Kaske took up this question some time ago and offered the following explanation:

136 Richard Lansing ... why has Dante chosen to duplicate its theme [that of the figurative survey of Christian history], though in strikingly different imagery, in a part of the poem so closely preceding? ... I suspect that what is being dramatized here is the distinction between 'history' as it exists in the mind of God, and history as it is allowed to work itself out in a material universe. The Procession of Scripture - unearthly, severely ordered, and using as its major symbols the Books that are themselves the word of God - is history seen, as it were, sub specie aeternitatis; the historical survey of Cantos XXXII and XXXIII, allegorical though it is, presents with greater liveliness and variety the vicissitudes and ultimate triumph of this divinely ordained drama when it is put into production on the imperfect stage of earth. (106-7)5

Kaske's remarks seem to me cogent and sensible, although I do not think that Dante's re-presentation of material owes anything to making it more lively and more various the second time around. And the 'ultimate triumph' of which he speaks, the coming of the DXV, while promised, is never realized. Dante, I believe, had something else in mind when he presented an image of the Church under two different allegorical guises. Before I suggest what I take to be the reason for his supposed narrative 'duplication/ it will be useful to recall in greater detail the actual sequence of events in both allegorical dramas. The Procession that depicts the books of the Bible is meant to convey an image of historical time as it unfolds from Genesis to the Apocalypse. As he gazes upon its advance rapt in wonder, Dante witnesses the appearance of the twenty-four Elders of the Old Testament, crowned in white, the colour of faith, walking two-by-two. Directly behind them follow four animals, representing the Gospels, crowned in green, the colour of hope, and seven figures representing the remaining books of the New Testament, who, naturally, are crowned in red, the colour of charity. Displaying the proper sequence of the theological virtues, they march in two columns behind seven candelabra, whose flames paint in the sky above streamers of multi-coloured light that form a protective canopy over their heads. Centred among the four Gospels is a Chariot, symbolizing the Church, upon which Beatrice stands, drawn by the double-natured Griffin, who represents Christ. On the right side of the Chariot and along the axis of its wheels dance the three theological virtues, on the left, the four cardinal virtues. The Procession records the entire span of human time, from Genesis to Apocalypse, conceived as God's providential plan. The end of time is dramatized, in an allegorical sense, by Beatrice, who appears as Christ will at the Second Coming (Purg. 30.13-18), ready to

Narrative Design in Dante's Earthly Paradise 137 pronounce judgment on her disciple. This scene allegorizes what I would refer to as the historical perspective of earthly time in bono. After Beatrice's chastisement of Dante and his confession to her of his moral lapses, the Procession converts into a Masque or Pantomime Show as the 'glorioso essercito' [glorious army] surrounds the Tree of Justice and becomes witness to a return to the beginning of time, to the Fall of Adam, followed by allusions to Christ's death, resurrection, and transfiguration, as an overture to the main event, the fall of the Church repeated in seven separate attacks on the Chariot. Each calamity, occasioned by an attack by a rapacious beast or monster, represents a specific period of significant degeneration or erosion of the Church's power: the persecutions of the Church by the early Roman emperors, the early heresies, the Donation of Constantine, the Mohammedan schism, further malignant donations, papal corruption, and the Babylonian Captivity. If the Procession of biblical books presents an image of the ideal plan of history in the mind of God, the Masque delineates how far the Church has deviated from that ideal, and, by contrast, the historical perspective of time in malo. Now what is especially interesting about this deployment of highly developed images is its relation to the architectural structure of the purgation of sin in Purgatory proper. Edward Moore's essay 'Unity and Symmetry of Design in the Purgatorio/ and much later Enrico De' Negri's study 'Tema e iconografia del Purgatorio/ have elucidated the systematic pattern of symmetry underlying the sequence of narrative events on each of the seven terraces of sin.6 Upon entering a terrace, the pilgrim Dante first encounters exempla illustrating a particular virtue, subsequently a number of penitential souls in the process of purging their disposition towards a specific sin, and finally a second set of figures, exempla of the vice being purged.7 The two sets of exempla, which Dante terms the 'ferza' and the "freno/ or whip and bridle, are flanked by angels. The first angel receives Dante into the new terrace, sings a song evoking the spirit of the opposing virtue in the corresponding beatitude, and indicates the way of ascent. As Dante leaves a terrace after having studied the exempla of vice, a new angel greets him, erases from his brow a P, standing for the sin or 'peccatum' symbolically purged, and guides him into the next terrace. This pattern emphasizes a tripartite structure: there are three panels of figures, and while the number of exempla may vary on the different terraces, the order of their presentation does not. The most sophisticated and complex pattern of this narrative grouping occurs in the first instance, on the terrace of pride, and for our purposes it provides the best illustra-

138 Richard Lansing tion of the model. On either side of Umberto Aldobrandeschi, Oderisi da Gubbio, and Provenzan Salvani, the three penitents purging their pride, we encounter three corresponding exempla or sets of exempla. The exempla of humility, sculpted on the walls of marble along the path, exhibit Mary at the time of the Annunciation, David dancing before the Ark, and Trajan humbly receiving the plea of a minor citizen. On the other side, balancing these exempla, we find, etched in the marble pavement upon which Dante tramples, twelve examples of pagan and biblical individuals struck down for their pride, aligned into three distinct groups, capped by a final example of the city of Troy, as pride writ large. That Dante intends us to take the twelve examples of pride as three sets of four is made evident by the fact that each terzina contributes to creating an elaborate acrostic whose initial letters spell out the word V-O-M, signifying 'uomo/ or mankind, an acrostic recapitulated in summary fashion in the thirteenth terzina of Troy.8 Dante's penchant for employing symmetry as a sign of thematic coherence is overwhelmingly evident in this part of the poem, which spans cantos 10 through 12, as is his highlighting of the Trinity in the tripartite structure in which sin is purged and virtue reinforced. That tripartite structure, as any reader of Dante would be quick to note, replicates the overall structure of the otherworld in its divisions into three realms, and in a sense Purgatory reverses the larger order of experience. While the path from Hell to Paradise displays first the exempla of vice and then the exempla of virtue, with examples of penitents in between, the sequence in Purgatory moves conversely from images of virtue to images of vice, separated by the confessions of the penitents. The ritual of purgation requires reinforcement of virtue as a first step towards confession, an act that enables the true penitent to confront vice later with strength and equanimity. It should come as no surprise, then, to discover that the structure of events in the Earthly Paradise duplicates the model for the seven terraces below. In the narrative panel reserved for the exempla of virtue, Dante presents the thirty-five books of the Old and New Testaments, in a Procession that leads to the advent of Beatrice as Christ figure. In the central panel that features the penitent undergoing purgation, Dante makes himself, as pilgrim, the penitent who confesses his sins of infidelity to his lady, experiences contrition, and receives absolution. In the panel reserved for the exempla of vice, Dante presents an epitome of a catastrophic and humiliating series of historical events that strip the Church of her dignity and stability. Both the Procession and the Masque are designed to fit the exemplaristic mould, of good and evil, of history in bono and history in

Narrative Design in Dante's Earthly Paradise 139 malo, which has been reiterated on each of the seven terraces below. The order of presentation, the progression from images of good to images of evil, is also preserved. The Old and New Testaments, containing the old and new law, constitute the book of virtue that offers the primary means of achieving salvation, as Dante himself states with characteristic concision in Paradiso 5.76-8: 'Avete il novo e '1 vecchio Testamento / e '1 pastor de la Chiesa che vi guida; / questo vi basti a vostro salvamento' [You have the New Testament and the Old and the Shepherd of the Church to guide you: let this suffice for your salvation]. In terms of the major symbolic figures within the two allegorical scenes that stand as counterparts to each other, Christ, the paragon of virtue, represented by the Griffin, is balanced by the Anti-Christ figure of the Giant, who attacks and abducts the Harlot. Beatrice, chaste, adorned in the colours of the three theological virtues, simultaneously figura Christi and Bride of Christ, is balanced by the cupidinous and wayward Harlot. Although to the best of my knowledge no one has ever made the connection, this pattern of correspondence is, I think, virtually self-evident, and it is reinforced in some degree of detail. The first exemplum of virtue on each of the seven terraces, in keeping with a device that Dante borrowed from Conrad of Saxony's Speculum Beatae Mariae Virginis, is always taken from the life of Mary.9 While Mary cannot figure directly in the Procession, Dante evokes her presence in the twenty-four Elders' paraphrase of the angel's words to Mary 'Blessed art thou among women,' words directed at Beatrice in anticipation of her appearance: 'Benedicta tue / ne le figlie d'Adamo, e benedette / sieno in etterno le bellezze tue!' (Purg. 29.85-7). As Singleton observes, the chant is a prophetic herald of Christ's coming, just as the Procession itself enacts the coming of Christ in Beatrice (50). Vellutello's interpretation of the Procession as bearing the shape of the Cross of Christ, thereby symbolizing the idea that Christ is the model not only for man but the trajectory of history itself is, incidentally, as imagistically powerful as it is theologically fitting. The teaching that makes Christ the foundation of the ideal Church is allegorized in the architecture, and specifically the floor plan, of every Gothic cathedral in Europe. The positioning of the nave, transepts, and sanctuary is meant to call to mind the image of the cross, in order to illustrate the doctrine that personal salvation derives from and depends directly upon Christ's crucifixion.10 Moreover, the personification of the seven virtues who act as chaperons to Beatrice and hover about the Chariot strengthens the affiliation of the Procession to the exempla of virtue, as do the Elders' theologically coloured garments. Later the personified virtues will join

140 Richard Lansing Beatrice in weeping when the Church disasters are recounted in the Masque.11 Supplementing the seven virtues are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, allegorized in the seven candelabra that precede the Procession. As Aquinas remarks, these gifts are sometimes called virtues in the broad sense of the term, are superior to all virtues except the three theological virtues, and as habits of the good soul are required for salvation.12 The Procession, then, epitomizes the very idea of virtue. And finally, the rite of removing the letter P from Dante's brow on each terrace finds its parallel in Dante's immersion in the rivers Lethe and Eunoe, where he undergoes ritual absolution and a final cleansing of his personal sins. What emerges from this analysis is a view of Purgatory that is more integrated and uniform than previously thought. Dante has assembled the narrative components of the Earthly Paradise on the model that he has deployed throughout Purgatory proper, so that we can perceive his Garden of Eden as the culmination of the same process of ritual purification that takes place on each of the seven terraces.13 It is the moment that ties together all of the thematic and conceptual threads of the fabric of Purgatory; it is the jewel in the structural crown of the transitional realm. Critics have not been quick to notice this pattern of correspondence, perhaps because they have focused primarily on external sources as a means of elucidating Dante's structures, sources which are astonishing in their number and range. Dante himself cites Ezekiel and St John as sources for the Procession of the books of the Bible, and throughout the cantos of the Earthly Paradise he makes extensive use of material from and the spirit of John's book of the Apocalypse. But those sources, while providing the outline for the Procession, do not account for the idea of the Procession, the image of the marching 'glorioso essercito.' In John's vision as in Ezekiel's, the twenty-four Elders are assembled around a throne on which the divine Christ sits, having been presented statically in a manner that accentuates the mystical. Here we must turn to classical examples of processions, like those found in Prudentius's Psychomachia, Martianus Capella's De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, or Bernard Silvester's De mundi universitate. Alain de Lille's Anticlaudianus provides the especially remarkable parallel of a chariot fashioned by the seven liberal arts, the trivium and quadrivium, drawn by Prudence in an ascent into heaven where the renewal of man is celebrated.14 And one should keep in mind that Dante would have been very familiar with actual processions like those of the Corpus Christi and the general Mass, as well as of mosaic images lining the tympana of cathedrals in Ravenna and elsewhere.15 We are virtually certain that Dante derived his idea for balancing or contrasting a set of virtues with a set of vices from Conrad of Saxony's

Narrative Design in Dante's Earthly Paradise 141 Speculum and from Hugh of St Victor's De quinque septenis. But neither of these sources can account for the tripartite narrative structure found in the Earthly Paradise. It is quite possible that he modelled his narrative structure on an episode from the Aeneid, his favourite text after the Bible. Book 6 of the Aeneid recounts Aeneas' underworld journey, which the Trojan hero embarks upon with the sole desire of coming face-to-face once again with his father Anchises. Interestingly, this scene reveals a tripartite structure. Aeneas first encounters a series of souls who died during the journey from Troy, specifically Palinurus, Dido, and Deiphobus. Only subsequently does Aeneas meet Anchises, the prototypical figure of the past, from whom he is given a prophetic vision of the future of his people in the new world of Rome, and in particular of the rulers from Silvius down to Augustus and Marcellus. All of the narrative ingredients are here: a panel of figures of the past contrasts with a panel of figures of the future, and Anchises, who functions as a kind of Beatrice for Aeneas, is fount of true wisdom and providential guide along the journey to Italy. Like Dante's paradigm, it covers historical time from beginning to end, which is to say, all the time it took to rebuild Troy in Rome, from the fall of Ilium (like the fall in Eden) to the advent of a future saviour (Augustus).16 It is cast in the prophetic mode, although Dante will convert the melancholic vision of the loss of the young Marcellus, the last of the great Romans presented by Anchises, into the salvif ic figure of a redeemer known only as 'un cinquecento diece e cinque' [a five hundred and fifteen]. And finally, in Virgil as well the pivotal events are presented at the very centre of the poem, in book 6 of 12, which centre symbolically marks the turning point in Roman history. The only difference, and it is a small one, is that Dante has reversed the poles by placing the image of the good before that of the bad, whereas Virgil presents the lesser past before the better future, the old world before the new. Given the centrality of the Aeneid to Dante's imagination, such an adaptation of narrative material is not entirely improbable, especially if we consider the fact that the only time Dante quotes Virgil's poem in the original, in the verse 'Manibus, oh date lilia plenis' (Purg. 30.21), occurs at precisely this juncture in the poem.17 Dante's reversal of polarity has less to do with a desire or need to rewrite the text of the Aeneid than with exploiting a characteristic rhetorical pattern that we find elsewhere in the poem as well. In the sphere of Mars, Dante's encounter with his great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida is distinctly modelled on Aeneas' meeting with Anchises in the underworld scene of book 6. The parallel, which is reinforced by an explicit and direct comparison of the two paternal figures, serves to alert the reader to

142 Richard Lansing a broader, structural correspondence between the two episodes that compares an image of the past with one of the future. Again reversing polarity with Virgil while maintaining chronological order, Dante has Cacciaguida list first the good and peace-loving families of the once 'pura cittadinanza' [pure citizenship] of his Old Florence, and subsequently a longer list of Florentine families corrupted by the 'confusion de le persone' [the intermingling of people] and the 'nova fellonia' [new felony] of more recent times, a train of historical events that will culminate in the poet's exile, as prophesied by Cacciaguida.18 For Dante, the ideal always seems to lie in the remote past or the prophesied future, never in the immediate present. To conclude: I believe that we can safely say that the Procession and the Masque constitute less a duplication of material than a squaring off of two distinctly inverse ethical perspectives on the history of the Church, the real and the ideal. If each terrace of Purgatory presents notable exempla of good and bad actions that merit archetypal status, the Earthly Paradise parades images of the collective totality of and continuity of perfection as well as of evil. What emerges on this eighth and last terrace, and this is what differentiates it from the lower terraces, is an image of social integration, of communitas, of the body of Christ which is the ideal Church, counterbalanced by its antitype, that same body meretriciously abused and torn apart.19 The eighth terrace, gathering and integrating all of what comes before, embraces the previous seven and simultaneously transcends them by going one beyond, to achieve the definitive view of the role of the individual within the context of human history, sub specie aeternita*„•„ 20

Notes 1 This essay first appeared in Dante Studies 12 (1994): 101-13. It is reprinted here by permission of the Dante Society of America. 2 Since the poem has an even number of cantos, there can be no absolutely central canto. Consequently one could consider either Purgatorio 16 (canto 50 out of 100) or Purgatorio 17 to mark the midpoint. Singleton places the centre in Purgatorial?, arguing that this canto 'can rightly be said to contain the central argument that is basic to the whole moral order, i.e., the general exposition of Love' (1). But one could argue perhaps even more strongly that the 'central argument' rests on the concept of divine justice based on free will, which Dante himself identifies as the allegorical meaning of the poem's subject in his Letter to Cangrande, if we accept its authenticity (Epistola

Narrative Design in Dante's Earthly Paradise 143 13.25). For the traditional view that Purgatorio 16 constitutes the central canto, see Vallone (97). There is compelling evidence for either position, but the topic is peripheral to the concerns of the present essay. 3 It is significant that the only time Dante's name appears in the poem, pronounced by Beatrice in her less than warm greeting (Purg. 30.55), occurs at precisely this 'central' point in the narrative. On the topos of the naming of the hero, which traditionally takes place at the centre of a medieval text and symbolizes the hero's self-integration and rebirth, see Ziltener (51-7). 4 An elaborate pattern of chiastic symmetry coupling the central two cantos, the contiguous cantos on either side of the centre, and the first and last of the six, is discussed by Bruno Porcelli, who credits Manfred Hardt with having first observed the pattern (173-4). 5 The passage quoted originally appeared in a 1974 version of the essay (211). 6 Moore underlines the elements of symmetry in the design of the terraces: virtue always comes at the beginning, vice always at the end, of a cornice; 'there is a studied correspondence between the numbers of these examples [of virtue and vice]' (251); 'sacred and profane instances are balanced and interchanged' (251); each virtue and vice is 'similarly presented,' that is, uses the same mode of presentation (e.g., sculpture, voice, vision, etc.). De' Negri reiterates Moore's findings while proposing, particularly for the terrace of pride, a number of detailed correspondences between the two sets of virtues and vices. Ferrante extends the symmetrical pattern to embrace the totality of the Purgatorio (155). 7 The one exception to this pattern occurs on the terrace of avarice and prodigality, where, in a variant form of symmetry, the exempla of virtue and vice occupy an interstitial position with respect to the three penitential souls Adriano V, Ugo Capeto, and Stazio. 8 The number twelve was traditionally associated with the idea of universality, universal history, fullness of time, and totality (the zodiac, the twelve months of the year, the twelve hours of the day and of the night, the twelve Patriarchs, the twelve Apostles, etc.). Dante clearly means to convey 'la rappresentazione "esemplare" della storia dell'umanita peccatrice' [the portrayal of the history of mankind's sinning by means of example] (Delcorno 128). 9 Conrad's work may also be the source for the idea of opposing sets of corresponding virtues and vices, although the procedure had already been codified by Hugh of St Victor in his De quinque septenis seu septenariis. See Delcorno's essay for a useful discussion of these sources. 10 Vellutello's intuition has by and large been overlooked in the commentaries since Scartazzini. Exceptions are Carroll, who also provides a diagram of the Procession in the form of a cross, and more recently Vallone 1981 (683).

144 Richard Lansing 11 The appearance of the Tree of Justice, first despoiled of its leaves by the Fall of Adam and later revitalized when it is joined to the Chariot (Christ's atonement), precedes the historical drama of the Church disasters. After the renewal of the Tree, Dante falls asleep, during which time the Procession returns to heaven, led by the Griffin. This allegorical scene provides the transition from the virtues to the vices, and opens, appropriately, with the verbalized memory of Adam's sin: 'Io senti' mormorare a tutti "Adamo"' [I heard 'Adam' murmured by all (Purg. 32.37)]. The structuring of events, in which the seven virtues are allowed to remain present with Beatrice during the recitation of the disasters while the Procession departs the scene and ascends into heaven, seems to stress the idea that the earthly life of Christ is the true model of human virtue for mankind. The corresponding evil, then, consists primarily of the degenerate or enfeebled vicars of the Church, the popes, whose role it is to act as Christ on earth. The main point here is that the image of sacred scripture in the Procession and the historical events of the Masque fall into entirely separate segments of narrative action. 12 The sevenfold spirit of the Holy Ghost consists of seven gifts. In Convivio 4.21.12, Dante cites the seven from Isaiah 11.2-3, in the same order: 'Sapienza, Intelletto, Consiglio, Fortezza, Scienza, Pietade, Timore di Dio' [wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, piety, fear of God] ('spiritus sapientiae et intellectus, spiritus consilii et fortitudinis, spiritus scientiae et pietatis. Et replebit eum spiritus timoris Domini'). Aquinas says the gifts are distinct from virtues, but are nevertheless like them because the powers of man, appetite and reason, are principles of these gifts: 'Ad primum ergo dicendum quod hujusmodi dona nominantur quandoque virtutes secundum communem rationem virtutis. Habent tamen aliquid supereminens rationi communi virtutis, inquantum sunt quaedam divinae virtutes, perficientes hominem in quantum est a Deo motus' [Hence ... these gifts are sometimes called virtues in the common meaning of the word virtue. However, there is something in them that transcends the common meaning of virtue, in that they are divine virtues and perfect man in so far as he is moved by God (ST I.II.68.al.rl)]. These gifts are superior to the intellectual and moral virtues, but inferior to the theological virtues: 'Unde sicut virtutes intellectuales praeferuntur virtutibus moralibus, et regulant cas; ita virtutes teologicae praeferuntur donis Spiritus Sancti, et regulant ea' [Hence, just as the intellectual virtues are superior to the moral virtues and regulate them, so the theological virtues are superior to the Gifts of the Holy Spirit and regulate them (ST I.II.68.a8.r)]. A soul must possess these gifts in order to attain salvation: 'quia scilicet in haereditatem illius terrae beatorum nullus potest pervenire, nisi moveatur et ducatur a Spiritu Sancto. Ed ideo ad ilium finem consequendum, necessarium est homini habere donum Spiritus Sancti' [For

Narrative Design in Dante's Earthly Paradise 145 no one can attain the inheritance of that land of the blessed unless he is moved and led by the Holy Spirit. Hence, to attain that end, it is necessary for a man to have the Gift of the Holy Spirit (ST I.II.68.a2.r)]. 13 Dante employs this device of juxtaposing exempla of good and evil both elsewhere in the Commedia and in the Convivio as well. In the sphere of Jupiter, the evil Christian rulers denounced by the Eagle (and marked by the acrostic LIZE) are immediately followed by the presentation of the six good rulers who form its eye (Par. 19.115-41). In Convivio 4.4-6, chapters that form a separate unit defining the nature of the imperial authority, Dante lists the good Roman rulers and the pagan philosophers, contrasting them with two benighted rulers, Charles the Cripple and Frederick II of Aragon. 14 Dante registers the influence of the Anticlaudianus here and throughout his poem, and, as Mazzotta notes, the text 'is a sourcebook in Dante's Paradise' (101). Mazzotta's work provides the most thorough and perceptive recent analysis of Dante's metaphorical deployment of .the trivium and quadrivium and the history of the artes liberates in medieval philosophic texts. For Dante's classification of the artes, see Convivio 2.13. 15 On iconographical representations of processions, see Bosco (874) and Vallone 1981 (688-9). 16 Unlike Dante, whose exempla are presented in chronological order, Virgil does not observe a strict historical sequence in his presentation of the great Roman heroes but backtracks, after exalting Augustus as founder of the Golden Age of Saturn, to previous eras before returning to the prophetic present and the ill-fated figure of young Marcellus. But Anchises' recitation creates an image of a procession, of heroes filing in sequence, so that the overall effect is nevertheless one that emphasizes the historical continuum and the achievement of progress. 17 Borsellino argues, without going into detailed analysis, that Dante's 'profetismo' is more indebted to Virgil than to John: 'La sua prospettiva infatti si misura su altre coordinate [che quelle dell'Apocalisse}: classiche, virgiliane. II suo mandate corrisponde a quello affidato ad Enea nei Campi Elisi, anche se il pellegrino del purgatorio deve postulare soltanto, ed enigmaticamente, senza visioni di gloria futura, la celebrazione di una non lontana palingenesi, proiettando per il momento visioni phi prossime di apocalisse' [His perspective, in fact, is measured along coordinates other (than those of the Apocalypse), namely the classical and the Virgilian. His mission corresponds to that entrusted to Aeneas in the Elysian Fields, even if in Purgatory the pilgrim must postulate only, and enigmatically, without visions of future glory, the celebration of a not-too-distant renewal, projecting for the moment visions more apocalyptic in nature (16)]. 18 Regarding the paradigm comparing Florence past and present (Par. 15-17),

146 Richard Lansing see my discussion in From Image to Idea: A Study of the Simile in Dante's 'Commedia' (Ravenna: Longo, 1977), 86-9. 19 Carroll, citing W.W.Vernon, delineates an elaborate pattern of correspondences between the evils portrayed as antitypes in the Masque and the archetypes of good presented in the Procession: 'The Monster is the antitype of the Triumphal Chariot. The Seven Heads form the antitype of the Seven Nymphs or the Seven Candlesticks. The Ten Horns are the antitype of the Ten Paces. The Harlot is the antitype of Beatrice. The Monster being loosed from the Tree, and dragged through the forest, is the antitype of the Chariot being led to the Tree and bound to it. The Giant, as Paramour of the Church, is the antitype of the Gryphon, who as the symbol of Christ, is the Bridegroom. In the Gospel History, Pontius Pilate is taken as an antitype of Christ. But in Purg. XX.91, Dante calls Philippe le Bel "il nuovo Pilato" [the new Pilate]' (483). 20 The number eight traditionally symbolized the resurrection of the soul and the state of eternal rest in the afterlife. Consequently it is also associated with the rite of baptism, which is the promise of salvation and eternal rest. Not only does Dante place the Earthly Paradise on the eighth tier of Purgatory, he also arranges the advent of the redeemer DXV, prophesied by Beatrice (Purg. 33.43), as the eighth event after the series of seven Church disasters, each of which, excepting the last and most climactic for Dante, occupies exactly two tercets (Purg. 32.109-17; 118-23; 124-9; 130-5; 136-^1; 142-7; 148-60). Seven, symbolic of the idea of terrestrial instability and human fallibility, is transcended by eight, symbolizing the restoration of the Church through messianic intervention. Bernardo argues convincingly that the Church Militant in the Earthly Paradise is thematically linked to the Church Triumphant in the sphere of the Fixed Stars in Paradise: 'the triumph of Christ in the eighth sphere [is] the natural complement of the appearance of Beatrice and of the symbolic procession of the Griffin at the summit of Purgatory' (138). He appropriately defines the symbolic significance of the number eight but fails to notice a further correspondence, that the scene in Purgatory likewise takes place on the eighth level.

Bibliography Bernardo, Aldo. 'Dante's Eighth Heaven: Ultimate Threshold to Reality.' Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 2 (1972): 131-50. Borsellino, Nino. 'Visione e profezia nel canto XXXII del Purgatorio.' Filologia e critica 12 (1987): 3-16.

Narrative Design in Dante's Earthly Paradise 147 Bosco, Umberto. 'II canto XXIX del Purgatorio.' In Letture scelte sulla 'Divina Commedia.' Ed. Giovanni Getto. Florence: Sansoni, 1970. 861-78. Carroll, John S. Prisoners of Hope: An Exposition of Dante's 'Purgatorio.' London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1906. Delcorno, Carlo. 'Dante e T'exemplum' medievale/ Letture dassensi 12 (1983): 113-38. Rpt. from Lettere italiane 35 (1983): 3-28. De' Negri, Enrico. Tema e iconografia del Purgatorio.' Romanic Review 49 (1958): 81-104. Ferrante, Joan. 'A Poetics of Chaos and Harmony.' In The Cambridge Companion to Dante. Ed. Rachel Jacoff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 153-71. Hardt, Manfred. Die Zahl in der 'Divina Commedia.' Frankfurt: Athenaum Verlag, 1973. Kaske, Robert. 'Dante's Purgatorio XXXII and XXXIII: A Survey of Christian History.' University of Toronto Quarterly 43 (1974): 193-214. - The Seven Status Ecdesiae in Purgatorio XXXII and XXXIII.' In Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio: Studies in the Italian Trecento in Honor of Charles S. Singleton. Ed. Aldo S. Bernardo and Anthony L. Pellegrini. Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1983. 89-113. Mazzotta, Giuseppe. Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Moore, Edward. 'Unity and Symmetry of Design in the Purgatorio.' In Studies in Dante, Second Series: Miscellaneous Essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899. 246-68. Porcelli, Bruno. 'Progressione e simmetria nella sequenza di Purgatorio XXVIII-XXXIII.' Studi eproblemi di critica testuale 35 (1987): 144-55. Singleton, Charles S. 'The Pattern at the Center.' In Dante Studies 1: 'Commedia': Elements of Structure. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954. 45-60. - 'The Poet's Number at the Center.' MLN 80 (1965): 1-10. Thomas Aquinas, Saint. Summa Theologiae. The Gifts of the Spirit (Ia2ae. 68-70). Vol. 24. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973. Vallone, Aldo. 'II canto XXIX del Purgatorio.' In Purgatorio: letture degli anni 1976-79. Rome: Bonacci, 1981. 675-94. - 'Purgatorio XVI.' In Strutture e mbdulazioni nella 'Divina Commedia.' Florence: Olschki, 1990. Ziltener, Werner. Chretien und die Aeneis: eine Untersuchung des Einflusses von Vergil auf Chretien von Troyes. Graz: H. Bohlaus Nachf., 1957.

A Desire of Paradise and a Paradise of Desire: Dante and Mysticism LINO FERTILE

Canto 23 of Paradiso opens with a simile in which structure, sound, and meaning combine to create a perfect balance between momentary calm and tension towards the future (Fertile, 'Stile' 14-16): Come 1'augello, intra 1'amate fronde, posato al nido de' suoi dolci nati la notte che le cose ci nasconde, che, per veder li aspetti disiati e per trovar lo cibo onde li pasca, in che gravi labor li sono aggrati, previene il tempo in su aperta frasca, e con ardente affetto il sole aspetta, fiso guardando pur che 1'alba nasca; cosi la donna mia stava eretta e attenta, rivolta inver' la plaga sotto la quale il sol mostra men fretta: si che, veggendola io sospesa e vaga, fecimi qual e quei che disiando altro vorria, e sperando s'appaga. [As the bird among the loved branches, having sat on the nest of her sweet brood through the night that hides things from us, anticipates the time on the open spray that she may see their longed for looks and find the food to nourish them for which her heavy toils are welcome to her, and with ardent longing awaits the sun, watching with fixed gaze for the dawn to break; so my Lady stood erect and intent, turned towards the part beneath which the sun shows

A Desire of Paradise and a Paradise of Desire 149 less haste. I, therefore, seeing her in suspense and longing, became as one that is moved with desire and satisfied with hope.]

We are in the eighth heaven of Paradise, the heaven of the Fixed Stars, but this is a strange Paradise. Beatrice is depicted awaiting ecstatically with a sort of sublime, calm trepidation for the blessed to appear beneath Christ the sun; Dante gazes lovingly at her and his desire is equal to his hope of fulfilment. Not only Dante, who is a passing visitor, but also Beatrice, who is a permanent resident, are both described in a condition of supreme tension, awaiting for a miraculous event which they are certain is about to unfold. What the poet describes is not Paradise as timeless fruition, but a Paradise of desire, a Paradise in time, where desire is at the same time constantly present and constantly satisfied by the certainty of fulfilment. The psychological situation described is the precise opposite of Virgil's condition in Limbo, where he lives in desire without hope (Inf. 4.42). It is also antithetical to the state of the earthly lover of the Petrarchan type, who keeps desiring that which cannot be and lives on desire devoid of hope: Lasso!, che disiando vo quel ch'esser non puote in alcun modo; e vivo del desir fuor di speranza. (Canzoniere 73.76-8) [I go on yearning for That which, alas, can't be by any means, And so I live by longing hopelessly.]

Its only significant equivalent is the state of mind of the soul absorbed in the contemplation of the divine. Jean Leclercq, writing on monastic life in the twelfth century, describes contemplation as 'partial participation' in heavenly bliss: cette participation est cependant deja une contemplation reelle: elle ne peut 1'etre que comme une anticipation de ce que sera la contemplation quand elle sera enfin parvenue a 1'etat parfait. Elle est un commencement, dans la foi et 1'amour; elle est une esperance, en meme temps qu'une possession; elle est certaine, autant qu'elle est obscure. Elle est, de par sa nature meme, orientee, tendue, vers un etat d'elle meme qui est encore a venir, et son premier effet dans 1'ame, sa manifestation la plus constante, est d'y entretenir un desir: le desir de contempler Dieu. Aussi comprend-on qu'elle soit souvent associee au

150 Lino Fertile mot et a 1'idee de ce desir, qui en devient, en quelque sorte, la definition. (Etudes 119) [This participation, however, is already real contemplation: this it can only be as an anticipation of what contemplation will be when it will reach its perfected state. It is a beginning, founded on faith and love; it is a hope and at the same time a possession as certain as it is obscure. By its very nature it strains towards an as yet unrealized version of itself; its primary effect within the soul, its most constant manifestation, is to maintain a state of desire, the desire to contemplate God. Thus it is easy to see why it is often associated with both the term and the idea of this desire, this desire which becomes in a manner of speaking the definition of contemplation.]

The purpose of this study is to show the extent to which a definition of contemplation as desire for God is relevant to our understanding of Dante's Paradiso. My intention is not to argue whether Dante was a mystic, but rather to show how the language and imagery of mystical literature may have affected his formal and ideological choices in the writing of his final cantica. Theologically speaking, Dante's journey should be completed when he first ascends to Heaven, for, as he will later be told, 'everywhere in heaven is Paradise' (Par. 3.88-9). The pilgrim is now in patria and he should be capable of immediately meeting God, embracing the whole of Paradise in one timeless instant. But if this is indeed the case, what is the poet to do? He could stretch the description of the ultimate bliss over the thirty-three cantos that are already assigned to Paradiso by the structure of the poem. However, such a description would neither match the symmetrical development of the other two cantiche, nor respect the traditional hierarchical structure of the heavenly home; above all it would not correspond, as we will see, to Dante's poetic intuition of the Paradise. Dante's stroke of genius was to conceive of, and represent, the pilgrim's experience of Paradise in statu viae, that is, not as achieved fulfilment, but as a quest for fulfilment. As the movement away from evil is completed and innocence is regained, a new movement begins towards the source of all goodness. As with the mystic, now that he has found God, the pilgrim must begin a new process of seeking Him (Bernard, On Loving God 21-2; On the Song of Songs 84.1). Thus the journey continues, but it becomes entirely positive. What now motivates it is no longer fear of evil, nor desire for personal purification, but desire for God. This desire is the pilgrim's chief emotion in Paradise, the new positive impulse that comes

A Desire of Paradise and a Paradise of Desire 151 into play and provides the third cantica with its own dramatic tension. It is commonly said that Pamdiso is the cantica of the visio Dei; I suggest that it is the cantica of the desire for that vision. This difference is crucial. The whole of Paradiso, its conception and poetic realization, hinges on it. The concept of desire (desiderium supernum) is a central one in the great Christian metaphor of earthly life as exile from, and journey towards, the heavenly homeland (Smithers; Gardiner). We find it significantly developed in St Gregory the Great. Contemplation and desire are equivalent notions for Gregory, and together form one of his favourite themes (Leclercq, Love of Learning 37-41; Etudes 117-21). In Gregory's writings, desire is no mere longing or yearning, but the constant emotion and state of mind of the pilgrim people as they journey towards the supernal. The distinctive feature of Gregory's notion of pilgrimage is its direct reference to the ambivalence of the Christian experience on earth: while the Christian pilgrim knows that he is travelling towards his celestial home, he also knows that this is a life of exile; indeed, the more the pilgrim has faith in his future attainment, the more he is aware of and feels his present privation; life offers him at most temporary rest, like a bed at an inn to the wayfarer whose mind however is somewhere else (Moralia 8.54,25-7). In some sense, this intense desire for God is a way of already possessing Him (Horn, in Evang. 2.27A and 2.30.1: PL 76.1207A and 1220C; etc.). Yet, this is an ambivalent feeling, for the awareness that such possession is virtual rather than actual leaves the soul still desiring, its joy marred by the anxiety of privation (Moralia 23.21, 85-6). To express the complexity of desiderium supernum, Gregory develops the biblical metaphors of taste and sight (Ps. 30.20 and 33.9; Is. 12.3 and 55.1, but especially John 4.5-15); he writes of the heart that thirsts, and of the desire to see the face of God; he uses terms such as aestuare, anhelare, inardescere, incalescere, and flagrare desiderio to signify the burning fire of desire for God (Leclercq, Termes' 90; Catry). He speaks of the sting of love with which God goads the Christian soul as if with a spear (see Purg. 21.37-8 and Par. 22.26). The desire for God is a leitmotif in the mystical writings of many Christian authors, from St Augustine (Bochet) to William of St-Thierry. I must focus at least on St Bernard, for it is he, the 'contemplative' (Par. 32.1), who leads Dante to his final encounter with the Deity. 'No one can seek God - Bernard writes - save those who have first found him' (On Loving God 21-2). In Bernard's paradoxical language, God's distance is a gift for the soul which seeks Him. However, as in Gregory, the beatitude assured by contemplation and desire has its reverse in the pain and

152 Lino Fertile anxiety of privation. St Bernard applies to mystical experience all the metaphors normally associated with earthly love (Mohrmann xx). His vocabulary strains language almost beyond logical signification. It too, like St Gregory's, expresses the bitter-sweet joys of contemplation through images of physical pain and privation (Blanpain): we sigh after God, are hungry and thirsty for Him, we must moan, be tormented by desire for Him. Desire is ardour, avidity, impatience, daring; it extends to infinity, it will never end (Bernard, On the Song of Songs 84.1). It is the language of the Song of Songs and of its commentaries from Origen's to St Bernard (Matter): the love that courtly literature will presently call 'amor de lonh/ Dante seems to write with full awareness of this tradition and of the way in which it affected vernacular love poetry - something which cannot be dealt with here. As a Christian, strong in the certainty of his faith, he allows the pilgrim from the very threshold of Paradise the joy of desire; at the same time, as a poet, he defers the full satisfaction of desire until the very end of the poem (see Gregory, Moralia 16.27, 14-19; 26.19, 13-17; Horn, in Evang. 2.25.2: PL 76.1190C), thus creating a space in which the poem too can be fully completed in line with its own formal requirements. This poetic strategy is inspired and justified by a theological argument, which Dante illustrates when the pilgrim explains to his ancestor Cacciaguida the reason why he can thank him only with his heart (Par. 15.73-84): L'affetto e '1 senno come la prima equalita v'apparse, d'un peso per ciascun di voi si fenno, pero che '1 sol che v'allumo e arse, col caldo e con la luce e si iguali, che tutte simiglianze sono scarse. Ma voglia e argomento ne' mortal!, per la cagion ch'a voi e manifesta, diversamente son pennuti in ali; ond'io, che son mortal, mi sento in questa disagguaglianza, e pero non ringrazio se non col core a la paterna festa. [Love and intelligence, as soon as the Primal Equality was plain to you, became equally poised in each of you, since the Sun that illumined and warmed you with its heat and light has such equality that all comparisons came short of it. But will and faculty in mortals, for the reason that is plain to you, are not equally feathered in

A Desire of Paradise and a Paradise of Desire 153 their wings, so that I, who am mortal, feel in myself this inequality and therefore can only give thanks with the heart for thy paternal greeting.]

The blessed, Dante argues, as they see God ('prima equalita'), achieve themselves equality between their affections and their intelligence; consequently, they no longer suffer the disparity ('disagguaglianza') between desire ('voglia') and faculty ('argomento') which binds Dante and all other mortals. This 'disagguaglianza' marks Dante, both as character and poet, throughout Paradiso. It is indeed the gap that desire spans and in which the poet situates the whole of Paradiso. As character, now reconciled with God, he naturally desires to know and enjoy the ultimate goodness (see Purg. 18.28-33), but he cannot attain it while his faculties are unequal to the task, a condition which persists until the very end of the poem (Par. 33.137-9) and is resolved there only through a free gift of God's grace (141). The same disparity affects the poet who desires to recount his heavenly vision, but is unable to remember or express it adequately; and in this case too the inequality is resolved only after the poem is completed, paradoxically, as a non-description of that experience, that is, as a poem which uses as its central metanarrative theme the inability of articulating itself, and in so doing articulates itself fully. On both levels, then, the full realization of the journey and of the poem is conditioned by the existence of desire. All the narrative devices employed in the cantica have this in common: they anticipate and simultaneously delay the final vision (see, with reference to the bride of the Song of Songs, Gregory, Moralia 5.4,31-4); they build in a condition of constant and ever increasing emotional and intellectual suspense, a state of sweet anxiety that becomes more and more burning as the pilgrim comes closer to fulfilment. In this sense Dante's experience of Paradise is, literally, an 'askesis,' a training and a struggle (see Par. 23.78; Gregory, Moralia 26.19,15, and Horn, in Hiezech. 2.2,270-91) not an appeasement, for God's desirability lies in His transcendence, and His power of attraction in His distance and His absence. Yet, this is not all. In this Paradise the blessed too feel constant desire (Fertile, 'Drama'; Ferrucci 248-54). In the Convivio, following St Thomas and the Aristotelian tradition, Dante states that desire cannot coexist with beatitude, the latter being a perfect condition while the former is defective (Conv. 3.15.3). This clearly is not true of the blessed in Paradiso. Here the poet writes of the wheel that moves the whole universe by inspiring it with eternal desire (1.76-7); Piccarda says that the desires of the blessed

154 Lino Fertile coincide with God's will, and in this coincidence consists their peace (3.73-85); Beatrice herself turns towards God 'tutta desiante' (5.86); Carlo Martello says that he and all the spirits of the Heaven of Venus circle with the heavenly Princes in one orbit, at one rhythm, with one thirst (8.35-6); he later defines God as the Good that both revolves and satisfies the whole of Paradise (8.97-8); Cacciaguida speaks of the sacred love that makes him thirst with sweet desire (15.65-6); Beatrice longingly awaits for the epiphany of Christ in the heaven of the Fixed Stars (23.1-12); she addresses the souls of the eighth Heaven saying that the blessed Lamb feeds them so that their hunger is always replenished (24.1-3); in his solemn profession of faith, Dante affirms his belief in a God who, unmoved, moves all Heaven with love and desire (24.130-2); St Peter and St James greet each other praising the food that feeds them above (25.24); Beatrice explains that the circle of angels closest to God is the swiftest in its motion because of the burning love by which it is impelled (28.44-5); the angels in the rose, flying between God and the blessed, impart to them peace and ardour which they gain fanning their sides (31.17); finally, in the poem's last image, the pilgrim's desire and will are also revolved by the love that moves the sun and the other stars (33.143-5). Dante's Paradise, then, is hardly the kingdom of quiet and immobility we might have expected; indeed, it is perennial motion, desire and ardour, hunger and thirst - not, however, of a human kind, for this motion does not aim anywhere but, as the tangible form of perfect love, it is in itself perfect. Here desire, hunger, and thirst are constantly alive and constantly replenished. The soul, as it reaches Heaven, is not fed and satisfied once and for all, its desire extinguished for ever and ever; but as at last it finds God, desire and fulfilment, perfectly balanced and simultaneous, become a timeless mode of being that is forever present. This is the irreducible difference that separates the visitor from the residents of Dante's Paradise. The hope and purpose of the pilgrim in his ascent to the Empyrean will not be the extinction of desire, but its constant fulfilment, the attainment of a perfect state of equilibrium whereby his soul will always receive what it desires and will never cease desiring what it receives. A theory of blessedness as eternal progression was developed by Gregory of Nyssa and later on by Scotus Eriugena and William of StThierry in his early treatise De contemplando Deo (Danielou, Deseille). After St Thomas Aquinas refuted it on theological grounds, this view was generally applied only to life on earth. However, the theme of desire in blessedness was employed by many ascetic writers to express the eternal novelty and freshness of heavenly bliss. As such it is present in St

A Desire of Paradise and a Paradise of Desire 155 Augustine (In loan, evangelium 3.21) and, in a particularly striking formulation, in St Gregory the Great. Gregory writes that the angels see God and simultaneously desire to see Him: Ne enim sit in desiderio anxietas, desiderantes satiantur; ne autem sit in satietate fastidium, satiati desiderant. Et desiderant igitur sine labore, quia desiderium satietas comitatur; et satiantur sine fastidio, quia ipsa satietas ex desiderio semper accenditur. (Moralia 18.54,125-9) [For that there be not anxiety in desire, in desiring they are satisfied, and that there be not disgust in their satisfying, whilst being satisfied they desire. And therefore they desire without suffering, because desire is accompanied by satisfying. And they are satisfied without disgust, because the very satisfying itself is ever being inflamed by desire.]

And then he goes on to state: Sic quoque et nos erimus quando ad ipsum fontem vitae venerimus. Erit nobis delectabiliter impressa sitis simul ac satietas. Sed longe abest ab siti necessitas, longe a satietate fastidium, quia et sitientes satiabimur, et satiati sitiemus. (Moralia 18.54,129-33) [So also shall we too one day be, when we come to the fountain of life. There shall be delightfully stamped upon us at one and the same time a thirsting and a satisfying. But from the thirsting necessity is far absent, and disgust is far from satisfying, because at once in thirsting we shall be satisfied, and in being satisfied we shall thirst.]

Significantly, the same passage appears verbatim in Hrabanus Maurus (De videndo Deo PL 112.1282CD) and, with almost the same words, in St Peter Damian (Rhythmus de gloria paradisi PL 145.982C). Similar expressions can be found in St Bernard (On the Song of Songs 84.1), Richard of St-Victor (De gradibus caritatis 2: PL 196.1200AB and D), and St Bonaventure (Vitis mystica 46,169: PL 184.736C). St Thomas himself, whilst rejecting the notion that the blessed may desire anything, accepts that there may be in Heaven 'esuries et sitis per remotionem fastidii' [hunger and thirst because they are not wearied (Summa Theol. la 2ae.67.4 ad 3)]. It is with not only the Bible in mind (Eccl 24.29; John 4.6-15), but also this tradition that Dante can write: Tanima mia gustava di quel cibo / che, saziando di se, di se asseta' [my soul tasted of that food which, satisfying of itself, for itself

156 Lino Fertile makes appetite (Purg. 31.128-9)], and create the wondrous image of the angels who, constantly flying back and forth between the rose and God, impart on the blessed both peace and ardour (Par. 30.64-9 and 31.1-18). It is because Dante imagines and structures it in terms of a tension between desire and fulfilment that his Paradise becomes poetically representable and Paradiso works as poetry. The presence of desire in the pilgrim allows the poet to describe his ascent as a dynamic progression; likewise, the preservation of desire in the blessed allows him to portray them as individual characters, for without the psychological differences of individual desires all identities would necessarily merge and be lost which means, theologically speaking, that just as eternity does not negate historical time, the achievement of beatitude does not entail the end of individual identities, but their fullest and freest realization (Jauss). Thus, moving forward from his position in the Convivio, Dante reconciles time and eternity, desire and beatitude, motion and quiet, and, as we will presently see, he also reconciles the philosophical pursuit of the visio Dei through knowledge with the contemplative approach of the mystic through love. The theme of desire is introduced in Paradiso from the opening lines of canto 1: Nel ciel che piu de la sua luce prende fu' io, e vidi cose che ridire ne sa ne puo chi di la su discende; perche appressando se al suo disire, nostro intelletto si profonda tanto, che dietro la memoria non puo ire. (4-9) [I was in the heaven that most receives His light and I saw things that he that descends from it has not the knowledge or the power to tell again; for our intellect, drawing near to its desire, sinks so deep that memory cannot follow it.]

Appressando se al suo disire: this is how Dante characterizes his own experience of Paradise. It is a psychological condition which obtains until the very end of the cantica, if at Paradiso 33.46-7 the poet can still write: 'E io ch'alfine di tutt'i disii / appropinquava' [And I, who was drawing near to the end of all desires]. Later on in the first canto (vv.77-8), Dante thus addresses God: 'Quando la rota che tu sempiterni / desiderata' [When the

A Desire of Paradise and a Paradise of Desire 157 wheel which Thou, being desired, makest eternal]. Here the reference is to a notion that was almost a scholastic motto: Deus movet sicut desideratum [God moves all the Heavens as the object of their desire] (see Conv. 2.3.9 and Par. 24.130-2). As an immediate response to the wondrous harmony and radiance of Paradise, a desire is kindled in the pilgrim's mind never felt before with such keenness (82-4): La novita del suono e '1 grande lume di lor cagion m'accesero un disio mai non sentito di cotanto acume. [The newness of the sound and the great light kindled in me such keenness of desire to know their cause as I had never felt before.]

Almost at the beginning of canto 2, we encounter two other metaphors that will be associated throughout the cantica with desire for God: hunger ('il pan ... del quale / vivesi qui ma non sen vien satollo) [the bread ... by which men here live but never come from it satisfied (vv.10-12)] and thirst ("la concreata e perpetua sete') [the inborn and perpetual thirst (19)]. Further on, 11 disio di veder' [our desire to see] is again kindled, 'acceso' (40-1). Thus, from the beginning of the cantica, desire is a point that pierces (Fertile, Tunta')/ a fire that burns (Fertile, 'Antica fiamma'), it is hunger and thirst (Naumann). This is strong, bold, physical vocabulary. The language of the body is used to suggest the supreme attainment of the spirit. In keeping with biblical and mystical tradition, the desire for the absent God can only be conceived and expressed in terms of the most physical human experiences. The satisfaction of that desire can only be described by reference to experiences of satisfying situations which the pilgrim now longs to see renewed in an absolute, infinite, and permanent manner. But clearly, these representations can only be metaphorical, they can only be but pale expressions of the inexpressible (Blanpain 55, Colombo). From the beginning of the cantica, a remarkable tension is established on two levels: first, between the pilgrim's desire and its distant object; second, between the pilgrim's superhuman experience and its linguistic representation, that is, the human symbols and metaphors within which that experience must be communicated. These are the terms within which the drama of Paradiso unfolds, as the story of how the pilgrim gradually closes the gap between himself and the object of his desire, and of how the poet resolves the problem of inexpressibility - how, that is, he bridges the gap between the Word and its linguistic symbol.

158 Lino Fertile These are also the terms of mystical experience and mystical literature, and while they may help us to understand the poetry of Paradiso, they are clearly inadequate to reflect its intellectual complexity. Indeed Paradiso is not only the cantica of lyrical' poetry, but also that of both theological and scientific disquisitions, and historical and political arguments. The critical question, therefore, is whether the two strands, the "lyrical' and the 'discursive,' respond to separate and different impulses, or whether they are different manifestations of a deeply unified structure. The desire felt by the pilgrim in Paradiso is shown to be twofold: there is desire as a longing to see God face to face, and desire as appetite for intellectual knowledge; the latter is articulated by means of questions and doubts (e.g., see Par. 1.83 and 94; 4.10,16,64,72, and 117, etc.) which often are explicitly formulated by Dante: indeed, when desire is of an intellectual nature, the terms 'dubbio' and 'disio' appear to be interchangeable. These two approaches to the Godhead correspond closely to two distinct forms of contemplation: the intellectual and the affective (Bernard, On the Song of Songs 49.4). Dante the narrator appears to favour a form of active approach to the beatific vision through knowledge, placing first, in Beatrice's words (Par. 28.109-11), Tatto che vede' [the act of vision] and second 'quel ch'ama' [that of love] (Fallani); however, his pilgrim's experience is lived through and poetically portrayed in affective terms. In fact, the two forms are deeply intertwined in the narrative as expressions of the same psychological tension. The disquisitions with which Beatrice, or some other soul, time after time illuminates, resolves, and replenishes Dante's desire are a direct response to his desire to know and, simultaneously, a stimulus to his desire to enjoy the ultimate bliss. They afford the pilgrim temporary contentment, while at the same time rekindling his desire. They are diversions in that they delay the final fulfilment of desire, but, more importantly for the narrative structure of the poem, they are an active preparation, a form of progressive adaptation and elevation, that is essential if the pilgrim is to become capable of sustaining the ultimate vision of Truth. The full potential of intellectual understanding must be realized and deployed before the pilgrim can see God. In this deployment there is a joy that is already heavenly, and yet one which increases the pilgrim's thirst for heavenly bliss. In other terms, the need to know is a manifestation and an expression - the only one possible at the human, linguistic level of poetry - of a desire for God that can only be fully expressed and satisfied beyond humanity, and the exhilaration brought about time and again by ever increasing knowledge is an adumbration of the perfect joy that will finally come with the full revelation of the Godhead.

A Desire of Paradise and a Paradise of Desire 159 Naturally, if for a moment we step out of the story, we realize that it is Dante the poet who both asks and answers the pilgrim's questions. The point is, however, that Dante dramatizes this process, making the progressive acquisition of knowledge integral to the pilgrim's quest for fulfilment. Poetically, too, Dante's doubts have the same retardatory and ambivalent effects as desire, in that each answer, albeit perfect and perfectly satisfying in its own merits, reveals new uncharted territories that the mind can never hope or presume to possess in advance of a Revelation that is persistently deferred (see Conv. 4.13.1 ff.; Purg. 21.1 and 31.128-9; Par. 4.124-5). However, it is at the semantic level that the identity of doubt and desire seems to operate most sensationally. Dante's sustained use of the linguistic code of mystical love to describe the contemplative tension of the mind in search of Truth is without doubt the most daring feature of Paradiso (Corti). It is a use of language that will find its most forceful expressions in the higher heavens, for instance, when the pilgrim comes to drink with his eyelids from the river of light: 'come di lei bevve / la gronda delle palpebre mie' [no sooner did the eaves of my eyelids drink of it (Par. 30.88-9)], where the synaesthesia hints at the coincidence of seeing and possessing. The supreme aim, hope, and (reaching out of the text and across to its reader) promise implicit in the pilgrim's ascent is precisely to restore the unity and identity, beyond desire, of knowing and possessing, which indeed - the poet tells us - is what happens in the final vision, even if only for one momentary flash. The language of Paradiso foreshadows and anticipates that moment, elusive though it will be. On the other hand, Dante's use of the language of desire does not negate reason or even reduce its role, as may sometimes be the case with the mystics (e.g., see St Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis in Deum 7.6, p. 313, not to mention an Angela da Foligno or a Jacopone da Todi). Reason is still, indeed more than ever, necessary in the cognitive effort that leads the pilgrim to God and the poet to the completion of his task (Barbi 12). Therefore, it is exercised in Paradise, too, though now in such a way as to reflect back onto the pilgrim's affections, on his ability to love and desire, for in Paradise his reason and love, his intelligence and will, unequal though they may be, work in perfect unison, in a relationship of mutual intensification. St Thomas (Summa Th. la.12.6 resp.) writes: Plus autem participabit de lumine gloriae, qui plus habet de charitate; quia ubi est major charitas ibi est majus desiderium, et desiderium quodammodo facit desiderantem aptum et paratum ad susceptionem desiderati. Unde qui plus habebit de charitate perfectius Deum videbit, et beatior erit.

160 Lino Fertile [Those share more in the light of glory who have more charity; because a greater charity implies a greater desire, and this itself in some way predisposes a man and fits him to receive what he desires. So that he who has greater charity will see God more perfectly, and will be more blessed.]

'A St. Bernard of Clairvaux can easily be fitted into this formula/ writes Etienne Gilson (48). In other words, the pilgrim's experience in Paradise is in line with St Thomas's thinking and yet as 'mystical' as that frequently evoked in mystical writers such as St Bernard (Leclercq, 'Bernard et Abelard'), Richard of St-Victor (Dumeige), and William of St-Thierry. In this way, Paradiso acquires its true conceptual wholeness and poetic dynamism. The narrative pattern is clear. It is conceived and realized as an exhilarating spiralling progression that is both physical and psychological, and affects the pilgrim's eyes as much as his mind and heart. As Dante soars higher and higher, his heart is caught between opposite emotions. Each new step gives him what he longs for, yet it leaves him unsatisfied and anxious as his desire is at the same time fulfilled and intensified. Each doctrinal explanation, each appraisal of his earthly concerns, is a stepping stone towards enlightenment. It is only by actively exercising his need to know that his desire to possess will be satisfied; hence the joy of knowledge is constantly represented, outside the pilgrim, by an increase of light and, inside him, by an increment of his ability to withstand and penetrate that light. Light is indeed the external manifestation of this internal process; it is a living allegory of a spiritual mood (see Par. 14.40-2). It, too, like desire, increases as the pilgrim ascends, and, as with desire, as soon as the pilgrim grows strong enough to take in his vision, he is confronted with new and ever more brilliant sights. Light constantly surpasses (sobranza) the pilgrim's seeing power (23.31-6), so much so that occasionally he feels blinded by it (25.118-21 and 28.16-18). To the progressive intensification of light - the sobranzare, the trasmodarsi of the object, by which Dante is in turn soprato and vinto - corresponds Dante's adjustment to it through the process by which he sormonta, that is, exceeds, with the help of ever increasing grace, his own capacity to see (Fertile, 'Estremo oltraggio'). This is the long and highly dramatic Ijattaglia de' debili cigli' [the struggle of the feeble eyelids (23.78)], and it corresponds to, indeed it visually represents, the internal, psychological drama of ever increasing desire. Of course there is a sense in which Dante's gradual approach to the Godhead in the Paradiso cannot be ultimately understood in mystical terms, in that it is a process that is explicitly intended to be both prophetic

A Desire of Paradise and a Paradise of Desire 161 and poetic, whereas it is of the essence of mystical experience to be, strictly speaking, incommunicable (D'Alfonso 29-4:1). On the other hand, even if the mystical experience may not be described or communicated, mystical literature does exist precisely as an attempt to communicate in time and words an event that transcends time and language. The question, therefore, is not whether Dante underwent a mystical experience (Truijen), but whether his Paradiso as a work of literature can be properly understood outside the tradition of mystical writings. As with all mystical writers, what the poet describes in Paradiso, and only metaphorically at that, is not Paradise proper as vision of, and union with, the Godhead, but, crucially, the way in which Dante the pilgrim draws closer and closer to that point. This is true not only of the ascent from the Heaven of the Moon to the River of Light (Freccero 211), but of the Empyrean itself, where all the blessed are expected to be found in their 'real' state of perfection and happiness. Indeed, even the poem's last canto is pervaded not by fulfilment, but by desire. As we come to Paradiso 33.115-20, we are given a glimpse of God one and triune; yet not His reality face to face, but still a symbol, a geometric figure that tantalizes more than it satisfies. The pilgrim gazes at it, until he perceives painted in the second circle - that of the Son of Man - the image of our human likeness (127-31); but how that image fits the circle and how it finds its place there, this remains a mystery (137-8). The poet and we, his readers, know that this is the very object the pilgrim has been yearning to see all the way through Paradise (see Par. 2.37-42); yet, now that we have come to it, this object does not release the secret of its making. The pilgrim still stares at it, he vainly strives to find the key that will unlock its mystery, as a geometer who eagerly seeks the formula for the squaring of the circle (133-6); his desire to see and comprehend reaches its peak, but the wings of his understanding are much too weak to carry him on such a flight (139). At this crucial, climactic point the 'disagguaglianza' between Voglia e argomento,' which he has been striving to overcome all along, re-emerges unabated as a peremptory reminder of his inescapable humanity. Then the end comes, neither with an embrace/flde adfaciem nor with a rational exposition that would alleviate the poet's and our tension, but with a sudden flash of light in which the pilgrim's desire finds at last the satisfaction it craved for all along: 'la mia mente fu percossa / da un fulgore in che sua voglia venne' [my mind was smitten by a flash wherein came its wish (140-1)]. Now, as the power of imagination fails the pilgrim, in the poem's last terzina, the word disio can resound for the last time, to

162 Lino Fertile declare that only now desire is at last made 'perfetto, mature e intero': that is, fully realized, equal to and in harmony with God's love: A 1'alta fantasia qui manco possa; ma gia volgeva il mio disio e '1 velle si come rota ch'igualmente e mossa, 1'amor che move il sole e 1'altre stelle. [Here power failed the high phantasy; but now my desire and will, like a wheel that spins with even motion, were revolved by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.]

However, this is an event that takes place, as it were, behind closed doors. For one timeless moment the pilgrim is rewarded with the unitive ecstasy, but paradoxically not with the understanding in human, rational terms, of the Godhead. The pilgrim's desire - we are told - is now moved by, and moves with, God's love, but our questions remain unanswered, the ultimate mystery of the Deity intact, our own desire kindled and frustrated, its satisfaction assured, yet again indefinitely deferred. Already, as he grants satisfaction to his hero, Dante the poet places himself and us at an immense distance from the Godhead, projecting now outside the book and into the lives of his readers a desire that in the book God has fulfilled, incomprehensibly, through a free act of His grace. Thus the ultimate failure of the geometer coincides with the supreme, breathtaking triumph of the mystic and the poet. As we close the book, the questions and the longing are ours alone, kindled again, as they are meant to be, from within the narrative of the poem by the tantalizing enigma of its ending. In this sense, the experience of the mystic is placed at the service of the poet and prophet (Mazzeo 5). The journey and the book end when there is no more unfulfilled desire, no more longing, no more need to know on the part of the pilgrim, and no more need or ability to say anything on the part of the poet. Now, what language had divided, silence brings to unity. Silence is where Dante's enigmatic God of knowledge and love lives, Who is promised to us in the life to come by the experience of the pilgrim, but presently denied to us by the poet's final renunciation of the attempt to describe Him. Here, too, is where true Paradise begins. It is when the word ceases to be, beyond language and beyond poetry, that Dante the pilgrim achieves his journey and attains mystically the supreme joy of the Godhead; and it is an achievement that the poet cannot and does not arti-

A Desire of Paradise and a Paradise of Desire 163 culate in words, for it is no longer a matter for poetry but for faith (Singleton). Pamdiso as poetry is entirely, as it can only be, on this side of God; it is a desire of Paradise and a Paradise of desire, an exhilarating approximation to a vision and a joy that remain unsaid and unrevealed. And rightly so: for where there is no desire left to fill, there is no language and no poetry. Note This paper is a reduced and adapted version of my article 'Pamdiso: A Drama of Desire.'

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Dante and the Authority of Poetic Language STEVEN BOTTERILL

The question of authority in its many guises has provoked a good deal of reflection among readers of Dante in recent years - Ascoli (1989 and 1990) offers both an interesting illustration and a substantial bibliography - as it also has in medievalists with other specific interests (Brownlee and Stephens). It has long been established that the relevant terms (auctoritas and its cognates), like the concept to which they refer, were as fundamental in medieval literary culture as to the social and political structures with which that culture was associated (Stabile, Minnis); but Dante's writing - notably, though not exclusively, in the Commedia - is distinguished from that of most of his predecessors and contemporaries by the relentlessness with which it probes, both explicitly and implicitly, into the moral basis and concrete expression of authority across an unusually wide range of human activities. Assertions of and pretensions to authority in spheres political, spiritual, ethical, cultural, and intellectual are all searchingly examined in Dante's work, whether in the linear analyses of the Convivio and the Monarchia or the more intricately dramatized figurations of the Vita nuova and the 'poema sacro'; but all these works, with their variety of approaches to the multifaceted problem of auctoritas, are bound intimately together by a common concern - which may even be seen as the central concern of Dante's literary career, worked out no less vividly in the theoretical treatment of the De vulgari eloquentia than in the practical application of the Commedia - to explore the nature and limits, and thus to define the authority, of the language of poetry. The centrality of this commitment in Dante's work, at least from the mid-1290s and the compilation of the Vita nuova onwards, helps to explain the fact, still all too often overlooked, that most of Dante's so-called 'opere minori' take the form, belong to the genre, or at least include numerous

168 Steven Botterill significant instances, of commentary on poetic texts - whether Dante's own (Vita nuova, Convivio) or those of other vernacular writers (De vulgari eloquentia). In all the writings that precede the beginning of his work on Inferno (plausibly datable to about 1307), Dante is, in fact, consistently engaged in devising a workable poetics for his own use, by setting up a productive dialogue between his creative practice as poet and his (retrospective and prospective) critical reflection on it. Recognition that that dialogue had taken a wrong turning, or reached a dead end, may indeed have much to do with the unfinished state of both the Convivio and the De vulgari eloquentia. But the definitive - if sometimes still elusive - statement of Dante's thinking about poetic language was to be reserved for the Commedia (Barariski). The poem is not only obsessed with authority on the thematic level (hence the judgments, allocations, definitions, and categorizations to which its characters and material are so frequently and irrefutably subjected), it also, as a poetic artifact, at least gives the impression of aspiring to an inherent and unanswerable authority of its own, in the exercise of which it undertakes to describe, albeit in a language that remains firmly grounded in the human, every conceivable aspect of universal existence, from the 'minuzie de' corpi' of Paradiso 14.114 to the sublime realities of the Empyrean. The Commedia''s own project, then, seems to require - as the poem itself seems to express - absolute confidence in the power of poetic language to achieve its (narrative, representational, argumentative, expository) ends, and absolute refusal to countenance the possibility that any limit exists by which that power may be constrained. Yet such confidence is no longer, in the last decade of the twentieth century, easily taken for granted or accepted as uncontroversial; and some recent readers of the poem (Tambling, Carugati) have been prepared both to believe and to argue that the linguistic (and, consequently, ethical) scepticism widespread in contemporary critical circles was shared by Dante.1 In Robert Hollander's words, such readers '[see] in Dante's self-conscious manipulations of language the signs of the writer's awareness of the impossibility of the very claims for poetic veracity which he has put forward most aggressively' (xiv). My aim in this article will be to take issue with views of this kind, and to suggest that the Commedia's aspirations to authority are strengthened, rather than undermined, by the poem's (and thus its author's) very awareness that the successful achievement of its self-declared enterprise will, in the long run, turn out to be impossible. The language of poetry was, for Dante, the supremely demanding and supremely rewarding form of eloquence. This much is made clear by the

Dante and the Authority of Poetic Language 169 argument of the - significantly titled - De vulgari eloquentia, which, having set out, in book 1, to identify and run to ground the most noble form of the Italian vernacular, and having concluded that, for the moment, no such form can be said to exist, takes it as axiomatic that, if (or rather when) such a language is brought into being, it will primarily be used by poets in the composition of their poetry. Despite the many subsequent developments in his thought, and despite, above all, the drastic and often underestimated effects of his shift from lyric to narrative-dramatic forms and techniques, nothing in Dante's later works gives us any reason to think that he ever modified this view. The authority of poetic language, then, derives ultimately from the basic function of eloquence, in the sense of the most effective possible use of language in any given situation, as an indispensable element in the Dantean scheme of things; the practice of poetry is simply the most important such linguistic situation that Dante was able to conceive. Within the narrative terms of the Commedia, the overriding importance of eloquence is amply demonstrated by the fact that, without it, Dante personaggio's journey would never have taken place; that, in short, it is to eloquence that Dante owes both his visionary experience and his eventual salvation. The passage that confirms this initially startling proposition occurs in Virgil's direct quotation of the appeal made to him by Beatrice, to come to the aid of her errant admirer: Or movi, e con la tua parola ornata e con cio c'ha mestieri al suo campare, 1'aiuta si ch'i' ne sia consolata. (Inf. 2.67-9)2 [Now go, and with your ornamented word, and with what else is needed for his rescue, help him, so that I may be consoled.]

The essential element in Beatrice's project for Dante's rescue from the dark wood of Inferno 1 is clearly the fact that Virgil possesses, and knows how to use, a 'parola ornata' (67). It is this that is singled out, in contrast with the much more generic matter of line 68, as the means by which Dante will be aided and Beatrice consoled; and it is vital to note that Virgil's word is designated as 'ornata' - not merely a word plucked from the dictionary, however potently charged with salvific meaning, but a word (or, more precisely, a language - synecdoche is clearly operative here) that is visibly (or audibly) embellished with the technical and rhetorical devices normally recognized by its hearers as constituting

170 Steven Botterill eloquence. And, given both the historical identity of the man who must speak this word - Virgil, pagan, patriot, but above all poet - and the context in which the word will be spoken - the Commedia, itself the work of a poet whose homages to his classical and vernacular forerunners never quite conceal his inspiriting sense of rivalry - it is clear that Virgil's 'parola ornata' will be both literally and metaphorically an instance of poetic language, a word put in a fictional poet's mouth by a real one, in the course of writing a poem. The eloquence - and the authority - of this word will be at once Virgil's (as character) and Dante's (as poet). Virgil, then, is not just to speak the saving word but to pay attention, as both his historical identity and his creator's agenda require, to the aesthetic and intellectual implications of its usage; and the efficacy of his speech is manifestly dependent, at least to a degree, on the elegance and persuasiveness of its formulation. Dante personaggio's initial recognition of his mysterious interlocutor as 'quella fonte / che spandi di parlar si largo fiume' [that spring / that pours forth so rich a stream of speech (Inf. 1.79-80)] is thus retrospectively justified; this is the immediately relevant aspect of Virgil's historical personality, the one that best equips him to become the character Dante's guide and mentor in Hell and (most of) Purgatory. Likewise, it is under the auspices of another possessor of eloquence, Bernard of Clairvaux, that Dante personaggio's journey reaches its appointed end.3 The narrative movement through the poem is, among much else, a movement from one 'parola ornata' to another, from Virgil's eloquence to Bernard's, from the pagan word that offers worldly renown ('lo bello stilo che m'ha fatto onore') [the fair style that has done me honour (Inf. 1.87)] to the Christian word that both transfigures the believer in this life and promises eternal bliss. The former, however, grounds the process that leads to the latter; and, at both ends of the journey, the functional significance of the word and its usage remains paramount. A good deal of caution is required at this point, lest we begin too quickly to entertain the notion that the conceptual centrality of eloquence in Dante's thought, in and of itself, immediately justifies the conclusion that he accepted the intrinsic validity of poetic language or, more controversial still, its supremacy over other forms of eloquent discourse. Firstly, it should be noted that Virgil's is not the only word (or language) in the poem distinguished by the epithet 'ornata.' It recurs in the bolgia of the seducers, as part of the tale of Jason: Ivi con segni e con parole ornate Isifile inganno, la giovinetta che prima avea tutte 1'altre ingannate. (Inf. 18.91-3)

Dante and the Authority of Poetic Language 171 [There, with signs and with ornamented words, he deceived Hypsipyle, the young woman who first had deceived all the others.]

It will instantly be apparent that Jason's 'parole ornate' are morally quite different from Virgil's: instead of saving, they betray; instead of embodying the truth, they act as a vehicle of deceit. Their ornamental quality is clearly specious, employed to conceal Jason's malicious and selfseeking intent; eloquence here has become the means of bringing about another's harm. The situation is, in fact, the exact reverse of that in which Virgil's 'parola ornata' comes to Dante's rescue; and this fact offers good grounds for hesitation before deciding that 'ornata' is necessarily a term of praise, or that eloquence itself is necessarily a positive value. Even in Virgil's case, moreover, eloquence is not constantly and reliably operative as a principle that governs his choice and use of words: it has limits. The earliest decisive proof of this is contained in the dramatic episode of the two travellers' physical and mental bafflement when confronted with the hostility of the devils who inhabit the city of Dis (Inf. 8.67-9.105). Faced with their refusal to admit him and Dante to the infernal fortress - which takes the unmistakably concrete form of having the gates to the city slammed in his face (8.115-17) - Virgil, but recently described (8.7) as 'mar di tutto '1 senno' [sea of all knowledge], painfully and paradoxically finds himself paralyzed in both intellect and language. He knows, in fact, neither what to do nor, more significantly, what to say: 'Pur a noi converra vincer la punga/ comincio el, 'se non ... Tal ne s'offerse. Oh quanto tarda a me ch'altri qui giunga!' (Inf. 9.7-9) ['Yet we must be meant to win the fight/ he began; 'if not... Such help was offered. Oh, how long it seems to me before another comes!']

The interrupted sentence gives the game away. Virgil here embarks on the verbal expression of an idea (which De vulgari eloquentia 1.2.3 proposes as the essential, and essentially human, function of language); finds it misconceived, erroneous, or at least inappropriate to his present circumstances; and breaks off abruptly, only to begin again on an entirely different tack. This verbal clumsiness is more than inelegant; it is inefficacious. In his inability to live up to the exacting standards of the De vulgari eloquentia, Virgil is also fatally unsuccessful in his immediate aim, which is to reassure his timid protege that all will still be well; and

172 Steven Botterill because his maladroit use of language has failed to convey a precise meaning - has failed, that is, to be effective, or even human, let alone eloquent - Dante personaggio ends up, needlessly, fearing the worst: I' vidi ben si com' ei ricoperse lo cominciar con 1'altro che poi venne, che fur parole a le prime diverse; ma nondimen paura il suo dir dienne, perch' io traeva la parola tronca forse a peggior sentenza che non tenne. (Inf. 9.10-15) [I clearly saw how he concealed his beginning with what came after, which were words different from the first ones; but nonetheless did his speech frighten me, because I understood his mutilated word to mean something worse, perhaps, than it did.]

Virgil's momentary loss of eloquence, issuing in a 'parola tronca' that neutralizes his 'parola ornata/ has consequences that bring him and Dante to the brink of disaster, enmeshing them in a net of mental and verbal impotence whose moral gravity is figured immediately thereafter in the threatening appearance of Medusa (Inf. 9.52-60), and from which they can only be released by the direct intervention of divine authority in the shape of the 'messo da ciel' (9.64-105). And it is highly pertinent to our theme that, when divine authority expresses itself on this occasion, it does so in words - but words of a very particular kind: Poi si rivolse per la strada lorda, e non fe motto a noi, ma fe sembiante d'omo cui altra cura stringe e morda che quella di colui che li e davante; e noi movemmp i piedi inver' la terra, sicuri appresso le parole sante. (Inf. 9.100-5) [Then he turned back along the filthy path, and spoke no word to us, with the appearance of a man gripped and beset by other cares than those of them before him; and we began to walk towards the city, safe in the echo of the holy words.]

So Virgil's 'parola ornata' cannot, it seems, always be relied on to guide or protect Dante; it carries within itself the capacity to fail, to become

Dante and the Authority of Poetic Language 173 'tronca.' Language in the mouth of a pagan, even the language of a poet like Virgil, cannot fulfil the conditions under which alone it can take on the authority of ideal eloquence, because it does not rest on a foundation of divinely guaranteed meaning. The Commedia's thematic development, as a result, will find the poem undertaking a quest for an infallible 'parola/ a word in which the believer can repose complete confidence that it will hold meaning, express truth, and possess protective power; and I would argue that that word is found above all in the discourse of Bernard of Clairvaux (Par. 31.59-33.51) - which, like that of the 'messo da ciel' but like no other body of speech in the Commedia, is explicitly designated as consisting of 'parole sante' (Par. 32.3). The epithet 'sante' must, indeed, be seen as indispensable to the definition of the Commedia's ideal of eloquence; and, in the end, to Dante's conception of poetic language and its authority. As we have found in the case of Jason, the moral validity of eloquence is not, in Dante's thinking, a given; it is affected by a speaker's intentions and, in the bluntly narrative terms of the poem's fiction, by that speaker's location in the realms of the afterlife. The word uttered by the denizens of Hell may be 'ornata' - at times to a dazzling degree - but it cannot be holy, and it may not, quite simply, be true. This defect, perceptible even in the speech of a Virgil - as we have just seen - debars infernal eloquence from attaining the status or authority - of its purgatorial or paradisiacal equivalent. In the Commedia, true eloquence is the eloquence of the true; and a truly authoritative poetic language is one that deals exclusively in truth. Inferno is rich in instances of eloquent speakers whose verbal dexterity is soon revealed as the tangible realization of their moral and intellectual failings: the honeyed self-justification of Francesca da Rimini, the intricate but sterile wordplay of Pier della Vigna, the lofty yet vapid rhetoric of Brunette Latini, or, most pointed of all, the scathingly ironic image of Ulysses, first quoting his own inspiring exhortation to his crew, and then, with odious self-satisfaction and false modesty, congratulating himself on the efficacy - the eloquence - of the 'orazion picciola' [little speech (Inf. 26.122)] that persuaded them to their doom: Li miei compagni fee' io si aguti, con questa orazion picciola, al cammino, che a pena poscia li avrei ritenuti [...] (Inf. 26.121-3) [I made my companions so keen, with my little speech, to be on their way, that thereafter I could scarcely have held them back ...]

174 Steven Botterill In their double context - original delivery and subsequent narration Ulysses' words can be seen to be cruelly deceptive, the product of an eloquence turned against itself and, more important, against the divine authority that ought to be its guiding principle. Ulysses' 'orazion' is the reverse of 'santa'; his eloquence serves falsehood and not truth. This is enough to disqualify it from any possibility of being authoritative, just as eloquence itself, taken as a concept unmodified by particular circumstances, must be so disqualified. What preoccupies Dante, and what is to become the object of the Commedia's linguistic quest, is, instead, an eloquence that shall be both efficacious and true, and thus be fully in accord with the prescriptions of the God who is himself the Word (John 1.1-12). Mere ability to manipulate words in pleasing and meaningful patterns 'parola ornata' - will not suffice, because although the speaker of such words may be a Virgil, he may also be a Jason or a Ulysses. Even if he is a poet, he may still also be a pagan. Rather, eloquence must be governed by divine authority and sanctioned by divine precedent; it must become sacred. This is the ideal of eloquence to which the poem aspires: the 'orazion picciola' of Inferno 26.122 must become the 'santa orazione' of Paradise 32.151, Ulysses' eloquent falsity must be redeemed into Bernard's eloquent veracity. Then and then alone will it be possible to speak the word that is both 'ornata' and 'santa/ both eloquent and true - the word that saves. The moral assessment of eloquence in the Commedia thus requires close attention to the identity, situation, and presumed intentions of the speaker; and, in consequence, it seems logical enough to look for exemplars of (sacred) eloquence, or any truly authoritative uses of language, in Paradiso, where every speaker ostensibly deals in truth, and where words are placed visibly, directly, and necessarily at the service of Dante's God. (It has already been hinted that Bernard of Clairvaux seems well qualified to appear in just such a light.) But so far we have been dealing with matters internal to the poem, with images of eloquence rather than its reality (or rather with instances of eloquence acting as its own image), and with a poetic language mediated through narrative and dramatization rather than making claims to authority in its own, or its author's, voice. The idea of Bernard of Clairvaux (or any other character) as being in some sense an 'exemplar' of eloquence, which brings with it the notion that eloquence is somehow to be practised or imitated outside the immediate context of the Commedia - presumably by its readers in their own dealings in words - must of necessity raise the question of how far the standards of verbal usage apparently propounded in the poem are

Dante and the Authority of Poetic Language 175 attributable to Dante himself as poet; that is, how far the eloquence of the characters in the Commedia (including, crucially, the poem's narrator, who is as much a character in the poem as any other) is not only the product of, but also a commentary on, the eloquence of Dante poeta. Does Dante, in a word, believe that its linguistic virtuosity and purity of moral intention entitle his poem to authoritative status; or does he accept that all forms of eloquence, even the language of poetry, are ultimately prevented, by their own inherent inadequacies, from ever attaining the consistency of reference or sufficiency of meaning on which such authority, to be genuine, must presumably rest? Do his sympathies - as poet, not as moralist or as Christian - lie with Ulysses or with Bernard? The question brings us back, of course, to the readers mentioned in the words of Robert Hollander quoted above; those who find in Dante a soul mate and precursor in the scepticism about language characteristic of contemporary literary theory and our self-consciously modern (or rather post-modern) cultural climate. For all his apparent respect for eloquence, and for all the vigour with which the Commedia seems both to propose and to embody the authority of poetic language, such readers find it difficult, if not impossible, to accept that Dante can have believed in his own poem's (implied or declared) aspirations—chiefly, no doubt, because they cannot believe in them themselves, and will not do Dante the disservice of accepting that his thinking about language can have differed in any substantial way from that of our own enlightened age. The Commedia's repeated and insistent claims to be telling the (or even a) truth are, in this view, inevitably undermined by its own status as fiction - which is to say, as a lie. From here it is but a step to the suggestion that Dante poeta is not only aware of, but positively rejoices in, this inescapable contradiction; and, in consequence, that the poem's real destination is not truth but falsehood, not coherence but chaos, not speech but silence (Carugati). By this criterion, the Commedia's manifest richness and vivacity of linguistic effect are a sign not of its author's success as a poet and belief in his own poetic art, but of the reverse, since, even with his linguistic resources stretched to the utmost (as they both are and are proclaimed to be in Paradiso), Dante poeta, as his own text admits, still cannot achieve a fully realized representation of what purports to be the matter of his poem. His language can never be adequate to its aims; and even a partial accomplishment of those aims, partaking as it must of some degree, however tiny, of imperfection, is still to be sternly stigmatized as failure. Dante poeta, though, is seen as having anticipated this conclusion and, indeed, as having so designed his text as not only to have taken it

176 Steven Botterill into account, but to have made it the poem's principal message - insofar as the concept of a poem's having a 'message' retains any meaning in the context of this argument - to the reader. Prominent among the evidence that might be adduced in support of this daring hypothesis is the series of narratorial interventions and exclamations in Paradise that proclaims, quite overtly, the incompetence of Dante's (or any human) language to convey the reality of what it is seeking to describe. This collection of passages - which, taken together, and building on an insight of E.R. Curtius (159-62), have come to be defined as the 'ineffability topos' - is extensive and consistent enough to have been recognized as one of the more important bodies of metapoetical reflection in Dante's work (Colombo); and its presence, which begins at the very moment of Dante personaggio's entrance into Paradise, at Paradiso 1.70-1 ('Trasumanarsignificarper w&fl / nonsiporia' [Tobetranshumanized cannot be rendered in words]), does seem to take an ax to the roots of Dante's apparent project, since it offers a constantly nagging reminder to readers that what they are encountering is a verbally constructed image pretending to be a reality but necessarily failing in the attempt. Yet the attempt is made; Paradiso is written (and read); and the reader who argues that because Dante, as a Christian, held it to be impossible successfully to represent certain experiences or phenomena in human language, he therefore concluded that such language was denied the right to lay valid claim to any kind of authority, is one who might justifiably be accused of invoking standards of linguistic validity that are so demanding as to be meaningless - and one who certainly has not understood the nature of the relationship between Dante's conception of poetic language and his theological understanding of the universe. This, in fact, is the crux of the matter: that the attempt to write Paradiso be made, and made successfully, in the teeth of its own ultimate impossibility and Dante poeta's awareness of that impossibility. That the authority of poetic language is not absolute does not mean that it does not exist; that the last word can never be spoken (in this world) does not mean that the word that is spoken here cannot justify its claim to enjoy authority. It is surely more satisfactory, and more in keeping with everything we can deduce from Dante's writings, to interpret the very existence of Paradiso as an assertion, even a celebration, of language's innate power, its potential to undertake an expressive enterprise that will remain valid even within its (God-given) limitations, as it represents to a human audience an experience of the divine, than it is to see it, and the Commedia as a whole, as a text forever gloomily harping on its own representational inadequacy.

Dante and the Authority of Poetic Language 177 Nor is this assertion negated, in my view, by the recognition - given voice in the 'ineffability topos' - that, however far language may go, it can never go far enough. Imperfection is inherent in the human condition; yet it does not make life unlivable, or words unspeakable. Acceptance that limits are set to the range and capacities of human language is a necessary corollary of the fundamental Christian belief that limits are set to every form of human activity and every moment of every human life - that, in the Adamic terms of Paradiso 26.117, there is always a 'segno' that humanity must not (and cannot, because it is human) 'trapassar.' The founding myth of both Judaism and Christianity, the Garden of Eden story, is based on precisely this notion. If Dante accepted this - and I see no reason, except the wishful thinking of a post-Romantic culture unable to come to terms with this most discomfiting aspect of medieval alterity, to believe that he did not - there would have been no cause for him to lose faith in the powers and authority of his own poetic language, even as he necessarily admitted its final inability to share to the full in an authority reserved, in the Christian scheme, for the word of God alone. Dante poeta is Ulysses' spiritual kinsman in the audacity of his (poetic) voyage (Carugati 89-112); but the relationship ends when it comes to observing the conditions laid down for that voyage by a higher power. Linguistically, the poet travels as far as he can, sailing unknown waters and exulting in the experience; but he knows that his travels must come to an end, and an end that falls short of what he, as poet and indeed as believer, might desire. The attempt becomes its own justification; the linguistic journey itself, not its foredoomed failure to bring poet and poem to their destination, is what counts. In the end, perhaps, Dante seems more like Moses than Ulysses; though he is denied entry into a (linguistic) Promised Land, where his word and God's might at last become identical, he may at least be thought to have been vouchsafed a glimpse of it - and to have returned down the mountain bearing not tablets of stone but the text of the Commedia. The critical absolutism of the demand that Dante's poetic language fully embody the experience that it sets out to describe, the denial to it of any validity on the basis of its inevitable failure, and, above all, the attribution to Dante himself of the same nerveless scepticism that informs late-twentieth-century readings of this kind, are all the fruit of a theologically deracinated criticism that has lost touch with the conception of humanity - and thus of language - as essentially/0//en.4 Absolutist readers implicitly require of Dante that he consciously attempt to write not about God, or even like God, but as God; which is, of course, a demand to which

178 Steven Botterill no Christian author could meaningfully respond. Human use of words must always fall short of perfection, since every other aspect of human existence does so, and has done since Adam and Eve's disobedience 'brought death into the world, and all our woe'; but it is both anachronistic and profoundly contrary to the spirit of both Dante's theological beliefs and his linguistic theory (again, insofar as those can be deduced from his writings) to suggest that, for him, human language's failure to attain perfection instantly consigns it to the category of perfection's polar opposite. Words cannot do everything; but they can do much, and, in the mouth of a skilled and morally pristine speaker - a fictive Bernard of Clairvaux, perhaps, or even a historical Dante Alighieri - they can come infinitesimally close to the plenitude of meaning, beauty, and referential power that, in the last analysis, is reserved for the Word that is God. The 'ineffability topos' in Paradiso is, then, an obligatory acknowledgment of poetic language's limits, but not a shamefaced confession of its falsity. The recognition of Paradise's ultimate insufficiency does not preclude it from exerting an authority of its own, or from serving as a celebration, rather than a repudiation, of the language of poetry. Indeed, the tension that subtends the entire cantica, between the desire to probe language's boundaries and the knowledge that those boundaries are both immutably established and, as yet, incompletely explored, is, finally, creative; the exhilaration generated by Dante's pushing poetic language to its limits is not diluted by - in fact, it depends on - the acknowledgment of those limits' existence. Moreover, if Paradiso abounds in avowals of ineff ability, it abounds also in neologisms: new words, that is, created to express the (formerly) inexpressible, and thus to re-draw the boundaries of language, and give tangible proof that ineffability can be counteracted or even diminished. This willingness to add to the stock of poetic language, to devise and establish ways of saying what previously could not have been said, is a further sign of Dante's belief in the possibilities of linguistic expression and in the authority of his own poetic enterprise. Every time Dante poeta coins a neologism, he wins, and celebrates, a victory over silence and meaninglessness, a victory that would not have been possible if the Commedia's linguistic exuberance did indeed conceal, as some modern readers would have it, its author's cynicism, let alone despair, about the nature of the work that he has undertaken. The poetic language of Paradiso, taken as a whole, is exultant rather than diffident about its own claims to mean, to refer, and to express; and it founds those claims on a self-confident estimation of its own authority that derives directly from its

Dante and the Authority of Poetic Language 179 author's literary practice and theological beliefs. When the Christian poet speaks in the name of God, drawing to the full on all the resources with which his fallen human language is endowed, the result is the creation of a truly sacred eloquence, charged to the highest possible degree with expressive, truth-bearing power, that functions not only as a defining characteristic of certain individuals within the fiction of the Commedia, but as an exemplary principle for both poet and reader in the life of the world.

Notes 1 The connection between language and ethics cannot be explored in depth here, but that it would have seemed both natural and necessary to Dante is at least implied by the essentially linguistic nature of so many of the sins punished in Inferno. 2 The Commedia is quoted according to Petrocchi's edition; translations are my own. 3 I have tried to justify this summary description of Bernard at (I hope not tedious) length in my book, Dante and the Mystical Tradition: Bernard of Clairvaux in the 'Commedia' (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 4 It should be made clear at this point that I am in no way demanding assent to Christian beliefs, medieval or otherwise, on the part of Dante's modern readers; I merely claim that such assent was the principle that governed Dante's own understanding of the linguistic activities in which he was engaged, and that we overlook it at our interpretative peril.

Bibliography Alighieri, Dante. La 'Commedia' secondo Vantica vulgata. Ed. Giorgio Petrocchi. 4 vols. Milano: Mondadori, 1966-67. Ascoli, Albert Russell. The Vowels of Authority (Dante's Convivio IV.vi.3-4).' In Brownlee and Stephens, eds., Discourses of Authority, 23-46. - "'Neminem ante nos": Historicity and Authority in the De vulgari eloquentia.' Annali d'italianistica 8 (1990): 186-231. Baranski, Zygmunt G. 'Dante's (Anti-)Rhetoric: Notes on the Poetics of the Commedia.' In Moving in Measure: Essays Presented to Brian Moloney. Ed. Judith Bryce and Doug Thompson. Hull: Hull University Press, 1989. 1-14.

180 Steven Botterill Brownlee, Kevin, and Walter Stephens, eds. Discourses of Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1989. Carugati, Giuliana. Dalla menzogna al silenzio: la scrittura mistica della 'Commedia' di Dante. Bologna: II Mulino, 1991. Colombo, Manuela. Dai mistici a Dante: il linguaggio dell'ineffabilita. Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1987. Curtius, Ernst Robert. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. 1948. Trans. Willard R. Trask. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979. Hollander, Robert. 'Foreword/ Lectura Dantis Americana: 'Inferno,' I. By Anthony K. Cassell. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1989. ix-xv. Minnis, A.J. Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages. 2nd ed. London: Scolar Press, 1988. Stabile, Giorgio. 'Autore'; 'Autorita.' Enciclopedia dantesca. 6 vols. Roma: Treccani, 1970-76. Tambling, Jeremy. Dante and Difference: Writing in the 'Commedia.' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Dante and Politics JOAN M. FERRANTE

Dante was involved with politics in his life and in his writing. He served in elective and appointive offices, negotiated in person, and harangued by letter; he suffered condemnation and exile from Florence for his positions, and found audiences throughout Italy and eventually the world for those positions through his prose and his poetry. American scholars, in contrast to their Italian and English colleagues, have generally been less interested in Dante's politics than in aesthetic, literary-historical, or doctrinal aspects of his work. The political issues that dominate Dante's writings are the role of the empire and of the church in secular government, particularly in Italy, the relations between independent city-states or separate kingdoms and the empire, the destructive roles played by France and Florence, the divisive factionalism of political parties, Black and White Guelphs, Guelphs and Ghibellines, the corruption of the papacy and the papal curia, and the ideal of Rome. Major subjects of debate are the dating of the Monarchy and its connection with Henry VII or a subsequent emperor, whether the political views expressed in the Convivio, the Monarchy, and the Comedy are consistent, what the prophecies of the Comedy signify, the extent of Dante's imperialism and republicanism, and his attitudes towards the church and the papacy. Those writers who are concerned at all with Dante's political thought recognize the importance of politics in the Comedy. Even A. Passerin d'Entreves, who thought Dante deliberately subordinated politics to religion in the poem, says the Comedy is as much political as religious because for Dante religion involved changing this world (62-6). Gilson, noting that for Dante natural reason could confer earthly happiness in the sphere of action, which is the sphere of politics together with ethics, asserts that Dante hardly stopped repeating this from the Convivio to the

182 Joan M. Ferrante Comedy (304). I have argued that Dante's morality of sins and virtues has an essential social and political aspect, that Hell is the model of a corrupt society, Purgatory a society in transition, Paradise an ideal society (Political Vision). Others who have written on politics in the Comedy are Maurer and, more recently, Fortin, Farnell, and Mancusi-Ungaro. Since the political views in Dante's writings grow directly out of his experience of contemporary politics, it might be well to recall some of the relevant events of his life. Although many of the details of Dante's life continue to be disputed, much is known. Petrocchi ('Biografia') gives a detailed account with extensive bibliographic references of Dante's political and literary careers, what is known, what has been suggested, and what is most likely, from which I summarize here. Using contemporary legal documents and chronicles, as well as recent studies, Petrocchi traces Dante's participation among the Guelph forces in the successful military campaigns of Campaldino and Caprona in 1289, his inscription in 1295 into a guild, the Arte dei medici e degli speziali, in order to be eligible for political office in Florence, his service on city councils and as a prior, his participation in the banishment of leaders of both factions, Black and White, his opposition to continuing military aid to Pope Boniface VIII, in which Dante was apparently the leader of a minority within the Whites, his embassies to San Gimignano and to the pope, the takeover of Florence by the Blacks (with the help of the pope and Charles of Valois), and their condemnation of Dante (among others) in 1302 for barratry and conspiracy against Blacks, which carried a sentence of exclusion from office, fines, and a two-year exile. In exile, Dante and other Whites allied themselves with Ghibelline forces, which only helped strengthen the ties among the Black allies and increased Dante's sentence to death by fire if he ever returned to Florence. Dante lost faith in military solutions, broke with his fellow exiles before their defeat (20 July 1304), and began the life of a solitary exile, moving from court to court, The various sojourns cannot always be accurately fixed, though Petrocchi gives the most likely itinerary and chronology for the two decades of exile, with important stays in Lucca, Casentino, Verona, and finally Ravenna. Dante, a petty aristocrat, who had participated in democratic governments and actions in his early political life, became in exile more and more involved with aristocratic Ghibellines and the imperial cause. He was an outspoken supporter of Emperor Henry VII and his attempt to assert his authority in northern Italy between 1310 and 1313, which Pope Clement V at first supported and then opposed. After he left Florence and broke with the exiled Whites, Dante's most direct political participation was through his letters. Thirteen extant letters

Dante and Politics 183 have been attributed to Dante. Pastore Stocchi ('Epistole') speaks of the lost letters we know of, among them one which Dante mentions in the Vita nuova, to the 'principi de la terra/ the principal citizens of Florence, lamenting the loss of Beatrice (chapter 30), and at least one other which Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444) saw and describes in his Vita di Dante, complaining to the government of Florence of his undeserved exile, which is also mentioned by Villani in the Cronica (9.136). Three extant letters were probably written by Dante in the name of G[herardesca], Countess of Battifolle, to Empress Margaret, wife of Henry VII, which assure her of the countess's devotion to her and to the imperial cause (Ep. 8, 9,10). The six 'political letters' were discussed recently by Vittorio Russo ('Epistole'). They include one (Ep. 1) written to Cardinal Niccolo da Prato in the name of Alessandro, Count of Romena, the Florentine Council (in exile, of which Dante was one of twelve), and the White party of Florence (in exile); the letter does not name Dante but is attributed to him in the manuscript and by scholars who consider Dante the member of that group most adept in epistolary style (ars dictaminis). Dated 1304, the letter effusively supports the cardinal's peace-making efforts and promises that its signatories will refrain from warfare as he asked. Russo notes that it was Dante's preference to avoid violence that separated him from the other Whites, and compares him to Farinata, his 'alter ego,' the only one who did not want to destroy Florence after Montaperti. In the three letters that Dante wrote in support of Henry VII (Ep. 5 to the princes and peoples of Italy, 1310; Ep. 6 to the Florentines, March 1311; and Ep. 7 to the emperor, April 1311), all in his own name ('Dantes exul inmeritus' [Dante an exile undeservedly]), Russo notes the similarity in rhetorical language between them and the Comedy (e.g., the emperor as a sun rather than a moon to the pope's sun), the connections with the political ideals of Convivio 4 (the divine origin of the empire and its independence from the papacy), as well as ideas that would appear in the Monarchy (laws as a natural right common to all mankind). What Russo concludes from these and the two later letters (Ep. 11 to the Italian cardinals, 1314; and Ep. 12 to a friend in Florence, 1315) is the distance between the absolute certainty of Dante's ideology, his desire for a future utopia, and the political realities of present experience: his failures to consider the heavy financial and territorial demands Henry had made on Florence when Dante berated the city for refusing entry to the emperor; to recognize how substantial was the remission of penalties when Dante refused the offer to return to Florence; or to acknowledge the balance of power within the conclave when he urged the Italian cardinals (a minority) to return the papacy to Rome. Frugoni argues that Dante is not

184 Joan M. Ferrante proposing political action in his letter to the cardinals, but speaking as a biblical prophet, with the voice of God, as he does in the letters about Henry and in the Comedy. In his other major political work, the Monarchy, Dante certainly seems to be arguing theoretically rather than proposing specific political action, although he is presumably writing in response to a particular political situation. The work addresses three questions and answers them all affirmatively: whether monarchy or empire is necessary to the well-being of the world; whether the Roman people assumed that office by legal right (de iure); and whether the authority of the monarchy depends directly on God or indirectly through a vicar or minister of God. Whether the situation that gave rise to the work is Henry VTI's presence in Italy (1310-13) or the insistence of Pope John XXII (elected 1316) that the emperorship was vacant despite the election of Ludwig of Bavaria as King of the Germans (1314) is still being argued, though the later dating is now far more persuasive. John Scott ('Dante and Philosophy' 270-2) summarizes the current state of the argument, which rests heavily on the authenticity of the reference to Paradiso in Monarchy 1.12.6: 'sicut in Paradise Comediae iam dixi' [as I said in the Paradise of the Comedy], which places the Monarchy after 1316. P.G. Ricci, who edited the work and wrote the article on it in the Enciclopedia dantesca (hereinafter ED), accepted the reference, and his arguments have been supported by Prudence Shaw citing all the Latin manuscripts ('tutti i codici latini' [215-16]). Mazzoni, who also edited the work, accepts the authenticity of the passage and connects the Monarchy with the election of Ludwig ('Teoresi'). It is not irrelevant that the work was condemned and burned because it was connected with Ludwig's cause (Nardi; Russo, Monarchia; Vallone; Ferrante, Political Vision 127ff). Another passage in the Monarchy which has given rise to some discussion is the very end (3.15.17-18), in which Dante says that temporal happiness is in some way (quodammodo) ordered to immortal happiness, and that the emperor (Caesar) owes the reverence to the pope (Peter) that a first-born son owes his father. The question is whether this means that the pope finally does have authority over the emperor or not. Sistrunk reviews different readings of these last sentences, the majority arguing that they in no way diminish Dante's basic separation of authority, and he adds material from Convivio 4 about the respective duties of fathers and sons, the father to instruct and give example, the son to show respect and piety, but not necessarily obedience. In Convivio 4, although he asserted imperial authority as the natural ordering of man to a happy life, and

Dante and Politics 185 Rome as the divinely chosen seat of that authority, Dante had set the authority of the philosopher against that of the emperor on the question of nobility. Vasoli says Dante reasserts the conclusions of the Convivio in the Monarchy, but adds a third figure of authority, the pope, to the philosopher and the emperor. The philosopher guides us to temporal happiness on the basis of documents of reason, and the theologian to spiritual happiness via those of revelation, but neither could succeed without the supreme earthly authority of the emperor to restrain human cupidity. Consistency of thought from Convivio 4 and the Monarchy to the Comedy has been much discussed. Mazzoni juxtaposes passages from these three works and the letters to prove the connections (Teoresi') and asserts the 'absolute and full continuity of thought' between the imperial idea affirmed in the Monarchy and expressed in canto 6 of Paradiso ('II canto VI'). Kantorowicz demonstrates the working out in the Comedy of the goals posited in the last chapter of the Monarchy. Most critics who concern themselves with the subject emphasize the similarities (Ferrante, Political Vision 5-9; Scott, 'Dante and Philosophy' 267-74) or posit development rather than contrast. The most striking development is the assertion of imperial independence from papal authority. Holmes notes that Convivio 4, which introduces Dante's interest in the world monarchy of the Roman Empire, contains the subject matter of Monarchy 1 and 2 in embryo, though not of 3, because there had not yet been a papal-imperial conflict for the poet to take part in. Mazzoni calls the emperor an 'alter Christus' in his own sphere (11 canto VI' 129), and Capitani says the originality of the Monarchy lies in the notion of the empire's 'imitatio Ecclesiae' [imitation of the church] which reverses the papacy's 'imitatio imperii' [imitation of the empire] (243). (See also Chiavacci-Leonardi, Peterman, and Fiorelli.) Dante continues to attack the papacy throughout the Comedy for interfering with the church, as well as for general greed and corruption. Popes are featured in Hell, but not in Paradise, although Beatrice reminds us that two popes, Boniface VIII and Clement V, are destined for Hell, when she points out the seat in the rose for the emperor Henry VII. Holmes, who traces the development of Dante's views of the papacy through his life and his works, concludes that his anti-papalism was not simply a response to simony or excessive political interference, but a 'fanatical' belief that the providential plan of history required a saviour to rescue the degraded papacy and the world ('Dante and the Popes' 40). Charles Davis describes the role of the empire in disciplining a corrupted church within Dante's theology of history ('Vision of History'), and in the reformation Dante hopes to see in the church through a return to apostolic

186 Joan M. Ferrante poverty ('Poverty and Eschatology'). Scott, who is always aware of the political implications of Dante's poetry - "The political element, inseparable from the moral, is never far to seek in the message of the Comedy' ('Inferno XXVI' 186) - persuasively reads the corrupt church in much of Dante's imagery ('Paradiso XXVII'). Peter's speech in Paradise 27 can be read partly as an answer to Boniface's bull on papal authority, Unam Sanetarn; indeed, much of Dante's imagery in the Comedy is drawn from papalist and anti-papalist arguments (Ferrante, Political Vision 95ff). Scott suggests that the rock of Hell, particularly in canto 19, is an intentional parallel to the rock of Peter, with the popes imprisoned in the symbol of what they had corrupted ('Rock of Peter'); I have suggested that the rock of Purgatory may represent the pure church, presided over not by churchmen but by angels, who carry symbols associated with the papacy but inhabit a realm of spirit, not of temporal wealth or power (Political Vision 90). Dante blames much of the church's descent into corruption on the Donation of Constantine, a forged document which purportedly left secular power in Rome to the papacy. Dante argues against the legitimacy of that transfer in the Monarchy and the Comedy, not, as Capitani points out, disputing the facts of history, only their application (237). Capitani notes that from the twelfth century, the donatio or giving up of imperial power was often connected metalinguistically with the translatio imperii or transference of the empire from East to West by the pope's crowning of Charlemagne in Rome, both actions disapproved by Dante; he also points out that Dante nonetheless puts both emperors in heaven, while neither of the popes he associates with those actions is there (237-8). The corrupt church is attacked not only by Dante, but also by Marco Lombardo, by Beatrice, and by a host of saints in heaven, including Peter, the first pope on whom many claims to papal authority were based. One of Dante's major objections to the papacy is that it interferes with the operation of the empire, which God instituted to govern the world. He models his Paradise on the ideal of the Roman Empire - like Rome, it is both urbs and orbis, both city and world, with God as its emperor - and he features emperors in various parts of the cantica. Justinian, the only character in the Comedy to speak uninterrupted for an entire canto, dominates the heaven of Mercury with the history of Rome; the emperors who represent divine justice in Jupiter appear in and speak through the eagle, the symbol of Rome, 'the sign which made the Romans revered through the world'; a place is marked out for the emperor Henry VII, and for no other, in the rose that holds all the saved souls. Davis's first book, Dante

Dante and Politics 187 and the Idea of Rome, remains a rich source of background on the ideas of Rome ancient and medieval, Christian and pagan, on Dante's historical sources, and his use of them. More recently Davis has shown how Rome can be both the new Jerusalem and the corrupt Babylon in the Comedy ('Rome and Babylon'). Davis's studies of Dante's contemporaries, Brunetto Latini, Remigio dei Girolami, and Ptolemy of Lucca, with their grounding in the thought and virtues of republican Rome, have also provided a counterbalance to the concentration on imperial Rome (Dante's Italy], as has 'Dante's Republican Treasury' by Hollander and A.L. Rossi, which argues for republican Rome as the essential model for civic restoration and for the idealized description of Cacciaguida's Florence. By using Rome as his model for Paradise, Dante forces his audience to notice that he has reversed the two cities of Augustine, whose Rome is the city of man in opposition to the city of God. Hawkins has recently suggested, however, that the worldly values rejected by the souls in Dante's Purgatory are those of Augustine's city of man, and the preparation for entry into the city of God is made with the help of Augustinian positive and negative exempla. Dante also has two opposing cities, but they are Florence, the model for his Hell, and Rome, the model for Paradise. The city is, of course, the basic political unit in Dante's political thought, influenced by Aristotle, and in the political life he experienced in northern Italy. The tension between the city and the ideal all-encompassing structure of world-empire is resolved theoretically in the Monarchy, but is reflected much more realistically in the Comedy. Dante presents Hell as a greedy, self-centred city-state, indeed as Florence, as several critics have noticed (Fletcher, L.R. Rossi, Toff anin, and Ferrante, Political Vision); Peters ('Failure') notes that Dante opposes the city of God both to the injustice of human society on earth and specifically to Florence. Florence was one of the four largest cities in Europe in the early fourteenth century, the self-styled successor to Rome, constantly expanding its territory within (a third set of city walls begun in 1284) and without (by military and economic means); on contemporary Florence, see Davidsohn, Pampaloni, Schevill, and Catto, who suggests that it is precisely Florence's position as a cosmopolitan city in its politics, commerce, and art that makes Dante insist on placing it within a larger scheme. Scorrano calls Florence an exemplary city of great destiny and great responsibility (65). Dante alludes to contemporary Florence in his description of Hell with its many sets of walls, with the animals that impede his way (live lions, a symbol of the city's pride, as well as a leopard were on display in Florence), and perhaps with the 'towers' that

188 Joan M. Ferrante turn out to be chained giants (the towers of the nobles whose power hadturn out to be chained giants (the towers of the nobles whose power had been limited by the commune); and he implies that Florence is the real sinner in the circles of gluttony, suicide, sodomy, and theft (Ferrante, Political Vision). Anselmi reads the mutilated body in Hell and Purgatory as a symbol of the divided city, destroying itself in violence, which can be healed only by the empire, which was chosen by God and sanctified by his regenerating blood; Quinones treats the murder of Buondelmonte as a foundation sacrifice which has maleficent results. Dante strongly suggests that God's plan includes a restoration of peace and justice in the not too distant future, in a series of prophecies made to the pilgrim during his journey. Whether the 'veltro/ the greyhound of Virgil's prophecy in Inferno 1, and the 'DXV,' the five hundred and fifteen promised by Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise, are to be an imperial or a religious figure or figures has been argued for centuries. In the past century and a half, some have suggested Dante himself as the saviour to come, others his poem; for Dante, most recently Petrocchi ('Autobiografia') and Cuini, who takes the poet's perspective; for the poem, Verdicchio. Since there are detailed summaries of the various interpretations from the fourteenth century to the twentieth in both Italian (by Davis on the Veltro' [ED 5.908-12] and by Mazzamuto on the 'cinque cento diece e cinque' [ED 2.10-14]) and in English (by Cassell, quite recently, in Inferno 194-113), I will not retrace the material. I will simply say that the preponderance of opinion is on the side of a temporal ruler, an heir to the Roman eagle, who can control greed and reform the corrupt papacy and curia; Davis connects the two prophecies with Peter's promise in Paradiso 27 of aid from the divine providence that worked through Scipio (Dante's Italy 33-6), though many have argued for Christ, or a messianic Last World Emperor, or compromised with a Christ figure who might be an emperor. Interpretations have been based on numbers, numerical equivalents of Hebrew letters, and Latin anagrams. Specific identifications have been made as wide-ranging as Luther and Mussolini, but even the most likely suggestions, of Henry VII, Ludwig of Bavaria, or Cangrande for the veltro, are less persuasive to most dantisti than the intentionally vague leader to come.' As Cassell says, Dante probably "created a purposeful obscurity to give the widest possibility to some fulfillment... we can be sure that he did not seek unplanned obsolescence for a work "to which both heaven and earth had set their hand'" (112). The DXV prophecy occurs in the Earthly Paradise in the context of the allegorical procession and the drama of the eagle and the chariot. There has been general agreement about the symbolism of the chariot for the

Dante and Politics 189 church, the griffin for Christ, the eagle for the empire, the giant for the king of France (illegitimate secular power in general, French secular power in particular [Davis, Dante's Italy 66]), and the whore for the corrupt church, papacy, or curia. Other suggestions, of course, have been made: that the giant represents Boniface VIII, the illicit lover of the church (Ottimo commento 2.577) or the papacy; and the whore, the heresy of plenitude potestatis (Richard Kay, "Dante's Razor,' in which the DXV is interpreted as Gratian's distinctio fifteen, D.XV). Armour has written a book on the imagery in this episode, in which he dismisses many of the standard identifications - the chariot cannot be the church which did not exist before Christ - and suggests new ones: the griffin is Rome, combining traits of the republic (lion) and the empire (eagle), which is harnessed within God's design to guide mankind (chariot). It is a provocative thesis, filled with interesting background material, but finally overly subtle; however much Dante directs his message to an elite audience, rejecting those who try to follow in little boats, and however veiled his prophecies may be, it seems unlikely that he would deliberately give misleading clues or attribute unusual meanings to the key symbols in so important an episode. One aspect of Dante's politics that is not usually discussed, because it would not until very recently have been thought of in those terms, is his sexual politics. Only in the past twenty years has this subject attracted attention. That is not to deny the scholarly attention given to some of Dante's female characters in the past, Beatrice, the Virgin Mary, Matelda (whose identity continues to be a subject of debate [Forti, in ED 3.854-60; Ferrante, Political Vision 246-8; Armour, 'Matelda'; Del Popolo]), and Francesca, among others, but to suggest that only in recent years has Dante's attitude towards women and gender been looked at critically. Kirkham charts the women who appear in the Comedy and studies their significance in terms of their location and number, with particular emphasis on the number 4 in Limbo, and on 5 throughout as a number symbolically associated with women. Shapiro, dividing Dante's women into three categories - wives and virgins, lovers, mothers and maternal figures - presents Dante as a medieval misogynist. Schnapp suggests that Dante employs sexual solecisms, explicit and implicit gender reversals, to 'articulate the intersection between the "feminine" world of vernacular lyric and the "masculine" world of Latin epic' (149). Jacoff, pointing out the tendency of men to project their desires onto female emblems, looks at Dante's treatment of Semiramis and Myrrha; she makes an intriguing comparison between Dante's momentarily collapsing his own life into his heroine's in the Francesca episode, a kind of idolatry of his own work,

190 Joan M. Ferrante with Ovid's placing the Myrrha story right after Pygmalion ('Figures of Female Desire'). Jacoff has also contributed traditional studies of sources and meanings to our knowledge of women in Dante, in 'The Tears of Beatrice/ and the section on the three 'donne benedette' (with Stephany) in Inferno II. Most recently, the historian of religion Jaroslav Pelikan published a work on three ladies in the Comedy, as the three 'eternal feminities,' Beatrice, the Virgin Mary, and the church. Dante's treatment of women and gender is more wide-ranging than he is usually given credit for. He includes women explicitly in the audience of many of his works: lyric poems; the Vita nuova, where he turns to women for sympathy and understanding and credits them with alerting him to the self-centred nature of his poetry when he claimed to be writing in praise of Beatrice (18); the Convivio, a philosophic work he describes as tempered and virile, whose audience includes women as well as men ('non solamente maschi ma femmine' [1.9.5]); and the Comedy, which includes requests for prayers from the souls in Purgatory to women relatives, and Dante's direct address to Queen Clemenza in Paradise 'Da poi che Carlo tuo, bella Clemenza' (9.1). Women not only awaken Dante to love, they also lead him to God, Mary indirectly, Beatrice both physically and mentally; her name gives him the force to climb (Purg. 6) and the courage to pass through fire (Purg. 27); the reflection of God's light from her eyes draws Dante upward in Paradise and reflects his first vision of God as the point of light (Par. 28); her words teach him divine truths. Beatrice is a Christ figure for Dante in the Vita nuova and the Comedy (Singleton), and because of that, I have argued, she is able to play the startling roles of priest, confessor, and theologian, as well as guide to heaven, but she is also a historic woman, whose beauty inspires in the pilgrim the old stirrings of the flesh, albeit now purified ('Beatrice as Priest'). For a real woman, not an allegorical figure, to take on any of a priest's functions, to give the sacraments or teach theology, is startling because it was declared impossible by Thomas and Bonaventure in no uncertain terms, but Beatrice not only lectures Dante on theology, she even corrects Plato and fathers of the church. Moreover, only Beatrice and God are said to be infallible in the Comedy. Among her teachings, Beatrice subtly brings Dante to see God as androgynous. While the feminine side of God is by no means Dante's invention, it is clear from his carefully balanced use of masculine and feminine terms for God's attributes that he is not bound by grammatical forms, but is consciously making a point about God. Beatrice uses the feminine forms, adjectives and pronouns, as well as abstract nouns, for God from the beginning of Paradise, but Dante does

Dante and Politics 191 not begin to speak that way himself until canto 13. By the end, however, he describes the final vision of the Trinity first in masculine, and then, and more extensively, in feminine terms (Ferrante, 'Beatrice as Priest'). While it is true that Dante's moral judgments in Hell are cast in the language of a traditional moralist, in which to be weak and sinful is to be womanly, so that male sinners may be described as female and circles of sins may be given a female cast, it is equally true that Dante reverses this approach in Purgatory and Paradise, using a woman, the Virgin Mary, as an example of virtue on each ledge of Purgatory, and giving the feminization of men and the masculinization of women a positive force in both realms (Ferrante, Woman as Image 142ff). Dante seems to make a conscious effort to counter his earlier sexual discrimination: though the pilgrim keeps blaming Eve for the loss of Paradise as he moves through Purgatory, he is corrected both by the heavenly procession, which names Adam, (Purg. 32.37), and by Beatrice, who explicitly blames him for damning himself and his progeny (Par. 7.25-7). Matelda presides over the Earthly Paradise, as Cato does the ante-Purgatory. And women seem to be present in force in the heavenly rose: ten women are named, as against eight men. We have seen many more men in the course of Dante's journey and know they must also be in the rose, but the seating arrangement suggests that many more women are there as well. The rose is the ideal society Dante posits in the Monarchy and models in the Comedy, the fulfilment of all his political dreams. It is fitting that it be composed of women and men, adults and children, Jews and Christians, blacks and whites. Bibliography Anselmi, Gian Mario. 'II sangue e le piaghe: immagini della citta partita.' Letture classensi 15 (1986): 27-39. Armour, Peter. 'Matelda in Eden: The Teacher and the Apple.' Italian Studies 34 (1979): 2-27. - Dante's Griffin and the History of the World: A Study of the Earthly Paradise. Oxford: Clarendon, 1989. Capitani, Ovidio. 'Riferimento storico e pubblicistica nel commento di Bruno Nardi alia Monarchia Dantesca.' Letture classensi 9/10 (1982): 217-45. Cassell, Anthony. Inferno I: Lectura Dantis Americana. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989. Catto, Jeremy. 'Florence, Tuscany, and the World of Dante/ In The World of Dante. Ed. Cecil Grayson. Oxford: Clarendon, 1980.

192 Joan M. Ferrante Chiavacci-Leonardi, A. 'La Monarchia di Dante alia luce della Commedia.' Studi medieval: 18 (1977): 147-83. Cuini, Carlo. Qualche novita nella 'Divina Commedia': il Veltro, 'ilgran rifiuto/ ed altro. Ancona: Bagaloni, 1986. Davidsohn, Robert. Storia di Firenze. Florence: Sansoni, 1956-68. Davis, Charles T. Dante and the Idea of Rome. Oxford: Clarendon, 1957. - 'Dante's Vision of History.' Dante Studies 93 (1975): 143-60. Rpt. in Dante's Italy and Other Essays. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984. - 'Poverty and Eschatology in the Commedia.' Yearbook of Italian Studies 4 (1980): 59-86. Rpt. in Dante's Italy. - 'Rome and Babylon in Dante.' In Rome in the Renaissance: The City and the Myth. Ed. Paul A. Ramsey. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 18 (1982): 19-40. Del Popolo, Concetto S. 'Matelda.' Letture dassensi 8 (1978): 121-34. Di Scipio, Giuseppe. 'Dante and Politics.' The 'Divine Comedy' and the Encyclopedia of Arts and Sciences. Acta of the International Dante Symposium, 1983. Ed. G. Di Scipio and Aldo Scaglione. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1988. Farnell, Stewart. The Political Ideas of the 'Divine Comedy': An Introduction. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985. Ferrante, Joan M. Woman as Image in Medieval Literature from the Twelfth Century to Dante. Durham: Labyrinth, 1985. First published 1975. - The Political Vision of the 'Divine Comedy.' Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. - 'Beatrice as Priest of an Androgynous God.' In Cemers Occasional Papers. Binghamton: SUNY Press, 1992. Fiorelli, Piero. 'Sul senso del diritto nella Monarchia.' Letture dassensi 16 (1987): 79-97. Fletcher, J.B. The Crux of Dante's Comedy.' In Essays in Memory of Barrett Wendell. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965. Fortin, E.L. Dissidence et philosophie au moyen age: Dante et ses antecedents. Montreal and Paris: Bellarmin and Vrin, 1981. Frugoni, Arsenio. 'Dante tra due conclavi: la lettera ai cardinali italiani.' Letture dassensi 2 (1967): 69-91. Gilson, Etienne. Dante and Philosophy. Trans. David Moore. New York: Harper and Row, 1963. First published 1949. Hawkins, Peter S. 'Divide and Conquer: St. Augustine in the Divine Comedy.' PMLA 106 (1991): 471-82 Hollander, Robert, and Albert L. Rossi. 'Dante's Republican Treasury.' Dante Studies 104 (1986): 59-82.

Dante and Politics 193 Holmes, George. Dante. New York: Hill and Wang, 1980 - "Dante and the Popes.' In The World of Dante. Ed. Cecil Grayson. Oxford: Clarendon, 1980. Jacoff, Rachel. The Tears of Beatrice: Inferno II.' Dante Studies 100 (1982): 1-12. - 'Figures of Female Desire in Dante.' Romanic Review 79 (1988): 129^42. Jacoff, Rachel, and William A. Stephany. Inferno II: Lectura Dantis Americana. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989. Kantorowicz, Ernst H. The King's Two Bodies. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957. Chapter 8. Kay, Richard. Dante's Swift and Strong. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978. - 'Dante's Razor and Gratian's D.XV.' Dante Studies 97 (1979): 65-95. Kirkham, Victoria. 'A Canon of Women in Dante's Commedia.' Annali d'italianistica 7 (1987): 16^41. Published in Italian as 'Quanto in femmina foco d'Amor dura.' Letture classensi 18 (1989): 235-52. Mancusi-Ungaro, Donna. Dante and the Empire. New York: Peter Lang, 1987. Maurer, Karl. 'Dante als politischer Dichter.' Poetica 7 (1975): 158-88. Mazzoni, Francesco. Teoresi e prassi in Dante politico.' In Dante Alighieri. Monarchia: Epistolepolitiche. Turin: ERI, 1966. - 'II canto VI del "Paradiso."' Letture classensi 9/10 (1982): 119-59. Mazzotta, Giuseppe. Dante, Poet of the Desert. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. Nardi, Bruno. 'Fortuna della "Monarchia" nei secoli XIV e XV.' In Nel mondo di Dante. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1944. Pampaloni, Guido. Firenze al tempo di Dante. Rome: Archivi di State, 1973. Passerin d'Entreves, A. Dante as Political Thinker. Oxford: Clarendon, 1952. Pastore Stocchi, Manlio. 'Epistole.' Enciclopedia dantesca, 2:703-10. Pelikan, Jaroslav. Eternal Feminines: Three Theological Allegories in Dante's 'Paradiso/ New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990. Peterman, Larry. 'Dante and Happiness: A Political Perspective.' Medievalia et Humanistica n.s.10 (1981): 81-102. Peters, Edward M. The Failure of Church and Empire, Paradiso, 30.' Medieval Studies 34 (1972): 326-35. - 'Pars, Parte: Dante and an Urban Contribution to Political Thought.' In The Medieval City. Ed. H.A. Miskimin, David Herlihy, A.L. Udovitch. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977. Petrocchi, Giorgio. 'Biografia, attivita politica e letteraria.' In Enciclopedia dantesca. Appendice, 1-53. - 'Autobiografia politica e religiosa nella "Commedia."' Letture classensi 11 (1982): 81-96.

194 Joan M. Ferrante Quinones, Ricardo J. Dante Alighieri. Boston: Twayne, 1979. - 'Foundation Sacrifice and Florentine History: Dante's Anti-Myth.' Lectura Dantis 4 (1989): 10-19. Reeves, Marjorie. The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism. Oxford: Clarendon, 1969. Ricci, Pier G. 'Monarchia.' Encidopedia dantesca 3:993-1004. Rossi, Louis R. The Devouring Passion, Inferno VI.' Italica 42 (1965): 21-34. Russo, Vittorio. 'La Monarchia di Dante (tra Utopia e progetto).' Letture dassensi 7 (1977): 51-89. - 'Le Epistole politiche.' Letture dassensi 16 (1987): 69-78. Schevill, Ferdinand. History of Florence. New York: Ungar, 1961. First published 1936. Schnapp, Jeffrey T. 'Dante's Sexual Solecisms: Gender and Genre in the Commedia.' Romanic Review 79 (1988): 143-63. Scorrano, Luigi. 'Da Firenze a Firenze: vicenda politica nella Commedia.' Letture dassensi 16 (1987): 51-68. Scott, John A. 'Imagery in Paradiso XXVII.' Italian Studies 25 (1970): 6-29. - The Rock of Peter and Inferno, XIX.' Romance Philology 23 (1970): 462-79. - 'Inferno XXVI: Dante's Ulysses.' Lettere italiane 23 (1971): 145-86. - 'Dante and Philosophy.' Annali d'italianistica 8 (1990): 258-77. Shapiro, Marianne. Woman Earthly and Divine in the 'Comedy' of Dante. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1975. Shaw, Prudence. 'Sul testo della Monarchia.' Studi danteschi 53 (1981): 187-217. Singleton, Charles S. An Essay on the 'Vita Nuova.' Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958. - Journey to Beatrice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967. Sistrunk, Timothy G. 'Obligations of the Emperor as the Reverent Son in Dante's Monarchia.' Dante Studies 105 (1987): 95-112. Toffanin, Giuseppe. 'Canto VIII.' Lectura Dantis Scaligera, Inferno. Florence: Le Monnier, 1967. Vallone, Aldo. Antidantismo politico e dantismo letterario. Rome: Bonacci, 1988. Vasoli, Cesare. 'Filosofia e politica in Dante fra Convivio e Monarchia.' Letture dassensi 9/10 (1979): 11-37. Verdicchio, Massimo. The Veltro and Dante's Prologue to the Commedia.' Quaderni d'italianistica 5 (1984): 18-38. Waller, Marguerite. 'Seduction and Salvation: Sexual Difference in Dante's Commedia and the Difference It Makes.' In Donna, Women in Italian Culture. Ed. Ada Testaferri. University of Toronto Italian Studies 7 (1989): 225-43.

Dante and Androgyny CAROLYNN LUND-MEAD

Androgyny, like heterosexual union and gestation, functions figuratively in a positive sense to express the containing of plurality in unity, the overcoming of division, the crossing of organic, psychological, and ontological boundaries. On a phenomenological level, androgyny represents the experience of becoming part of the other, of rendering the other part of the self. Positive androgyny (as Joan Ferrante's survey makes clear) appears in the exegetical writings, literature, and art of the high Middle Ages, affirming, in its fusion and confusion of male and female characteristics, the fecundity of sexual complementarity (Women as Image 4-5).1 On the other hand, androgyny can body forth the obliteration of sexual differentiation making generative union impossible and creating an impotent/infertile asexual being. Ovid's myth of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, to which (I argue elsewhere) Dante alludes in his story of Francesca and Paolo, provides a locus dassicus of negative androgyny. In Ovid's structuring of the story, aggressive female desire results in the diminution of male identity. The sexual union which Salmacis forces upon the reluctant Hermaphroditus metamorphoses them into what is described as an impotent androgyne (rather than as an infertile gynandrous being), one in which Hermaphroditus preceives himself to have become but half a man (rather than one in which Salmacis perceives herself to have become but half a woman). As used positively, however, in medieval exegetical writing and in Dante's poetry, both gynandry and androgyny function figuratively to express the right directing of desire for the manifestation and proclamation of an identity which amalgamates the sexes. Paradoxically, as utilized by biblical exegetes, the androgyne, like the virgo intacta andfecunda (both of which are textually connected to marital imagery), affirms procreative

196 Carolynn Lund-Mead heterosexual amalgamation while superseding sexual intercourse itself and denying the intersubjectivity of the sexes. This anomaly derives from the positing of God as the goal of sexual differentiation. Within the Judeo-Christian context, beginning with the myth of the creation of Eve from Adam's body ('she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man' [Gen. 2.23]) and the subsequent pronouncement that 'therefore a man ... cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh' (24), androgyny and sexual union have been inextricably connected as fundamental expressions of the relationship of unity in duality.2 This connection is further expanded by the Apostle Paul's association of the 'one flesh' of the creation story with the state of man and woman in marriage, and with the unity of Christ and Ecclesia - a mysterious union that Paul describes as an androgynous body in which Christ, the bridegroom, is the head, and the individuals within the church, who are represented as his bride, are members of his body (Eph. 5.21-33). In the twelfth century, heterosexual union in the Song of Songs (along with the 'one flesh' of Genesis 2.24) is also interpreted as a foreshadowing of the marriage between Christ and Ecclesia. This mystical amalgamation of male and female, human and divine, is made possible because of the Incarnation, in which the Son of God joins himself in Mary's womb to a human body - woman's flesh - as he will join his mystical body to his bridal church. In twelfth century exegesis, the sponsa in the Song of Songs represents not only Ecclesia and Mary but also the individual soul, both as the feminine aspect of the soul and as the integrated whole. In recognition of the inward complementarity of the soul, the affective, feminine component must be united with the rational, masculine element (her psychological bridegroom); the amalgamated soul then prepares, as a bride, for union with God, the Logos, her spiritual bridegroom. This paradigm, Ann Astell declares in the conclusion to her study of the Song of Songs in the Middle Ages, provides a basis for Christian poetics from the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries, one which invites participation in the use of sensual imagery to convey the quality of God's love for humankind and to awaken bridal affection in return (180). As part of Cistercian androgynous theology, God, Christ, and the ecclesiarch participate in sexual complementarity: they act as both generative and nursing mother as well as animating father to their spiritual offspring, as Caroline Walker Bynum has illustrated in her study Jesus as Mother (112-29). In addition, thirteenth-century women mystics, such as Gertrude and Mechtild of Hackeborn, describe themselves and Mary, as well as Christ and God, in both male and female metaphors. In

Dante and Androgyny 197 a breakdown of the traditional gender differentiation of roles, these women attribute such activities as loving and governing, feeding and instructing, to both sexes (242-3). The distinction and interaction of male and female in the orthodox mysticism of these centuries affirms the fullness of humankind, which, in its likeness to the divinity, leads the way to God, whose unity embraces plurality. In this manner, androgyny, heterosexual union, and gestation all express the crossing of psychic and ontological boundaries to effect reciprocal, generative integration. The 'classical representation' of the reading of the Song of Songs as the wedding-hymn between God and the individual soul is to be found in the commentaries of the Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux (Matter 122-33). These writings profoundly shape the structure of Dante's journey of integration, at the end of which Bernard himself officiates. In sermon 26, as Astell indicates, Bernard creates a novel mixture of genres by integrating an elegy into an epithalamium. Bernard describes his experience of loss for his departed brother Gerard as 'the sufferings that are shared equally by lovers when compelled to remain apart' (7.10), and makes the beatified Gerard an exemplum of the beauty of the bride of Christ as she describes herself in Song 1.4. Bernard's mourning, as it expresses itself in yearning for the feminine principle, sets in motion a process that leads 'from the experience of loss to the possibility of ultimate union' (Astell 124): Gerard functions as 'an intermediary figure who directly engages the natural affections that are to be divinized in the marriage with God' (132). Bernard's process of contemplation provides Dante with what he calls, when he meets him in Paradise, a foretaste of divine presence; Bernard's presence, in turn, becomes such a foretaste for Dante: Qual e colui che forse di Croazia viene a veder la Veronica nostra, che per 1'antica fame non sen sazia, ma dice nel pensier, fin che si mostra: 'Signer mio lesu Cristo, Dio verace, or fu si fatta la sembianza vostra?'; tal era io mirando la vivace carita di colui che 'n questo mondo, contemplando, gusto di quella pace. (Par. 31.103-11) [As is he who comes perchance from Croatia to look on our Veronica, and whose old hunger is not sated, but says in

198 Carolynn Lund-Mead thought so long as it is shown, 'My Lord Jesus Christ, true God, was then your semblance like to this?' such was I, gazing on the living charity of him who, in this world, in contemplation tasted of that peace.]

Here, at the end of his journey, Dante gazes upon the living cartia of Bernard, the vera icon of God, who, in turn, tells Dante to look upon Mary's face: Riguarda omai ne la faccia che a Cristo piu si somiglia, che la sua chiarezza sola ti puo disporre a veder Cristo. (Par. 32.85-7) [Look now upon the face which most resembles Christ, for only its brightness can prepare you to see Christ.]

God's face is masculine-feminine; one comes into the presence of this God by way of the incorporation of the masculine and feminine. Just as Bernard demonstrably affirms this message at the end of Dante's journey, so the saint's exegetical writings signify, from the beginning, this process of access to the divine presence. In chapter 40 of the Vita nuova, the period of distress that Beatrice's death occasions for Dante coincides with the holy week in which pilgrims journey to see the Veronica, 'the blessed image which Jesus Christ has left us as an imprint of His most beautiful countenance, which my lady in glory now sees' (1-5). Dante realizes, and writes a poem to express the fact, that the pilgrims whom he observes journeying, unaware, through the desolated city which has lost 'la sua beatrice' (12), could continue successfully on their pilgrimage to the Veronica only if Dante were to make them weep for the loss of Beatrice. From this period of love-yearning, Dante continues his pilgrimage to his Veronica enticed by affection for Beatrice, who arrives in the Earthly Paradise as the sponsa (the bride of Christ and his own spiritual bride [Purg. 30.11]) and who introduces him into the 'Candida rosa/ ... /che ... Cristo fece sposa' [the pure white rose that Christ made his bride (Par. 31.1-3)], which is presided over by the Virgin Mary. In this feminine rose, to which he has been led by Beatrice, 'la mia donna' (56), Bernard,' 1 santo sene' (94), becomes, for Dante, 'la Veronica nostra' (104). Like the woman who provided the imprint of Christ's face for others to see, Bernard provided the literary blueprint for access to God through the integration of the masculine with the feminine by means of love.

Dante and Androgyny 199 Criticism today tends to reflect both a defence of the reconciliations effected or suggested by this mystical paradigm, and a critique of the dilemmas which it leaves unresolved. To treat of the harmonizations within their historical framework, the Cistercian paradigm attempts, among other things, to combat the concept of dualism, which in the twelfth century was being promoted by the Cathars, as in the early centuries it was promoted by the Gnostics. In early Christianity, Wayne Meeks reminds us, the unification of opposites, especially the opposite sexes, served as a prime symbol of salvation (165-7). At this time the Apostle Paul equivocated on the issue of sexual equivalence within the congregation - an equivalence based on the baptismal formula 'there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus' (Gal. 3.28). Paul's equivocation, among other things, is related to his concern for the dualistic denial of the goodness of the whole of God's creation, which is inherent in Gnostic androgyny: an attempt to leave behind sexual distinction, which belongs to the lower, material, mutable world (associated with the feminine), for the transcendent, spiritual, eternal aspect of the soul and of the cosmos (associated with the masculine). Gnostic androgyny calls into question the innate goodness of the body, the feminine, and the institutions of marriage and of society in general (Meeks 189-97; Gartner 254-S).3 Paul's insistence upon the symbols of sexual differentiation, in an attempt to promote mutuality of status 'in Christ' while rejecting the obliteration of sexual distinction, resulted historically in the deferring of realized sexual equivalence to the resurrected state, the restricting of the discipleship of equals to 'the soul/ and the eliminating of ecclesiastical office for women (Fiorenza 278-9; Meeks 207-8; Parvey 134-7). Augustine, in response to Manichean dualism in the fourth century, declares that the body shares with the soul the composite nature of humankind. The defective relationship between the sexes which resulted from the Fall, according to Augustine, was not the sex act itself, but the involvement of the affective nature of man in the act. He advocates the disciplined redirecting of the affections to God, their only appropriate object: Some things are to be enjoyed, others to be used, and there are others which are to be enjoyed and used ... To enjoy something is to cling to it with love for its own sake. To use something, however, is to employ it in obtaining that which you love, provided that it is worthy of love ... The things which are to be enjoyed are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, a single Trinity ... (1.3.3-1.5.5)

200 Carolynn Lund-Mead Twelfth-century orthodox mysticism is unique in its attempt to spiritualize rather than eliminate sexual eroticism, to engage the libido rather than suppress it. The sexual nature of bodily forms is made to mirror and express the metaphysical need for complementarity (Astell 37); love of the flesh is transformed into an experience of God who is Love (100-1). This attempt to ennoble sexual differentiation as a means to loving, reciprocal integration exists concomitantly with a continuous ecclesial commitment to the virginal state. Lamberto Crociani draws attention to the significance which ancient liturgical texts place upon the concept of fecundation without sexual union in order to restore, renew, and regenerate fallen man. A parallel is drawn between the terra vergine non arata (virgin land that had never been ploughed) from which Adam was formed, and the virgin birth, partus verginalis, of Christ, the new Adam (129,142). Sister Healy reiterates the significance for St Bonaventure, in the thirteenth century, of the appearance of the Virgin Son of a Virgin Mother in ushering in a new order for humankind: the state of virginity, which is above the state of marriage and resembles the state of the glorified body which knows no corruption (119, 128). Cistercian epithalamium mysticism, while grounding its metaphors in the language of the passionate heterosexual relationship of the Song of Songs, circumvents the experience of intersubjectivity: spiritual union occurs instead of, rather than because of or in conjunction with, sexual union. As a consequence of spiritual interaction being premised upon the paradoxical fruitfulness of virginity, the imagery of the sexual paradox of androgyny is often used in conjunction with that of heterosexual union. In sermons 9 and 10, written for the edification of his spiritual brethern, St Bernard develops, at length, the significance of the nourishing breasts of both the bride and the bridegroom. Dante's extensive use of figurative androgyny has received critical attention: Dante, himself, identifies with the feminine (Kirkpatrick) and suggests in the Paradiso that he feels himself becoming one with Beatrice (Ferrante, Woman as Image 144). Dante's presentation of the female side of God includes referring to God in the feminine gender (Ferrante, Woman as Image 141; Dante's Beatrice 26-32); presenting the female trinity of Mary, Lucy, and Beatrice as an analogue of the male model (Ferrante, Woman as Image 140; Di Scipio 109); presenting Beatrice as an analogue of Christ (Ferrante, Woman as Image 136-9; Levy, following Singleton); describing God himself as participating in male parturition, thus providing a model for the re-enactments of Francis and Dominic, who give spiritual birth to their respective fraternal orders (Schnapp 150-2). Rachel Jacoff demon-

Dante and Androgyny 201 strates the manner in which gender reversals in Virgilian allusions pervade Purgatory 30, the canto in which Beatrice, in a gesture uncharacteristic of Virgil's Aeneid, assumes female leadership ('Models'); Marianne Shapiro delineates the many instances in which Beatrice in the Paradiso is identified with male roles and with mastery (163). Generic doubleness abounds in the Earthly Paradise, both in the structure of the garden itself and in the interaction within it (Lund-Mead), extending to the nurturing 'petto' of the Griffin (Stock 10-11). Gary Cestaro examines gender reversals in the imagery that Dante uses throughout his texts to describe his search for the originary idiom of mankind and to express his own relationship to language. Some critics, such as Joan Ferrante and, more recently, Jeffrey Schnapp, focus upon the positive reciprocity of Dante's integration of the sexes. For Ferrante, Dante's unusual view of human love between a man and woman as "not just a figure for the love of man and God, but a necessary step toward that love' goes beyond the scope of the stilnovisti poets and indeed of his times (Woman as Image 129-31); Dante's confusion of the sexes "contributes to the sense of mankind as one, of the union or fusion of male and female' (Woman as Image 143). Schnapp perceives Dante's 'sexual solecisms' as breaking down Roman patriarchal categorization and the subordination of the feminine, as elaborating a middle ground between licit and illicit solecism. In this middle ground, issues of secular authority are worked out. An exchange takes place between sexual attributes, and by extension between languages, genres, and historical persons (between male and female, Latin and vernacular, epic and lyric, Virgil and Beatrice), making it possible for Dante to come to grips with his own poetic hybrid (149). Other critics focus upon the lack which Dante's integration of the sexes reveals, particularly in its incorporation of the feminine. Marianne Shapiro sees mother sublimation as 'the only crown available to a poet writing in a patristic society' (35), and Dante, 'to a higher degree than earlier poets,' measuring 'the quality of love by its success in eliminating sensuality' (152). Shapiro emphasizes the absence of happy lovers in the Commedia (68) and of marriage as intimacy between two human beings (37), as well as the denial of a role for women which recognizes, incorporates, or celebrates their sexuality, since man must serve the patriarchate. Rachel Jacoff, more recently, draws attention to Dante's use of maternal imagery to subvert erotic tensions (Tears'), and to his negative depiction of female desire, not only of transgressive female desire, but of all female desire, and ultimately of any desire that is reluctant to relinquish what Julia

202 Carolynn Lund-Mead Kristeva (in an essay which Jacoff believes to be too conservative to offer any viable alternative) calls 'specific corporealities' ('Transgression'). More stridently, Gayatri Spivak analyses the figure of Beatrice in the Vita nuova as a victim of the brutal sexism' of the literary tradition in which the text is embedded (73), while Joy Potter sets out to read the text, not as 'the story of a love rightly and nobly sublimated and purified into a worthier form,' but as a power struggle in which Dante struggles to free himself from the power of Beatrice (60). Dante's figurative androgynes, which are themselves sexual paradoxes, give rise to these conflicting perspectives. Such conflicts also exist fundamentally in biblical and exegetical rhetoric of sexuality. As is well known, two essential models of sexual differentiation in creation are presented in Genesis, one in which God created humankind, male and female, in his own image (1.26-7); the other in which God created man from the earth, breathed into him the breath of life, and then from man made woman (2.7,21-3). These two divergent accounts were traditionally interpreted as if the first were further elaborated in the second, with the result that man and woman were perceived as paradoxically equal - in sharing God's image - but unequal - in the extent to which they shared the divine image, and in the sociological and cosmological hierarchy, since woman was perceived as 'secondary/ both literally and figuratively. The Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, in spite of his theoretical affirmation of the goodness of creation on the basis of the Torah (Baer), allegorically interprets the reuniting of Adam and Eve in 'one flesh' (Gen. 2.24) as a threat to the integrity of the masculine, regulatory component: 'When that which is superior, namely Mind, becomes one with that which is inferior, namely Sense-perception, it resolves itself into the order of flesh which is inferior, into sense-perception, the moving cause of the passions' ('Legum Allegoria,' 2.50). The Apostle Paul, on the other hand (as elaborated above), interprets the 'one flesh' positively, as a metaphor for the mystical uniting of Christ with his bride: as a means of return to the identity of wholeness. Paul's interpretation, although reconciliatory, nevertheless, like Philo's, participates in the model of derivation rather than of equivalence of the sexes in creation. The initial Christian movement, however, began with a vision of a discipleship of equals 'in Christ' in which women took an active part in leadership, and which posited itself against the dominant patriarchal ethos of the Graeco-Roman world (Fiorenza 90-2; Meeks 197-206). Following Paul's equivocation on the issue of equality, the hierarchical creation model of Genesis 2 is brought to bear in the later Pastoral Epistles as

Dante and Androgyny 203 verification of woman's subordination to man, 'for Adam was formed first, then Eve' (1 Tim. 2.11-15), reinforcing the 'after and therefore inferior' status of women (Parker 178-85). The concept of the feminine as the aspect of being that is most receptive to God flourishes in the thirteenth century, promoted by both male and female mystics. While the nuns of Helfta identify with the powerlessness and physicality of Christ because of the fact that they are women (Bynum), Bonaventure, in the fourth chapter of his Itinerarium, perceives the feminine, affective nature of humankind to be the means whereby the soul may reform her image of God. Concomitantly in the thirteenth century, however, the moralist philosopher Thomas Aquinas was synthesizing the biblical hierarchical creation model with the Aristotelian concept of the woman as a male manque (Parker 182-3). Aquinas reinforces the 'natural' subordination of woman promoted by the Pastoral Epistles while avoiding Aristotle's implicit dualism by attributing to God a plan for the nature of the species as a whole, for which the male is the regulatory principle: the female (who in her individual nature is defective) when joined to the male in 'one flesh' (Gen. 2.24) serves the purpose of passively procreating from the active male seed that which is 'perfect in masculinity' (Summa Ia.92,1). At this time, furthermore, the church was reacting against perceived challenges to the patriarchal order, from Cistercian resistance to the incorporation of spiritual women who were petitioning for recognition (Thomson), to extermination by the Inquisition of the Guglielmites, who were seeking salvation through a feminine alternative to the patriarchal trinity and ecclesiarch (Wessley). From equivalence to secondariness, these two antithetical impulses (like the parodoxical analogy of androgyny and heterosexual intercourse) coexist within church history and doctrine. Historically, the dominant tendency has fundamentally engaged in promoting, justifying, and theologizing the ideals of patriarchy - in particular the subordination of the feminine - while the counter impulse surfaces from time to time to proclaim and to effect the breakdown, modification, and transformation of patriarchy, to promote a community of equals or the reciprocal amalgamation of the sexes. The latter thrust, however, has tended to be pushed into the realm of eschatological eventuality (as it was in the early church) or to remain as mystical theology (as it did in Cistercianism) rather than to effect social or ecclesial change. Thus we find that Dante's androgynous interaction in the Commedia is effected in a realm above the mutable world, where the sexual reciprocity imperfectly signified in earthly marriage is realized, where Beatrice possesses a resurrected body

204 Carolynn Lund-Mead - one which participates in the incorruptability of which virginity on earth (except in the case of the Virgin Mary) is an imperfect copy - and where eschatological equivalence of the sexes exists. Criticism which censures Dante's rhetoric of sexuality tends to focus upon the problems that it creates, or in which it participates, rather then resolves. Although critical defence of Dante's rhetoric of sexuality often tends to part company from critical censure, meaningful insight is to be gained from an approach which examines its historical, intellectual, poetic, philosophical, and/or theological contexts, and attempts to describe more accurately the position which the text takes in relation to the conflicts within contemporary ideologies. In this regard, much work remains to be done. As recent conflicting critical appraisals confirm, Dante's crossgendering of the figure of Beatrice, in particular, reflects contemporary ideological contradictions. In terms of Cistercian psychology, however, it is an oversimplification to claim that, in the Vita nuova, in keeping with 'a deeply rooted male Western Platonic tradition' (Potter 60), the Christological Beatrice is defeminized; that the beatified Beatrice is asexual, deprived of both her sexual distinction and her human physicality; that Dante makes her Other, thereby negating her sensual power over him (Potter); that it is 'natural' that Beatrice should be masculinized in the male precinct of Paradise (Shapiro 151). Rather, because of the Incarnation, the Christological Beatrice figures forth a composite, generative integration of the divine with the human -both masculine and feminine - not a sterile renunciation of the same. Christ in becoming human took on woman's flesh. Beatrice is woman's flesh. Without Christ as Word made flesh, Beatrice would not be the flesh which Dante makes word.4 An interchange of male/female roles accompanies this integration of ontological realities. Beatrice's translated body is glorified woman's flesh, embued with spiritualized eroticism. Dante's continued attraction to the beauty of her mouth and eyes, in particular, draws him to identify with her. Beatrice is Other only in the sense of being what she assists Dante in becoming experientially before death: a member of tt\e feminine precinct of Paradise, the rose which Christ made his bride. Beatrice's generic doubleness and her translation to a glorified body do not constitute a loss of individuality. At the end of Dante's journey, Beatrice resumes her particular seat in Paradise, where, in contradistinction to Platonic philosophy, every soul retains his or her identity; where, as Giuseppe Di Scipio makes clear, the number of male and female souls is carefully balanced. Empithalamic mysticism, as opposed to Cathar uni-

Dante and Androgyny 205 tive mysticism (as Denis De Rougemont [153-6] points out) culminates in communion - an act of reciprocity which implicitly maintains an essential distinction between Creator and creature, between male and female. Bernard's intercessional prayer for Dante's entry into this communion maintains such a distinction, in what Charles Williams once called the principle of 'exchanged derivation' (222), between 'figlia' and 'figlio/ 'fattore' and 'fattura' (Par. 33.1-6). This exchanged derivation, however, as Rachel Jacoff indicates, participates in transcendence rather than in the transgression of incest or idolatry only because of 'the vanishing of specific corporealities' (Transgression/ 139-40). In epithalamic mysticism, the grounding of figurative language in physical reality exists for the purpose of metaphysical realization in this world and ultimate spiritual union between God and the resurrected being - both body and soul - in the next. Rather than being disempowered, the Christological and translated Beatrice is empowered with the divine guidance of Dante's spiritual life and his poetry. Joan Ferrante points out that Dante, in making Beatrice his teacher of philosophy, flagrantly defies Paul's explicit prohibition, which is repeated throughout the thirteenth century, against women instructing (Dante's Beatrice 4). Aware that his feminine incarnations of Christ border on transgression and blasphemy, the poet has, as Giorgio Barberi Squarotti convincingly argues, couched them so as to avert a final transgression of theological construction. Dante has founded Beatrice's divine character upon his own visions and interpretations, rather than upon the words or acts of Beatrice (16-25). The temerity for which the Guglielmites were exterminated by the Inquisition included the creation of a story of the life of Guglielma of Milan which mirrored the details of the life of Christ (Wessley 295). The positing of God as the goal of sexual differentiation applies equally to both genders: just as Beatrice is not the final object and goal of Dante's life, his poetry, or his affections, so Dante is not the final object of Beatrice's devotion. Their relationship is posited upon the metaphysical communion of lovers, which obviates the necessity of an intimate relationship between human beings. While, as Ferrante claims, Dante employs the imagery of marriage to express the highest love (Woman as Image 151), the marriage between St Francis and Poverty is, as Shapiro says, 'entirely allegorical' (65); the purpose of the union is the spiritual generation of souls for God. Similarly, when Beatrice arrives in the Purgatorio, she is figuratively hailed as both the bride from the Song of Songs ('Veni, sponsa, de Libano' [30.11]) and as Christ, the bridegroom according to medieval exegesis ('Benedictus qui venis!' [19]). As such, Beatrice gives (virgin)

206 Carolynn Lund-Mead birth to the word 'Dante' (55), just as the Virgin Mary (whom the sponsa also exegetically represents) gives flesh to the 'verbo divino' (Par. 23.73-4). Thus Dante employs the imagery of heterosexual union in conjunction with the imagery of androgyny and fecund virginity in order to express metaphysical generative reciprocity. Beginning in the Vita nuova, naming as proclamation assumes a particular significance in Dante's poetry. Love's heralding of Beatrice is heightened by the gender conversions it entails and by the reciprocal complementarity it suggests. In chapter 24.4-5, Love proclaims Beatrice, who is preceded by Giovanna, by invoking, in Latin translation, the prophecy of Isaiah as repeated by John the Baptist: 'lo quale precedette la verace luce, dicendo: "Ego vox clamantis in deserto: parate viam Domini"' [who preceded the True Light saying: 'I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord']. This prophecy is associated with John the Baptist by each of the evangelists in the New Testament (Matt. 3.1-3; Mark 1.1-3; Luke 3.1-4) but recorded only by John as having been repeated by the Baptist himself (John 1.23). In the Gospel of John, the Baptist voices this prophecy in order to establish his identity when members of the religious establishment ask, 'Who are you?' (22). Having verified his own prophetic legitimacy, the Baptist proceeds to explain that 'he who sent me' also identified the man whom he baptized by means of the sign of the Spirit descending and remaining on his person (33). The Baptist concludes, 'And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God' (34). John the Evangelist repeats the Baptist's testimony by way of establishing the incarnate identity of the eternal Word. With the proclamation of this eternal existence, John opens his gospel: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God' (1). In the Vita nuova, all these proclamations - of the poet Dante, of Love, and, by allusion, of the prophet Isaiah, John the Evangelist, John the Baptist, and God the Father - seek to establish the legitimacy and the identity of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as a prototype of the woman Beatrice: 'lo suo nome Giovanna e da quello Giovanni lo quale precedette la verace luce/ According to Dante's figure of Love, the name Giovanna derives from the masculine form, while 'la verace luce' signifies both the Son of God and Beatrice. Within the same sentence, Love includes a representation of both the derivative and the analogous relationships of the masculine and the feminine, the divine and human. The derivation model, to which etymological relationship belongs (Giovanni-Giovanna), pertains to the sphere of intellectual understanding; the analogous model ('la verace luce'), to the sphere of revelation.

Dante and Androgyny 207 In the Genesis story of creation, naming is a male prerogative: 'Then the man said, / "This at last is bone of my bones / and flesh of my flesh; / she shall be called Woman, / because she was taken out of Man"' (Gen. 2.23). In chapter 24 of the Vita nuova, the male figure of Love announces the identity of Beatrice. On this his last appearance, however, Love indicates that Beatrice ought to be called by his name: 'E chi volesse sottilmente considerare, quella Beatrice chiamerebbe Amore, per molta simiglianza che ha meco' [Anyone who thought carefully about this would call Beatrice Love because of the great resemblance she bears to me!]. Dante's rebirth in the Commedia is the story of the spiritual recreation of humankind from the perspective of post-incarnational man. From her rnouth, or upper womb, the woman who in the Vita nuova is announced as Beatrice-ChristLove gives birth to the name 'Dante' (30.55). Naming is no longer a male prerogative, but is reciprocally shared by both male and female, just as Christ, the new Adam who is birthed by Mary, participates in both genders. Beatrice, as has been noted, is heralded both in the Vita nuova and in the Commedia with Latin quotations. Although it has been alleged that the Latin language functions as a tool of male hegemony, as a means of excluding Beatrice from all-male precincts (Potter 61; Spivak 80-1), the opposite, in fact, occurs. In the Vita nuova, the masculine figure of Love gives place to Beatrice, who by means of a Latin quotation is given recognition as a feminine incarnation of God. In the Earthly Paradise, the place where Beatrice assumes the yielded leadership of the masculine Virgil, the poet attributes prophetic words of Christ to Beatrice in Latin. In response to le donne' Beatrice replies, 'Modicum, et non videbitis me; / et iterum, sorelle, mie dilette, / modicum, et vos videbitis me' [A little while, and you will not see me; and again, my beloved sisters, a little while, and you will see me (33.10-12)]. Beatrice converses in prophetic language with her Latin-speaking sisters in Dante's Purgatorio, just as Christ, according to the testimony of John the Evangelist, converses with his disciples (16.16). The cross-gendering of Beatrice is significant when one considers Dante's concern for the decadence of the monarchy and the corruption of the papacy. Mario De Rosa points out that for Dante, God remains the only guiding patriarchal figure, and that it is Christ's uniquely intimate relationship with God the Father that makes possible the fraternity of humankind as God's adopted children. According to the Apostle Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians, God's adopted children are both male and female: 'we are the temple of the living God; as God said... "I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters'" (6.16,18). In the

208 Carolynn Lund-Mead high Middle Ages, the freedom from power which, of necessity, characterized the role played by spiritual women made them a powerful potential for ecclesial reform. The motive behind much of the Cistercian use of maternal imagery is the recognition of the need to supplement authority with love. This anxiety, Bynum finds, is expressed by men rather than women, since the authority of men was based on office, that of women, directly on divine inspiration (Jesus as Mother, 153-9); women fulfilled the precepts of the church with vehemence, in protest against what they saw as the worldliness and compromise of office (Holy Feast, 243-4). Stephen Wessley considers that the vacuum created by contemporary ecclesial controversies provided an incentive for the ideology of the Guglielmites, who, deriving practices and beliefs from the concept of primitive Christianity, believed that by the example of Guglielma of Milan - the Holy Spirit incarnate in a woman - a new female church order was to provide leadership for a new age of the Spirit (297-8). The Cistercians proposed a corrective to the limitations of ecclesial patriarchy, the Guglielmites a radical atlernative. Dante reflects these concerns. Lorraine Stock interprets Beatrice in the Commedia as a nourishing mother in contrast to Mother Church 'empty of milk' (an image which Stock believes to derive from Bernard's interpretation of the breasts of the bride and bridegroom [11]). Dante's Beatrice is a 'spiritual foster-mother, supplanting the negligent Church' (10), which has been drained of its 'feminine' nurturing qualities. In addition, it is in the mirror of Beatrice's eyes, rather than from the hands of a celebrating priest, that Dante receives a eucharistic vision. As a historical analogue, one might look to the development of the female personification of divine Wisdom as a hypostasis of God and the celebration of the heroines Judith and Esther in the Old Testament, which occur, as J. Edgar Bruns has suggested, at a time of disillusionment, when confidence in the patriarchate was shaken (53-5). Dante's incorporation of Beatrice into patriarchal roles, both ecclesial and divine, reflects a recognition of the need for the inclusiveness of representation - an inclusiveness which in the orthodox mysticism of the high Middle Ages was perceived to be represented by Christ himself. Dante's exchange of the leadership of Virgil for that of Beatrice, however, is not simply (as has been suggested) a necessary substitution of patriarchal discourse for heterosexual 'intercourse' with Beatrice (Waller 242), just as the final substitution of the leadership of Beatrice with that of Bernard is more than a recourse to fraternal bonding. The poet, in fact, prepares for the generic doubleness of Beatrice with the cross-

Dante and Androgyny 209 gendering of Virgil. The image of Virgil as a mother rescuing her child from the flames in the Inferno (23.37-45) represents the feminization of the figure of Roman patriarchy, as Schnapp brilliantly recognizes. In this figure of speech, Aeneas carrying father Anchises from burning Troy in Virgil's Aeneid becomes mother Virgil (the father of Roman poetry) carrying the Christian poet Dante upon her breast: Marian pieta augments Roman patriarchal pietas (159). Subsequently, at the moment of the appearance of Beatrice in the Purgatorio as both sponsa and sponsus, Dante refers to Virgil as both 'mamma' and 'patre' (30.44, 50): Virgil is both cultural mother and father, as Beatrice is both spiritual bride and bridegroom; from this cultural and spiritual, human and divine, male and female amalgamation, Dante is reborn, named, and baptized. And finally, in the Paradise, the image of the heraldic eagle of empire as a mother stork circling her nest of young (Par. 19.91-6) epitomizes the conjoining of the Roman and the Holy Roman Empires as part of God's historical plan for the translation of empire. Dante approvingly quotes in the Monarchia a saying which declares: 'Romanun imperiurn de Fonte nascitur pietatis' [the Roman empire was begotten in the womb of piety (2.5.5)]. Throughout the universe of the Commedia, from the leadership of Virgil to that of Beatrice and finally to Bernard, gender integration and sexual fluidity characterize a journey of inclusiveness which leads to the God in whom sexual differentiation is posited as the only appropriate goal of the love of humankind. Androgyny, heterosexual union, and gestation interact as analogous metaphors for this generative metaphysical union which obviates and supersedes intimate, interpersonal sexual relationships between man and woman, and which anticipates final union of body and soul with God in eternity. Notes 1 Consult Ferrante's work as well for a wealth of information regarding Dante's gender differentiation in relation to that found in biblical exegesis, Neoplatonic allegory, courtly literature, and interpretations of classical texts in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 2 On the Jewish use of the Platonic myth of a bisexual progenitor to solve the exegetical dilemma presented by the unusual sequence of the first two chapters of Genesis and to support monogamy, see Wayne Meeks, 185-6. 3 Both I.P. Culianu (95) and Elisabeth Fiorenza (66) refute Elaine Pagels's view of the liberating force of feminine imagery in Gnosticism.

210 Carolynn Lund-Mead 4 Beginning with Michele Barbi, the insistence upon the living reality of Beatrice, who 'dopo morta, e piu viva di prima' (127), has continued to inform Dante criticism. More recently James Cotter emphasizes the significance of the Incarnation in making the human being, and Beatrice in particular, the meeting place of the natural and the supernatural, the human and divine. Robert Harrison explicates the fundamental association of the body of Beatrice with the body of Christ in Dante's first vision in the Vita nuova, and of the sacramental body of Beatrice with the body of Dante's poetry. Bibliography Alighieri, Dante. La Divina Commedia. Ed. Giorgio Petrocchi. 2nd. ed. Torino: Einaudi, 1975. - The Divine Comedy. With an English Translation and Commentary by Charles S. Singleton. 3 vols. Bollingen Series 80. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. - Opere di Dante. Ed. M. Barbi et al. 2nd. ed. Firenze: Societa Dantesca Italiana, 1960. - La Vita nuova. Trans. Barbara Reynolds. Middlesex: Penguin, 1969. Astell, Ann W. The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1990. Augustine, Saint. On Christian Doctrine. Trans. D.W. Robertson. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1958. Baer, R.A. Philo's Use of the Categories 'Male' and 'Female.' Leiden: Brill, 1970. Baker, Derek, ed. Medieval Women. Oxford: Blackwell, 1987. Barberi Squarotti, Giorgio. 'L'ambiguita della Vita Nuova.' In Psicoanalisi e strutturalismo difronte a Dante. Vol. 3. Florence: Olschki, 1972. 7-55. Barbi, Michele. 'Allegoria e lettera nella Divina Commedia.' In Problemi fondamentali per un nuovo commento della 'Divina Commedia.' Firenze: Sansoni, 1955. 115-40. Bernard of Clairvaux. On the Song of Songs. Trans. Kilian Walsh. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1971. Vols. 2 and 3 of The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux. Ed. Louis Bouyer, et al. 4 vols. 1971-80. Bible. The New Oxford Annotated Bible: Revised Standard Version. Ed. Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. Bonaventure, Saint. Itinerarium Mentis in Deum. With an English Translation by Philotheus Boehner. Saint Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1956. Bruns, J. Edgar. God as Woman, Woman as God. New York: Paulist, 1973.

Dante and Androgyny 211 Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. - Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Cestaro, Gary P.'"... quanquam Sarnum biberimus ante dentes": The Primal Scene of Suckling in Dante's De vulgari eloquentia.' Dante Studies 109 (1991): 119-47. Cotter, James Finn. 'Dante and Christ: The Pilgrim as "Beatus Vir."' Italian Quarterly 38.107 (1987): 5-19. Crociani, Lamberto. 'L'eucologia mariana nei sacramentari romani.' In Maria, Madre di Dio: scrittura, teologia, liturgia, iconografia. Atti della 'Tre Giorni' mariana Firenze 21-23 marzo 1988. Ed. L. Crociani. Firenze: SS. Annunziata, 1991.111-61. Culianu, I.P. 'Feminine versus Masculine: The Sophia Myth and the Origins of Feminism.' In Struggles of Gods: Papers of the Groningen Work Group for the Study of the History of Religions. Ed. H.G. Kippenberg et al. Berlin: Mouton, 1984. 65-98. De Rosa, Mario. 'La paternita di Dio nella Divina Commedia.' Studi e problemi di critica testuale 30 (1985): 31-40. De Rougemont, Denis. Love in the Western World. Trans. Montgomery Belgion. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Di Scipio Giuseppe. The Symbolic Rose in Dante's 'Paradiso.' Ravenna: Longo, 1984. Ferrante, Joan M. Dante's Beatrice: Priest of an Androgynous God. Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992. (CEMERS Occasional Publications, Series 2.) - Woman as Image in Medieval Literature: From the Twelfth Century to Dante. New York: Columbia University Press, 1975. Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schussler. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. New York: Crossroad, 1983. Gartner, Bertil. The Theology of the Gospel of Thomas. Trans. Eric J. Sharpe. London: Collins, 1961. Harrison, Robert P. The Body of Beatrice. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988. Healy, Sister Emma Therese. Woman According to Saint Bonaventure. New York: Georgian, 1955. Jacoff, Rachel. 'Models of Literary Influence in the Commedia.' In Medieval Texts and Contemporary Readers. Ed. M. Schichtman and L. Finke. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.158-76. - The Tears of Beatrice.' Dante Studies 100 (1982): 1-12.

212 Carolynn Lund-Mead - Transgression and Transcendence: Figures of Female Desire in Dante's Commedia.' Romanic Review 79 (1989): 129-42. Kirkpatrick, Robin. 'Dante's Beatrice and the Politics of Singularity.' Texas Studies in Literature and Language 32 (1990): 101-19. Kristeva, Julia. 'Stabat Mater.' In The Kristeva Reader. Ed. Toril Moi. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.160-86. Levy, Bernard S. 'Beatrice's Greeting and Dante's Sigh in the Vita Nuova.' Dante Studies 92 (1974): 53-62. Lund-Mead, Carolynn. 'Notes on Androgyny and the Commedia.' Lectura Dantis 10 (1992): 70-9. Matter, E. Ann. The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990. Meeks, Wayne A. The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity.' History of Religions 13 (1974): 165-208. Ovid. Metamorphoses. With an English Translation by Frank Justus Miller. Ed. T.E. Page, et al. 3rd ed. Vol. 1. The Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1977. Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Random House, 1979. Parker, Patricia. 'Coming Second: Woman's Place/ In Literary Fat Ladies: Rhetoric, Gender, Property. London and New York: Methuen, 1987.178-233. Parvey, Constance F. The Theology and Leadership of Women in the New Testament.' In Religion and Sexism: Images of Woman in the Jewish and Christian Traditions. Ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974.117-49. Philo. With an English Translation by F.H. Colson and G.H. Whitaker. The Loeb Classical Library. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1929-62. Potter, Joy Hambuechen. 'Beatrice, Dead or Alive: Love in the Vita Nuova.' Texas Studies in Literature and Language 32 (1990): 60-84. Schnapp, Jeffrey T. 'Dante's Sexual Solecisms: Gender and Genre in the Commedia.' Romanic Review 79 (1989): 143-63. Shapiro, Marianne. Woman Earthly and Divine in the 'Comedy' of Dante. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1975. Singleton, Charles S. Dante Studies II. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954. 72-85,122-38. Spivak, Gayatri C. 'Finding Feminist Readings: Dante-Yeats.' Social Text 3 (1980): 73-87. Stock, Lorraine Kochanske. 'Reversion for Conversion: Maternal Images in Dante's Commedia.' Italian Quarterly 23.90 (1982): 5-15. Thomas Aquinas, Saint. Summa Theologiae. Latin text and English translation. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963.

Dante and Androgyny 213 Thomson, Sally. 'The Problem of the Cistercian Nuns in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries.' In Baker, ed., Medieval Women, 227-52. Waller, Marguerite. 'Seduction and Salvation: Sexual Difference in Dante's Commedia and the Difference It Makes.' In Donna: Women in Italian Culture. Ed. Ada Testaferri. University of Toronto Italian Studies 7. Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1989. 225-43. Wessley, Stephen. 'The Thirteenth-Century Guglielmites: Salvation through Women.' In Baker, ed., Medieval Women, 289-303. Williams, Charles. The Figure of Beatrice. London: Faber and Faber, 1943.

Singing the Book: Orality in the Reception of Dante's Comedy1 JOHN AHERN

I quite realize what little weight the approval of the ignorant mob has for the learned. - Petrarch, FamiHares 21.15.

Franco Sacchetti tells how Dante twice rebuked singers of the Comedy. Passing a blacksmith who hammered on an anvil and at the same time sang the poem like a cantare,' his Dante complained: 'You sing the book and do not say it as I made it; this is my only craft (arte) and you ruin it' (Novelle 114). Afterwards the blacksmith sang cantari about Tristan and Lancelot instead of the Comedy. Another time an ass driver, as he sang the poem, shouted 'arri,' or 'gee up!/ every time he struck the animal's back. In retribution Dante struck his back (Novelle 115). Sacchetti is unlikely to have told these tales if people did not sing the Comedy in the late fourteenth century (Papante, 61-2). In each anecdote manual labourers 'sing' lines from the Comedy while working, probably matching end- and middle-line pauses to the rhythms of their labour as in traditional work songs. The verb cantare may indicate loud recitation, monotone chant with a cadenced ending, or melodious song. Certainly it denotes more than Aeneid 1.1, where cano means 'I celebrate' or T treat,' not T sing.'2 The significance of the rebuked blacksmith's behaviour has eluded critical attention. Once challenged, he dropped the Comedy for a cantare, a traditional narrative poem in hendecasyllabic verse (the same meter as the Comedy), which both minstrels and ordinary citizens performed.3 Substituting a cantare for the Comedy entailed merely a change of words, not music. Note, however, that Sacchetti's Dante does not blame the blacksmith's mangling of the text on performance itself but on the quality of that performance. Oral performance is taken for granted.

Singing the Book: Orality in the Reception of Dante's Comedy 215 There is, in fact, considerable evidence that persons outside the usual medieval literary public sang the Comedy. Petrarch writing to Boccaccio (1359) claimed that the 'ignorant [idiotae]... in shops and the market place' knew Dante. He spoke of Dante's 'long-standing popularity... acclaimed in the theatres and cross-roads of the city' (Familiares 21.5) and noted how the 'unskilled tongues of his admirers defiled the poem in performance [pronuntiando].' Petrarch's claim not to envy Dante 'the applause and hoarse murmuring of dyers, drapers, shopkeepers, thugs and their ilk' is another indirect confirmation of the poem's widespread popular performance. Forty years later the situation was unchanged. In a dialogue by Leonardo Bruni (1401), the humanist Niccolo Niccoli says he would 'remove Dante from the ranks of the learned [litteratorum] and leave him with the fullers and millers' (Bruni 70). Dante himself received complaints about performances of the Comedy in his last years. Giovanni del Virgilio, a Bolognese professor of rhetoric, reprimanded him ca.1318-19 for not writing the Comedy in Latin.4 He thought the subject too serious for illiterates (gens ydiota) and inappropiate for street performance: ... tanta quid heu semper iactabis seria vulgo, et nos pallentes nichil ex te vate legemus? Ante quidem cythara pandum delphyna movebis Davus et ambigue Sphyngos problemata solvet, Tartareum preceps quam gens ydiota figuret et secreta poll vix experata Platoni: que tamen in triviis nunquam digesta coaxat comicomus nebulo, qui Flaccum pelleret orbe. (Ecloga I, 6-13)5 [Why will you always, alas, toss serious matters to the mob, and why shall we, pallid from study, read nothing of yours, O bard? But you undoubtless shall first move the curved dolphin with your lyre and Davus shall solve the Sphinx's riddles before ignorant people imagine the Tartarean abysses and the heavens' secrets which Plato barely drew from their spheres - matters which, in the cross-roads, without ever digesting them, the well-dressed wretch, who'd banish Horace from the world, croaks out.]

216 John Ahern For del Virgilio reading was the only valid mode of poetic reception. He has 'Dante' deny ever intending to address illiterates: 'I am not speaking to these people, but to expert readers [studio callentibus]/ In defining Dante's error, del Virgilio formulates a principle to which many humanists subscribed: 'clerus vulgaria tempnit' [the clerk despises popular things]: Carmine sed laico! clerus vulgaria tempnit, et si non varient, cum sint ydiomata mille; preterea nullus, quos inter es agmine sextus, nee quern consequeris celo sermone forensi descripsit. (15-19) [But yours is a lay [or popular] song! The clerk despises popular things, and, even if they did not vary, there are still thousands of idioms; moreover, no one from the ranks whose sixth member you are, nor the one whom you follow to heaven [i.e., Virgil] ever wrote in the language of the piazza.]

Dante ignored this criticism. Untroubled by the 'danger' of oral performance, he expressed amusement at the offence caused by female performance of his poem. He asks a third party: 'Comica nonne vides ipsum reprehendere verba, / turn quiafemineo resonant uttritalabello...' [Don't you see that he reproaches me for my comic words because they sound out mangled by female lips? (Ecloga II, 52-3)].6 Oral performance of the Comedy did not surprise him. In the past half century, we have come to understand that orality plays a large role in medieval literature and constitutes part of its 'alterity' (Jauss 189). The early explorations of Parry, Havelock, and Lord into the oral matrix of classical culture occasioned a re-evaluation of the great medieval epics.7 More recently, broad cross-cultural studies of oral poetry by Finnegan and Zumthor (1983) have corrected and extended these insights. Zumthor, in particular, has re-examined the whole spectrum of Western medieval poetry from this point of view. In addition, Stock has employed the oral-written distinction tellingly in developing subtle typologies of medieval culture. Roncaglia has shown that it is no longer possible to posit, as De Bartholomaeis (121) and Contini (Poeti del Duecento 1:45) did, a complete divorce beween writing and song by the midthirteenth century. Literary history which scorns popular or oral literature

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has long been discredited (Predelli). We now realize that oral and literary poets constantly rubbed shoulders, as did, for example, Poliziano and the blind Francesco da Firenze in the Medici court, where each fashioned very different poems in ottava rima (Frasso). Manzoni and other eighteenth- and nineteenth-century men of letters attended the salon performances of oral 'improvising' poets (Vitagliano, Gentili, Di Ricco). Indeed, Metastasio, who began as an improvising poet in the streets, ended as an Olympian man of letters. The continuity between certain aspects of oral performance in contemporary and medieval Italy has been documented by Kezich and Evarts. It is in this context, then, that I propose to examine the role orality played in the reception of the Comedy. Varieties of Reception In late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Italy, some poems were intended solely for hearing, others solely for reading, and others for combinations of the two. Most poems for oral performance were, of course, never recorded; for example, the outlawed Carolingian epics sung on the piazza in Bologna around 1289 have vanished (Ugolini 8).8 But other compositions of apparently oral origin, like the 'Sirventese dei Lambertazzi e Geremei' (1280) and the popular poems in the Memoriali Bolognesi were preserved in writing in the late thirteenth century. Medieval literacy was by and large 'recitation literacy/ Texts were often thought of as functions of oral performance, not self-sufficient entities. Even producers of texts tended to think of the written page as uttered words temporarily stored as graphic signs in order to be uttered again later. For example, both Francis of Assisi and Marco Polo imagined the largely illiterate audiences of their dictated texts as hearing them read aloud, rather than reading them in silence.9 At the other extreme were Latin literary texts that resisted oral performance. Only skilled readers familiar with Latin literature, who read and reread del Virgilio's hexameters in solitude, could arrive at their full meaning. Public oral performance of texts in classicizing Latin was impossible if only because the old metres were not performable, and the public lacked the necessary linguistic competence. Oral performance alone did not give access to all Latin literary texts. The literate culture of the Italian communes contained a high residue of orality. A majority of the population had some alphabetic skill, but for practical not 'cultural' motives. We can distinguish four groups: illiterates, semi-literates, vernacular literates, and Latin literates. The first and last

218 John Ahern can be sharply defined. Idiotae or illitterati cut across class divisions. They include labourers, craftsmen, and aristocrats, with women probably outnumbering men. Their daily lives required no access to written information.10 According to Giovanni Villani's much disputed statistics (Cronica 9.94), in 1339 they constituted 40 per cent of the Florentine population, but the actual figure was probably higher.11 The semi-literates or indocti were unschooled artisans and craftsmen, members of the populo minuto and arti minori, whose livelihoods required access to written data. Their rudimentary pragmatic literacy allowed them to sign their names and haltingly decipher bills of sale, simple accounts, and like documents. For more complex operations, they employed notaries.12 The blacksmiths, millers, dyers, drapers, and innkeepers who sang and recited the Comedy belonged to this group. The third group, vernacular literates, consisted of merchants, bankers, and others with primary schooling, whose professional activities required advanced alphabetic expertise but not mastery of classical Latin. It corresponded to the popolo grasso and certain arti maggiori such as the Calimala.13 Dante called them 'volgari e non litterati/ They formed the public of vernacular literature. The last group, the litterati, had attended schools of grammar and logic and universities. As judges, notaries, canon and civil lawyers, administrators, doctors, and teachers, their professions required the ability either to store and retrieve written information in Latin or to impart that skill. Villani claimed they were an eighth the size of the vernacular literates, or 71A per cent of the population. Dante claimed that this smaller group's narrowly utilitarian ideas about writing produced poor readers (Conv. 1.9.2-4; 1.11.10-12). Only one out of a thousand of them, he said, could read a Latin commentary on his philosophic canzoni (1.9.2). In practice, probably few Latin literates read literature in Latin. These four groups had fluid, complex, paradoxical interrelations. All undoubtedly attended oral performances of many kinds. The natural public of such performances was, pf course, the idiotae and indocti, whose uncritical participation in oral performance posed problems, as we shall see, for litterati like Lovati. Yet these oral performers at times claimed their authority derived from certain 'books' which contained the tales they sang. But when vernacular literary texts received oral performance, the illiterates could listen but not read. Twofold reception (i.e., listening and reading) was possible only for Latin and vernacular literates. No group could give every oral performance the full response that it demanded. The relations between high and popular, literate and illiterate, were reciprocal and symbiotic not merely antagonistic.14 Petrarch and the

Singing the Book: Orality in the Reception of Dante's Comedy 219 Paduan 'pre-humanist' Lovato Lovati (ca. 1237-1309) provide apt illustrations of the subtle ways in which oral culture shaped the response of the literate. A member of the ruling elite, Lovati was a consummate politician and litteratus, who hunted out old manuscripts of Latin literature (Weiss, Hyde, Billanovich, Collodo, and Delcorno Branca). In an oft-cited verse epistle in Latin, he recounts a performance of the Carolingian cycle on the piazza at Treviso around 1288: Fontibus irriguam spatiabar forte per urbem, que tribus a vici nomen tenet, ocia passu castigans modico, cum celsa in sede theatri karoleas acies et gallica gesta boantem cantorem aspitio; pendet plebecula circum, auribus arrectis; illam suus allicit Orpheus. Ausculto tacitus: Francorum dedita lingue carmina barbarico passim deformat hiatu, tramite nulla suo, nulli innitentia penso ad libitum volvens; vulgo tamen ilia placebant.15 [I was walking at random through a city watered by fountains and named for three alleys, criticizing leisure time at a moderate pace, when high on a stage, roaring about Carolingian battle order and Gallic deeds I spy a singer. The little people hang on all sides, ears alert as their Orpheus entrances them. I listen in silence: songs consigned to the Franks' tongue he ruins with barbaric interruptions everywhere; songs with no plot, dependent on no thread, he spins spontaneously, and yet the crowd liked them.]

This poetic performance was executed on a raised platform in an open, public space by a professional composer-singer. Lovati listens in silence, while presumably the others chatter and respond. The noisy public belongs mostly to the urban lower classes (plebecula or populo minuto) and identifies emotionally and uncritically with the singer. The text belongs to a familiar repertory and celebrates values and events regarded as culturally normative: the warrior ethic and conflict with Islam. (Two comparable Franco-Venetian epics survive in written form: the Prise de Pampelune and the Entree d'Espagne.) There is no mention of musical accompaniment, but the performance must have been sung for the performer is termed

220 John Ahern cantor and his performance carmina. The performance shares several features common to oral poetic performance in other cultures. It is loud (boantem), perhaps because the genre required a special tone of vocalization.16 It is in a special language, Franco-Venetian.17 It appears to have been extemporaneous composition (ad libitum volvens), what Lord and others call composition by addition. It is punctuated with regular pauses.18 Lovati's random amble distinguishes him from the mob. He criticizes (castigare is a quintessentially Horatian verb) its leisure-time activity from which he abstains: ausculto tacitus. He scorns the singer's loud, broken delivery, the narrative organization, and the audience's pleasure. He imitates Horace's Satires and Epistles, whose language and values permit a standpoint from which he may defamiliarize the contemporary world (Weiss 12). He conceals the city's name, Treviso, under an etymological periphrasis (que tribus a vici nomen tenet), calling the singer 'Orpheus' and his platform a 'theatre.' The well-known tales of Charlemagne and Roland become quasi-Roman 'karoleas acies et gallica gesta.' Lovati's scorn for the singer's public stems from the popolo grasso's hostility towards the popolo minuto and his literary education. The judge and the crowd evaluated oral performance with different criteria. He wrongly believes that the singer did not control his material, and he misperceives the oral performance as deforming an existing written text, rather than recreating it. Still his alienation from the world of oral poetry was less than complete. Before studying Latin literature, he must have participated in similar oral performances as an unself-conscious member of the crowd. It is striking that when Lovati also composed a Latin epic in hexameters (now lost), he chose Tristan and Iseult as his subject rather than some Roman tale. Likewise the rebuked fabbro chose to replace the Comedy with a cantare about Tristan or Lancelot.19 Both men knew such cantari through oral performances. The fabbro heard and repeated them; the judge heard but also read and perhaps even copied them. The two men had more in common than the judge liked to think. Petrarch's relation with oral performance was likewise more complex than he acknowledged. He complained to Boccaccio (ca. 1366) that itinerant court poets pestered him with requests for poems to perform (Seniles 5.2; Wilkins) and objected bitterly to popular performance of his early lyrics (Familiares 21.15). These literate performers sought texts to memorize and, like traditional illiterate oral performers, had powerful memories and marked histrionic gifts: '[they are] ... men of no great intelligence, of great memory and persistence... they recite with immense

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expressiveness/ Yet he too memorized long texts, such as Boccaccio's Griselda tale, which he performed for friends (Seniles 17.3).20 He too thought of texts as performances to be learned and recreated. In addition, despite disclaimers, he maintained quasi-commercial relations with such oral performers.21 There is probably a grain of truth in his statement that he might have been 'a hoarse murmurer at court, a man of the mob/22 Indeed, he might have been able to earn a living as a performer (joglar) rather than a maker of texts (trobador).23 He had a beautiful singing voice and played the lyre well, according to Filippo Villani. Furthermore, as he noted in the margin of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, he sang difficult verses till he got them right.24 Like the oral performers he scorned, he did not, perhaps could not, divorce composition and song. Reading and Singing in Dante's Writings For Dante music was as much a part of poetry as grammar and rhetoric. Poetry, he says, is 'nothing other than fictio expressed according to rhetoric and music' [nichil aliud est quam fictio rethorica musicaque poita (De vulgari eloquentia [DVE] 2.4.9)]. Like Lovati he assisted at public poetic performances, such as the 'many good poems' of Gotto da Mantova which 'he heard performed by the poet himself' (DVE 2.13). He notes the tornata's origins in oral performance, though he uses it differently (Conv. 2.11.3), and says that the ballata's requirement of plausores (probably dancers or players of percussion instruments) makes it inferior to the canzone, which is a self-sufficient verbal artifact (DVE 2.3.4-5). We have documentary evidence of musicians linked to him (Pirotta, Richter), a fact which tends to confirm Boccaccio's remark that the adolescent Dante frequented musicians and had them set his texts to music (Vita di Dante, XX). He composed some poems for sung performance, others for reading alone. When he sent a friend two poems, he asked him in the first ('Se Lippo amico mio se' tu che me leggi') to set the second ('Lo meo servente core') to music. The poem is meant first for reading and second for oral performance. Like his contemporaries, he circulated his own manuscript poems and collected those of others. He probably owned a large anthology of vernacular verse (Folena 1970: 10). He warns that the following poem is for reading, not oral performance: Messer Brunette, questa pulzelletta con esso voi vi ven la pasqua a fare: non intendete pasqua di mangiare,

222 John Ahern ch'ella non mangia, anzi vuol esser letta. La sua sentenzia non richiede fretta, ne luogo di romor ne da giullare; anzi si vuol piu volte lusingare prima che 'n intelletto altrui si metta. (Rime [147]) [Master Brunette, this little girl comes to spend Easter with you. Do not think of an Easter of eating, for she does not eat, but wants to be read. Her meaning requires no haste, no noisy place, no oral performer's place. She'd rather be enticed several times before putting herself in someone else's intellect.] Here he addresses his readers under the cautionary fiction of Master Brunetto, an inept, barely literate reader who prefers eating to reading and noisy public performance by giullari (like that described by Lovati) to silent textual decodification. In the De vulgari eloquentia Dante isolates the central issue: the relation of song and writing in the canzone (cantio). Here he analyses the changing dynamics of contemporary poetic reception. Although reading remained a public, social activity well into the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, silent reading with the eyes had arisen and was gaining ground (Saenger). He begins by distinguishing song (cantio) and reading (lectio), then works out the author/performer distinction in Aristotelian terms (actio and passio) which come to him through the philosophic grammarians (Shapiro): Est enim cantio, secundum verum nominis signifactum, ipse canendi actus vel passio; sicut lectio, passio vel actus legendi. Sed divaricemus quod dictum est, utrum videlicet hec sit cantio, prout est actus, vel prout est passio. Et circa hoc considerandum est quod cantio dupliciter accipi potest; uno modo secundum quod fabricatur ab auctore suo et sic est actio - et secundum istum modum Virgilius primo Aeneidorum dicit:'Arma virumque cano' - alio modo, secundum quod fabricata profertur vel ab auctore, vel ab alio quicunque sit, sive cum soni modulatione proferatur, sive non: et sic est passio. (DVE 2.8.3-4) [Now cantio, according to the word's true meaning, is the action or passion of singing, just as lectio is the passion or action of reading. But let us examine what has been said, I mean whether a cantio is so called as being an action or as being

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a passion. In regard to this, we must remember that cantio may be taken in two ways. First, as its author's composition, and so it is an action; and in this way Virgil says in Aeneid I , 'I sing of arms and the man.' Second, when after composition it is performed by the author or anyone else, with music or without, and so it is a passion.] His discussion raises more problems than it solves because he never develops the singing/reading distinction, or examines reading as such, or explains the meaning of the 'action and passion of reading/ He does not focus on silent reading of carefully constructed vernacular texts as an important cultural activity, of which he is a master. He does not articulate a phenomenology of reading because (1) his vocabulary of composition is entirely oral (De Robertis) and (2) the actio/passio distinction applies to only part of the problem. This is not surprising for only in the late twentieth century has reading been studied as a multifarious, historically conditioned activity. As an experimental poet, whose poetic practice outstripped the available critical vocabulary, Dante made far more powerful use of textuality than did his contemporaries, and was acutely conscious of the novelty of his cultural situation. But for all that, the mesmerizing power of sound or voice impeded his efforts to define verbal artifacts conceived mainly as writing for readers, rather than as sounds for listeners. But he comes close when he establishes the pre-eminence of text over music and oral performance, even if he and his contemporaries cannot imagine a divorce: Praeterea disserendum est utrum cantio dicatur fabricatio verborum armonizatorum, vel ipsa modulatio. Ad quod dicimus quod nunquam modulatio dicitur cantio, sed sonus, vel thonus, vel nota, vel melos. Nullus enim tibicen, vel organista, vel cytharedus melodiam suam cantionem vocat, nisi in quantum nupta est alicui cantioni; sed armonizantes verba opera sua cantiones vocant, et etiam talia verba in cartulis absque prolatore iacentia cantiones vocamus. Et ideo cantio nichil aliud esse videtur quam actio completa dicentis verba modulationi armonizata ... (DVE 2.8.5-6) [But it must be discussed whether the construction of words set to music or the melodic modulation itself can be called cantio. To which we say that modulation is never called cantio, but sound, tone, note or melody. No flute-player, organist, or lute-player calls his melody a cantio except when it is wed to a cantio, but the makers of words set to music define their works as cantiones, and even when such words are lying upon sheets of paper, with no performer, we call them cantiones.

224 John Ahern So cantio seems to be nothing other than a completed action of one who says words harmonized to a melody.] Here, without quite seeing the full implications, he defines poetry in purely textual or 'grammatical' terms as 'the words lying on the page with no performer/ In the Commedia Casella, a Florentine singer and musician mentioned in contemporary documents but whose compositions are lost, performs one of Dante's canzoni.25 Like Lovati's singer, he performs outside to a circle of entranced listeners: E io: 'Se nuova legge non ti toglie memoria o 1'uso a 1'amoroso canto che mi solea quetar tutte le mie voglie, di cio ti piaccia consolare alquanto 1'anima mia, che, con la sua persona venendo qui, e affannata tanto!' 'Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona' comincio elli allor si dolcemente, che la dolcezza ancor dentro mi suona. Lo mio maestro e io e quella gente ch'eran con lui parevan si content! come a nessun toccasse altro la mente. Noi eravam tutti fissi e attenti a le sue note ... (Purg. 2.106-19) [And I: 'If no new rule deprives you of memory of or familiarity with the love songs that once soothed my every desire, please give a little comfort to my soul with them, because, coming here with my body, it has gotten so tired!' 'Love who discourses in my mind/ he then began so sweetly the sweetness still rings inside me. My teacher and I and all those people who were with him seemed so happy that nothing else could touch their minds. We were all of us fixed and concentrated on his notes...]

Singing the Book: Orality in the Reception of Dante's Comedy 225 At the century's end, the Anonimo Fiorentino found this scene implausible, for in Dante's day, he thought (quite incorrectly), 'it was not the custom to perform canzoni.'26 No canzone appears less suitable for singing on the piazza. Occurring in the poet's consciousness (anima, mente, intelletto, pensieri, etc.), it recounts the interior search for wisdom in Lady Philosophy. It presumes readers, not listeners, for it requires knowledge of his other poems (14), especially one which it corrects without naming (73-6). Dante composed this canzone shortly after Beatrice's death (1290) when he sought consolation in reading pagan and Christian authors. Ten years later in a lengthy analysis (Conv. 3), he discussed the texts that led to the canzone's composition. The allegorical figure Philosophy represents the object of all reading, for she is 'the lady of these authors, of these sciences and these books' (3.12). (Indeed so intense was this reading, it caused temporary blindness [3.9.15-16].) He goes on to define the ideal philosopher as ideal reader - a category from which he excludes the illiterati et vulgares for their self-indulgent, uncritical relation to texts, and the literati, for their strictly opportunistic use of texts. He pleads for disinterested reading as a legitimate intellectual activity in itself: Onde non si dee dicere vero filosofo alcuno che, per alcuno diletto, con la sapienza in alcuna sua parte sia amico; si come molti sono che si dilettano in intendere canzoni ed istudiare in quelle, e che si dilettano studiare in Rettorica o in Musica, e I'altre scienze fuggono e abbandonano, che sono tutte membra di sapienza. Ne si dee chiamare vero filosofo colui che e amico di sapienza per utilitade, si come sono li legisti, li medici e quasi tutti li religiosi, chi non per sapere studiano ma per acquistare moneta o dignitade; e che desse loro quello che acquistare intendono, non sovrastarebbero a lo studio. (Conv. 3.11.9-10) [No one should be called a true philosopher who is the friend of wisdom, or any part of it, for pleasure; for many people find delight in understanding canzoni and studying them, or find delight in studying Rhetoric and Music, and flee and abandon the other sciences, all of which are part of wisdom. Nor should any one be called a true philosopher who is the friend of wisdom for practical reasons, such as lawyers, doctors, and almost all the members of the religious orders, who do not study to know but to acquire money and rank; if any one gave them what they desire to acquire, they would waste no more time studying.]

Thus a poem conceived in reading, intended for reading and in part about reading, was also sung. There is no convincing argument against Casella

226 John Ahern performing it before 1300 to his own melody (Marti), for if oral performances of canzoni were unknown, and if Casella did not set them to music, Dante would hardly have depicted such a scene. We conclude, then, that Dante envisioned a twofold reception of his canzoni: critical detached decoding of the words on the page; and rapt listening to the same words as an acoustic or musical event. Conclusion The public accorded the Comedy this same twofold response. Around 1314 the didactic poet Francesco da Barberino heard it, then read it (Petrocchi 1957). Two or three years later, an anonymous Bolognese notary copied lines from the Inferno into a register, as did other notaries over the next decade (Livi 26-9,44-9). They seem to have written these short quotations from memory (De Benedetti). Moreover, modern textual scholarship shows that the poem's most dramatic passages, being the most frequently memorized, were the least marred by manuscript error (Folena 1965-6: 47). Copyists looking at texts also 'heard' them in their memories. Memorization helped fix the text. But notaries and blacksmiths memorized differently. Notaries could consult a text and remember performances; blacksmiths could only remember and recreate performances. For literates, poetic performance is the recitation of a fixed, readily consumable text. Illiterates consider no single oral performance as normative. Thus literates often view oral performance as the butchering of a fixed text. This is the criticism that Sacchetti's 'Dante,' Giovanni del Virgilio, and Petrarch all level against performance of the Comedy by dyers and drapers, etc. But the very spontaneity with which literates and illiterates alike memorized and performed the Comedy suggests that Dante composed this poem, like his canzoni, for reading, singing, and memorizing.27 The Comedy penetrated all levels of Trecento society. Echoes of it in cantari popolari appear not as literary allusions but as half-conscious reminiscences (Branca 1936: 22; Meli 82-7). Blacksmiths, fullers, innkeepers, and women probably learned it through the performances of literate singers such as the comicomus nebulo whom Giovanni del Virgilio heard in Bologna around 1319. Two decades after Dante's death, a Florentine grain merchant, Domenico Lenzi, repeated snatches of the poem in apparently spontaneous recollection in his daybook, Lo specchio umano (Pinto). Despite his modest self-definition as a "grosso idiota/ he

Singing the Book: Orality in the Reception of Dante's Comedy 227 should be classed with the volgari e non litterati (Pinto: 159).28 He may well have owned a copy of the poem which he read aloud to himself and others. In addition, given his vantage point as a merchant on a public square, he probably also heard oral performances of the Comedy. And yet, even though he himself was a poet and a maker of books, and even though he quoted Dante very aptly, it is difficult to imagine him reading the poem with requisite readerly expertise. But not even a mob-loathing Hteratus could divorce reading and oral performance. Moggio de' Moggi tells how Dante's son, Pietro Alighieri (author of a Latin commentary on the Comedy), performed a vernacular verse summary of the Comedy on the piazza at Verona - proof that one person could be both exegete and giullare (Vattasso 100-2). Another such literatus, the lawyer Alberigo da Rosciate (ca. 1350), discussing the poem's title in his preface to his Latin translation of Jacopo della Lana's Commentary, links the poem to both ancient comedy and contemporary Lombard 'comedians' who 'adhuc sunt in usu nostro: apparent enim maxime in partibus Lombardiae aliqui cantatores qui magnorum dominorum in ritimis cantant gesta, unus proponendo, alius respondendo' [still practise among us. Indeed especially around Lombardy there appear some singers who sing the deeds of great lords in poems; one of them sets forth and the other answers].29 When the adolescent Petrarch arrived in Bologna in 1320, he must have seen small unbound fascicles (quadernetti) of the Comedy and have heard that Giovanni del Virgilio, a professor of rhetoric, had criticized Dante for addressing illiterates. Indeed, Petrarch may have heard the poem performed by the same comicomus nebulo mentioned by del Virgilio. Thirty years later, he told Boccaccio that, though readily available, he owned no copy of the Comedy (Familiares 21.5), yet reminiscences of it so saturate his vernacular poetry, we must conclude he knew much of it by heart (Santagata, Trovato, Contini 88-90). He probably learned the poem by reading it over and over (his disclaimers notwithstanding), but he most certainly also learned it, wittingly or unwittingly, through hearing it performed, as he himself tells us, in shops, marketplaces, theatres, and crossroads. One who composed poems for singing, who sang as he composed, and who prided himself on his performance of memorized texts would naturally have memorized and sung part of the Comedy. He shared with the illiterate and craft-literate the assumption that vernacular texts were intended for public performance and memorization and not just private reading.30 Today we tend to think of the aural/oral reception of poetry as secondary or irrelevant when compared to the deep engagement with the

228 John Ahern text possible only in repeated, highly concentrated meditation of the words on the page. Statements of contempt for idiotae and indocti in Latin and vernacular literature in Trecento Italy reinforce modern sentiment that the Comedy's oral reception is at best an unimportant fluke of literary history. Some will think that an exclusively oral reception of the poem runs counter to Dante's self-evident intentions as a poet, even though comedia means 'rustic song/31 and its subdivisions' titles, canto and cantica, also link it with song. It is unnecessary to insist on the Comedy's 'bookishness.' Dante's narrator speaks as a scribe and maker of texts (Purg. 31.91) to solitary readers mulling over a text (Par. 10.22-7).32 To discourage additions and insure textual integrity, Dante invented terza rima and divided the poem into three equal parts (Tatlock). He invested binding, the last step in the bookmaking process, with a significance apparent only to those who oversaw the making of their own copies (Ahern 1982; 1984). He included acrostics, such as VOM (Purg. 12.25-72) and LUE (Par. 19.115^1), which no listener could register, and drew on the physical acts of writing and bookmaking for similes and metaphors incomprehensible to illiterates. He weighted his narrative with allusions to classical and Christian sources unavailable to the indocti, and which even the literate listener could not work out, being unable to interrupt the performance and consult the works in question, as he is encouraged to do (Inf. 9.102; Purg. 30.70-111). Moreover, there is no record of a complete, consecutive performance of the poem. Even if there were, it is difficult to imagine its holding the public's attention equally in all cantos. Thus, it could be argued that Dante intended twofold reception solely for skilled readers, and never intended oral performances by and for illiterates. In practice, however, no poem could elicit twofold response from the literate and not also elicit aural/oral response from the others. Oral performance made the poem available to all. Moreover, the poem's division into easily performable units of about 140 lines in an oft-sung vernacular metre strongly encouraged oral performance. By itself oral performance was not so much an inappropriate mode of reception as an incomplete one. A person might first read the poem, then hear it performed or recite it for himself, or hear it first, as Francesco da Barberino seems to have done, and read it later. The solitary act of reading was not to be divorced from the poem's acoustic reality, nor was that acoustic reality to be divorced from the slow, ratiocinative examination of the 'words as they lie on the page.' In addition, oral performance afforded enormous publicity and the chance of winning readers from the marginally literate who rarely read

Singing the Book: Orality in the Reception of Dante's Comedy 229 vernacular texts. We know this occurred, for in Florence in 1373 many 'non grammatici' (i.e., dyers, drapers, grain merchants, shopkeepers, blacksmiths, ass drivers, etc.) requested a public reading and commentary of the Comedy331 - proof there existed a large public for the Comedy aware of its insufficient literary competence. In the half century after the poem's completion in 1321, it probably could not have won a following among 'non grammatici' without frequent oral performance. Boccaccio was given the task of publically explicating this text to these earnest admirers of admittedly insufficient literary competence. Not surprisingly many literati criticized him for 'opening up' the poem to the 'unworthy mob/ and Boccaccio himself, after commenting on twenty cantos, came around to their point of view.34 Profound ambivalence regarding the relation of oral and written culture marked the entire age. Thus Giovanni del Virgilio, after criticizing Dante for making a serious poem accessible to gens idiota and performable by a comicomus nebulo, praised him in an epitaph as Vulgo gratissimus auctor' [an author most pleasing to the masses or mob (del Virgilio 78)]. Notes 1 An earlier version of this essay appeared in Annals of Scholarship 2.4 (1982): 17-40, from which it is reprinted with permission. 2 Analysing contemporary writing in the early Trecento, Dante compares luteplayers (citharistae) and smiths (fabbri): Thus a poor blacksmith blames the iron given him, and a poor lute-player blames his lute, with the intention of blaming a poor knife or poor music on the iron or lute, shifting it from themselves' (Convivio 1.11.11). (Unless otherwise noted, translations are by the author.) Both craftsmen use tools in an 'art' which requires them to strike or 'percuss.' The comparison of poets to craftsmen and 'makers' dates to Aristotle (Poetics 1447a). Dante later calls the troubadour poet Arnaut Daniel il migliorfabbro (Purg. 26.117), 'the better maker or smith.' If Sacchetti had in mind the lute-player/smith comparison or the poet/smith comparison, his anecdote would take on a new edge. ThefabbroOis a bad poetic performer and so not comparable to the poet. Thus the anecdote, while attesting to widespread singing of the Comedy, also registers deep unease about the level of performance. 3 Boccaccio's Dioneo, for example, thrice sings cantari with ladies of the brigata (Decameron, Third Day, conclusion, 8; Sixth Day, introduction, 3; Seventh Day, conclusion, 6). Admittedly, these three cantari (Boccaccio's own Teseida

230 John Ahern and Filostrato, and the Donna del vergiu) were written compositions, not traditional oral poems. It is noteworthy that Boccaccio saw no incongruity in middle-class literates singing such texts. Probably we should imagine Sacchetti's blacksmith as singing the Comedy in a similar fashion. 4 Although Rossi has argued strongly that Boccaccio forged this entire correspondence ca. 1351-5, Padoan, Billanovich, and others continue to accept its authenticity. 5 Dante's minor works are cited in the respective editions in the two volumes of the Opere Minori. Here I follow Enzo Cecchini's text (Opere Minori II: 654-6). For detailed commentary on these verses, see Cecchini and also Velli. 6 In the Letter to Cangrande (whose authenticity continues to be challenged [Kelly]) Dante says he chose to write the Comedy in the 'locutio vulgaris in qua et mulierculae communicant' [in the common language in which even little women communicate (10.225)]. 7 Scholarship on the orality of medieval epic is too vast to cite here, but see Magoun, Benson, Duggan, and Vance, as well as the essays in the collections Oral Tradition, Literary Tradition; Oral Literture and the Formula; and Oral Literature: Seven Essays. For the complex interrelation of oral performance and reading, see among many others, Chaytor, Crosby, Walker, Nelson, and Rieger. 8 Besides Ugolini's informative survey of oral poets in medieval Italy, see Casagrande and Vecchio, as well as Bronzini on the relation of the cantari to literary poets such as Pulci, Boiardo, and Ariosto. 9 Francis concludes his Lettera a tutti ifedeli cristiani thus: 'Coloro i quali non sanno leggere se la facciano leggere e rileggere spesso e le tengano a mente sempre adoperandosi santamente a metterle in pratica ...' [Let those who do not know how to read have it read and re-read to them often and keep them in mind, working always to put them into practice (Fioretti 179)]. Marco Polo opens his book in this way: 'Signori re, duchi, conti, cavalieri, prinzipi e baroni, e tuta zente a cui diletta da saver le diverse zenerazion de zente a dei regnami del mondo, tole questo libro e fatelo lezer ... a siando in carzere a Zenova, alora si fe scrivere questo libro a Ristazo da Pisa' [Lord kings, dukes, counts, knights, princes and barons, and all people who delight to know the diverse generations of peoples and kingdoms of the world, take this book and have it read ... and being in prison he had Rustichiello from Pisa write this book (II Milione, prologo)]. 10 For medieval literacy in general, see Parks and Bauml; for literacy in Italy, see Hyde, Lopez, Graff, and Grendler (71-110). 11 Villani's demographical statistics, particularly regarding the percentage of

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the population in school (Cronica 9.894), have provoked much discussion (Fiumi, Frugoni, Davis, Graff [77-9], and Grendler [71-5]). 12 In ancient Athens long before aristocrats achieved literacy, this same class of craftsmen introduced and used alphabetic writing (Havelock 1982: 372). 13 '... sono molti e molte in questa lingua, volgari e non letterati' [There are many men and women in this tongue, who are vulgar and unlettered (Convivio 1.9.5)]. Although Dante here refers to the literacy of nobles, the phrase volgari e non letterati extends far beyond the patrician class. 14 Curschmann and Ong, among many others, discuss the interpenetration of the two cultures. 15 Guido Billanovich's edition (1989) of this epistle supersedes Foligno's (1906). 16 The Swazi izibongo calls out 'at the top of his voice in as rapid a manner as possible,' so that even for 'a Swazi it is impossible to understand it the first time he hears it' (P.A.W. Cook cited in Finnegan 123). Finnegan gives other examples of exaggeratedly dramatic delivery: the 'tearful sobbing delivery expected of Akan singers of dirges' and the 'husky and jerky voice in which Tatar heroic poems were delivered' (121). 17 In many cultures, oral performers use languages other than those of the audience. Certain West African singers employ Mandingo 'even when singing to speakers of other languages' (Finnegan 109-10). Finnegan also mentions Maori and Ruanda specialists who employed 'a special poetic language removed from that of the common people' (111). 18 These pauses facilitate breathing and correspond to the line endings and caesuras of written verse. Lord says that South Slavic performers 'do not know what words and lines are' (28), and in their performances 'the end of the lines is very clearly marked, and run-on lines are few' (38). Most editors of oral performances mark typographically as a line-ending the semantic unit indicated by a pause in the performance (Berndt 62). For mid-line pauses and enjambment in Homeric verse, see Kirk (146-82). 19 It is possible that the cantare which thefabbro sang and the published text of Li Chantari di Lancellotto derive from the same oral tradition. 20 Petrarch might have first heard the tale from the monk Barlaam (Bettridge and Utley 198). 21 Chaytor (115-37) documents the close relations of writers and minstrels during this period. 22 Petrarch describes himself:'... ch'or saria forse un roco/ mormorador di corti, un huom del vulgo' [who perhaps now would be a hoarse mumbler in the courts, a man of the mob (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta 360)]. He describes oral performers of the Comedy in similar language:'... aut cui tandem invideat qui Virgilio non invidet, nisi forte sibi fullonum et cauponum et lanistarum

232 John Ahern ceterorumve ... plausum et raucum murmur invideam ...' [whom should I envy? I who do not envy even Virgil? Unless I should envy the applause and hoarse mumbling ... of fullers, shopkeepers, thugs and their ilk ... (Familiares 21.15; emphasis added)]. 23 For joglars and trobadors see Faral 73-9. 24 'I must make these two verses over again singing them [cantando], and I must transpose them - 3 o'clock in the morning' (quoted in Mommsen 88). 25 Vaticano 3214 contains this note after the text of a madrigal: 'Lemme da Pistoia et Casella diede il sono' [Lemme da Pistoia and Casella provided the music (Marti 13)]. 26 Surprisingly both Momigliano, in his Commentary, and Plona share this opinion. 27 In the nineteenth century, Francesco De Sanctis, like any Trecento notary, cited and wrote out lines from the Comedy without consulting the text (Folena 1965-6:47). 28 Most of the examples cited by Branca (1965) seem spontaneous, partial recollections of single lines and half-lines. Ugolino's cry, 'ahi dura terra, perche non t'apristi' (Inf. 33.66), appears in the middle of Lenzi's account of the banishment of the poor from Siena. He does not mention Dante perhaps because he assumed that his reader would recognize the line as an apt allusion to another episode of urban strife and desperate hunger. 29 Perhaps da Rosciate uses Lombardy in the broad sense, common in his day, to denote northern Italy including the Veneto. It is also possible that these performances were related to verbal duels, which were common both in oral and written texts in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italy (Ahern 1990). Oral poems were sometimes called 'ritmi.' I follow Fiammazzo's text in his edition (110) of Jacopo della Lana, with the emendations proprosed by Kelly (32, n.36). 30 Petrarch, however, brought a different quality of attention to the texts he read in solitude, as is implicit when he contrasts the 'inertia agmina' [sluggish troops] of his actual readers with the ideal future reader (Africa 9.451-77 [278-9]). 31 '... comoedia dicitur a "comos," villa, et "oda," quod est cantus, unde comedia quasi villanus cantus' [comedy takes its name from comos, a village, and oda, which is song; thus comedy is a rustic song (Epistolae XIII, 37; in Opere Minori 1:614)]. Dante elsewhere assumes the musical performance of written poetry (DVE 2.4.5-6). Thus it would not be surprising if the title he chose for his poem suggested a kind of sung performance. 32 Auerbach (1954), Spitzer, and Beall all examine the inscription of the reader into the Comedy. In addition Auerbach (1965: 274-303) analyses Dante's relation to his public in the context of late classical and medieval literature.

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33 The petition may be read in Del Lungo 163. Villani says that in the 1330s an eighth of Florentines who attended elementary school went on to one of the city's four grammar or Latin schools. 'Non grammatici' might well refer to this large group with rudimentary vernacular literacy (Davis 415). 34 In the same sonnet, 'Se Dante piange, dove ch'el si sia/ Boccaccio calls his public 'questi ingrati meccanici' [these thankless manual labourers (Opere 1009)]. Bibliography Ahern, John. 'Binding the Book: Hermeneutics and Manuscript Production in Paradiso 33.' PMLA (1982): 800-9. - 'Dante's Last Word.' Dante Studies 102 (1984): 1-14. - 'The Reader on the Piazza: Verbal Duels in Dante's Vita Nuova.' Texas Studies in Language and Literature 32.1 (1990): 18-39. Alberigo da Rosciate. Introduction to his Latin translation of Jacopo della Lana's Commentary. In II commentario dantesco di Graziolo de' Bambaglioli. Ed. A. Fiammazzo. Savona, 1915. Alighieri, Dante. La Commedia secondo I'antica vulgata. Ed. Giorgio Petrocchi. Milano: Mondadori Editore, 1966-7. - Opere Minori. Vol. 1,2. Ed. Cesare Vasoli and Domenico De Robertis. MilanoNapoli: Ricciardi, 1988. - Opere Minori. Vol. II. Ed. Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo et al. Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi, 1979. - Purgatorio. Vol. 2 of La Divina Commedia con i commenti di Tommaso CasiniSilvio Adrasto Barbi e di Attilio Momigliano. Ed. Francesco Mazzoni. Firenze: Sansoni, 1972. - Rime. Ed. Gianfranco Contini. Torino: Einaudi, 1970. Auerbach, Erich.'Dante's Addresses to the Reader.' Romance Philology 7 (1954): 268-75. - Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages. Trans. W. Trask. New York: Pantheon Books, 1965. Bauml, Franz H. 'Varieties and Consequences of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy.' Speculum 55 (1980): 237-65. Beall, Chandler B. 'Dante and His Reader.' Forum Italicum 13 (1979): 299-343. Benson, L.D. The Literary Character of Anglo-Saxon Formulaic Poetry.' PMLA 81 (1966): 334-41. Berndt, R.M. Djanggawul: An Aboriginal Religious Cult of'North-Eastern Arnhem Land. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952. Bettridge, William Edwin, and Francis Lee Utley. 'New Light on the Origin of

234 John Ahern the Griselda Story/ Texas Studies in Literature and Language 13 (1971): 153-208. Billanovich, Guido. 'II preumanesimo a Padova.' In II Trecento. Vol. 2 of Storia della cultura veneta. Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1976.19-110. - 'Lovato Lovati: 1'epistola a Bellino, gli echi da Catullo.' Italia medioevale e umanistica 32 (1989): 101-53. Boccaccio, Giovanni. Opere. Ed. Bruno Maier. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1967. - Trattatello in laude di Dante. In Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio. Vol. 3. Ed. Pier Giorgio Ricci. Milano: A. Mondadori, 1974. Branca, Vittore. II cantare trecentesco e il Boccaccio del 'Filostrato' e del 'Teseida.' Firenze: Sansoni, 1936. - 'Un biadaiuolo lettore di Dante nei primi decenni del '300.' Rivista di cultura classica e medievale 7 (1965): 1-3. Bronzini, Giovanni. Tradizione di stile aedico dai cantari al 'Furioso.' Firenze: Olschki, 1976. Bruni, Leonardo. Ad Petrum Paulum histrum dialogus. In Prosatori Latini del Quattrocento. Ed. Eugenic Garin. Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi, 1952. Casagrande, Carla, and Silvana Vecchio. 'L'interdizione del giullare nel vocabolario clericale del XII secolo/ In II contributo dei giullari alia drammaturgia italiana delle origini. Roma: Bulzoni, 1978. 207-58. Chaytor, Hfenry] J[ohn]. From Script to Print. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1945. Cipolla, Carlo. Literacy and Development in the West. Baltimore: Penguin, 1969. Collodo, Silvana. 'Un intellettuale del basso medioevo italiano: il giudice umanista, Lovato di Rolando.' Italia medioevale e umanistica 28 (1985): 209-19. Contini, Gianfranco. 'Un'interpretazione di Dante.' In Un'idea di Dante: saggi danteschi. Torino: Einaudi, 1976. 69-111. Crosby, Ruth. 'Oral Delivery in the Middle Ages/ Speculum 11 (1936): 88-110. Curschmann, Michael. 'The Concept of the Oral Formula as an Impediment to Our Understanding of Medieval Oral Poetry/ Medievalia et Humanistica 8 (1977): 63-76. Davis, Charles T. 'Education in Dante's Florence.' Speculum 40 (1965): 415-35. Rpt. in his Dante's Italy and Other Essays. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984. De Bartholomaeis, Vincenzo. Primordi della lirica d'arte in Italia. Torino: SEI, 1943. De Benedetti, Santorre. 'Osservazioni sulle poesie dei Memoriali Bolognesi/ Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 124 (1948): 1-41. Delcorno Branca, Daniela. 'Tristano, Lovato e Boccaccio/ Lettere italiane 42 (1990): 51-65.

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Del Lungo, Isidore. Dett'esilio di Dante. Firenze: Le Monnier, 1881. De Robertis, Domenico. 'Nascita della coscienza letteraria italiana.' Approdo letterario 11 (1965): 3-32. Rpt. in his U libra della 'Vita Nuova.' 2nd. ed. Firenze: Sansoni, 1970.170-238. Di Ricco, Alessandra. L'inutile e meraviglioso mestiere: poeti improvvisatori difine Settecento. Milano: F. Angeli, 1991. Duggan, Joseph J. The Song of Roland: Formulaic Style and Poetic Craft. BerkeleyLos Angeles: University of California Press, 1973. Evarts, Peter G. "The Technique of the Medieval Minstrel as Revealed in the Sicilian Cantastorie.' Studies in Medieval Culture 6-7 (1976): 117-27. Faral, Edmond. Les jongleurs en France au Moyen-Age. Paris: H. Champion, 1910. Finnegan, Ruth. Oral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance and Social Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Fiumi, Enrico. 'Economia e vita privata dei fiorentini nelle rivelazioni statistiche di Giovanni Villani.' Archivio Storico Italiano 111 (1953): 207-41. Folena, Gianfranco. 'La tradizione delle opere di Dante Alighieri.' In Atti del congresso internazionale di studi danteschi. Vol. I. Firenze: Sansoni, 1965-6. 1-78. - 'Cultura poetica dei primi fiorentini.' Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 142 (1970): 1-42. Foligno, Cesare. 'Epistole inedite di Lovato dei Lovati e d'altri a lui.' Studi medievali 2 (1906): 37-58. Francesco D'Assisi. I Fioretti di San Francesco. Ed. Roberto Di Marco. Bologna, 1970. Frasso, Giuseppe. 'Un poeta improvvisatore nella "familia" del cardinale Francesco da Gonzaga: Francesco Cieco da Firenze.' Italia medioevale e umanistica 20 (1977): 395-400. Frugoni, Arsenio. 'G. Villani, Cronica, XI, 94.' Bullettino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo e Archivio Muratoriano 77 (1965): 229-55. Gentili, Bruno. 'Cultura dell'improvviso: poesia orale colta nel Settecento italiano e poesia greca dell'eta arcaica e classica.' Strumenti critici 13 (1979): 226-64. Giovanni del Virgilio. La corrispondenza poetica di Dante Alighieri e Giovanni del Virgilio. Ed. E. Bolisani and M. Valgimigli. Firenze: Olschki, 1963. Graff, Harvey J. The Legacies of Literacy: Continuation and Contradiction in Western Culture and Society. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. Grendler, Paul F. Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300-1600. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. Havelock, Eric. Preface to Plato. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963.

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'The Pre-literacy of the Greeks.' New Literary History 8 (1977): 369-91. Rpt. in his The Literate Revolution in Greece and Its Cultural Consequences. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.185-207. Hyde, John K. 'Some Uses of Literacy in Venice and Florence in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries.' Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 5th ser., 29 (1979): 109-26. Jauss, Hans Robert. 'The Alterity and Modernity of Medieval Literature.' New Literary History 10 (1979): 367-83. Kelly, Henry Ansgar. Tragedy and Comedy from Dante to Pseudo-Dante. BerkeleyLos Angeles-London: University of California Press, 1989. Kezich, Giovanni. 'Extemporaneous Oral Poetry in Central Italy.' Folklore 93 (1982): 193-205. Kirk, Geoffrey S. Homer and the Oral Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Li Chantari di Lancellotto. Ed. E. Griffiths. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924. Livi, Giovanni. Dante, suoi primi cultori, sua gente in Bologna. Bologna: Cappelli, 1918. Lopez, Roberto S. 'The Culture of the Medieval Merchant.'Medieval and Renaissance Studies: Proceedings of the Southeastern Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 8 (1979): 52-73. Lord, Albert. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964. Magoun, Francis P. The Oral Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry.' Speculum 28 (1953): 446-67. Marti, Mario. La tematica del canto di Casella. Lectura Dantis Scaligera. Firenze: Le Monnier, 1963. Meli, Elio. 'Riecheggiamenti danteschi in un cantare toscano del secolo XIV.' Filologia Romanza 5 (1958): 82-7. Miglio, Luisa. 'Domenico Lenzi: tra mercatura e poesia.' Modern Language Notes 93 (1978): 109-30. Mommsen, Theodor E. Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1959. Nelson, William. 'From "Listen, Lordings," to "Dear Reader."' University of Toronto Quarterly 46 (1976-7): 110-24. Ong, Walter. Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1977. - Orality and Literacy. London and New York: Methuen, 1982. Oral Literature and the Formula. Ed. B.A. Stolz and R.S. Shannon. Ann Arbor Center for Coordination of Ancient and Modern Studies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1976.

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Oral Literature: Seven Essays. Ed. Joseph J. Duggan. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1975. Oral Tradition, Literary Tradition: A Symposium. Odense, Denmark: Odense University Press, 1977. Papante, Giovanni. Dante secondo la tradizione e i novellatori. Livorno, 1873. Parks, Malcolm B. The Literacy of the Laity.' In The Medieval World. Vol. 2 of Literature and Western Civilization. Ed. D. Daiches and A. Thorlby. London: Aldus Books, 1973. 555-76. Parry, Milman. L'Epithete traditionelle dans Homere: essai sur un probleme du style homerique. Paris: Editions 'Les Belles Lettres/ 1928. - The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Ed. Adam Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. Petrarca, Francesco. L'Africa. Ed. Nicola Festa. Firenze: Sansoni, 1926. - Canzoniere. Ed. Gianfranco Contini. Torino: Einaudi, 1964. - Le Familiari. Ed. Umberto Bosco. Firenze: Sansoni, 1942. - Lettere Senili. Trans. Giuseppe Fracassetti. 2 vols. Firenze: Le Monnier, 1892. - Opera Omnia. Vol. 2. Basilea, 1554. Petrocchi, Giorgio. 'II testo della Commedia.' In his L'Ultima dea. Roma: Bonacci, 1977. 81-96. - 'Intorno alia pubblicazione dell'Tnferno e del Purgatorio.' Convivium 25 (1957): 652-69. Pinto, Giuliano. II libra del biadaiolo: carestie e annona a Firenze a meta del '200 al 1348. Firenze: Olschki, 1978. Pirotta, Nino. 'Due sonetti musicali del secolo XIV.' Miscellanea en homenaje a Monsenor Higino Angles. Vol. 2. Barcellona, 1958-61. 650-62. Fiona, Stefania. Torse Casella non canto.' Nuova Antologia 88 (1953): 93-6. Poeti del Duecento. Vol. I. Ed. Gianfranco Contini. Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi, 1960. Polo, Marco. IlMilione. Ed. Dante Olivieri. Bari: Laterza, 1911. Predelli, Maria. 'Sulla letteratura popolare nella Toscana del Trecento.' Quaderni medievali 7 (1979): 57-74. Richter, Lukas. 'Dante e la musica del suo tempo.' In La musica nel tempo di Dante. Ed. Luigi Pestalozza. Milano: Unicopli, 1988. 55-112. Rieger, Dietmar, 'Audition et lecture dans le domaine de la poesie troubadouresque.' Revue des langues romanes 87 (1983): 69-85. Rime dei Memoriali bolognesi 1279-1300. Ed. Sandro Orlando. Torino: Einaudi, 1981. Roncaglia, Aurelio. 'Sul "Divorzio fra musica e poesia" nel Duecento italiano.' In L'Ars Nova italiana del Trecento. Ed. Agosto Ziino. Certaldo: Edizioni di studi sull'Ars Nova italiana del Trecento, 1978. 365-97.

238 John Ahern Rossi, Aldo. 'Boccaccio, autore della corrisondenza Dante-Giovanni del Virgilio.' Miscellanea storica della Valdelsa 69 (1963): 130-72. Sacchetti, Franco. Trecentonovelle. Ed. Emilio Faccioli. Torino: Einaudi, 1976. Saenger, Paul. 'Silent Reading: Its Impact on Late Medieval Script and Society.' Viator 13 (1982): 367-407. Santagata, Marco. 'Presenze di Dante comico nel Canzoniere del Petrarca.' Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 146 (1969): 163-211. Shapiro, Marianne. 'De Vulgari Eloquentia': Dante's Book of Exile. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Spitzer, Leo. 'The Addresses to the Reader in the Commedia.' In Romanische Literaturstudien: 1936-1956. Tubingen, 1959. 574-95. Stock, Brian. The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. - Listening to the Text. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Street, Brian V. Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge Studies in Oral Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Tatlock, John S.P. 'Dante's Terza Rima.' PMLA 51 (1936): 895-903. Trovato, Paolo. Dante in Petrarca: per un inventario dei dantismi nel 'Rerum vulgarium fragmenta.' Firenze: Olschki, 1979. Ugolini, Francesco A. J cantari d'argomento dassico con un appendice di testi inediti. Firenze: Olschki, 1933. Vance, Eugene. 'Roland and the Poetics of Memory.' In Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structural Criticism. Ed. Josue V. Harari. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979. 374-403. Vattasso, Marco. Del Petrarca e di alcuni suoi amid. Roma: Tipografia Vaticana, 1904. Velli, Giuseppe. 'Sul linguaggio letterario di Giovanni del Virgilio.' Italia medioevale e umanistica 24 (1981): 137-58. Vitagliano, Adele. Storia della poesia estemporanea nella letteratura italiana dalle origini ai nostri giorni. Roma: Loescher, 1905. Walker, Roger M. 'Oral Delivery or Private Reading? A Contribution to the Debate on the Dissemination of Medieval Literature.' Forum for Modern Language Studies 7 (1971): 36-42. Weiss, Roberto. 'Lovato dei Lovati (1241-1309).' Italian Studies 6 (1951): 3-28. Wilkins, E.H. 'On the Circulation of Petrarch's Italian Lyrics during his Life Time.' Modern Philology 46 (1948): 1-6. Zumthor, Paul. Introduction a la poesie orale. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1983. English translation: Oral Poetry: An Introduction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990.

Singing the Book: Orality in the Reception of Dante's Comedy 239 - 'Literatus/Illiteratus: remarques sur le contexte vocal de I'ecriture medievale/ Romania 106 (1985): 1-18. - La Lettre et la voix: de la 'Litterature' medievale. Paris: Seuil, 1987.

Interpreting the Commentary Tradition to the Comedy DEBORAH PARKER

Manuscripts of the Inferno began circulating around the second half of 1314; copies of Purgatorio about a year later. The roughly six hundred extant manuscripts of the poem testify to its popularity. Nevertheless the Comedy presented a number of interpretive challenges to its readers. The poem's wealth of doctrine and its many references to historical, theological, and ancient matters made it somewhat inaccessible, even to its first readers. It was a poem that required exposition and clarification, creating, in short, "a demand for commentary' (Minnis 439). Hence from its first diffusion the Comedy generated a reaction that was immediate, voluminous, and unparalleled. This body of commentary provides us with a rich variety of responses to the Comedy through history. I. An Overview of Medieval and Renaissance Dante Commentary Such a response to a vernacular text was unprecedented. During the thirteenth century commentaries were generally appended to patristic and ancient works. The application of a critical procedure which had been employed in the interpretation of Scripture and classical texts represents a remarkable conceptual shift. In extending to the Comedy the theoretical techniques that had been used to explicate sacred and ancient texts, Dante's first commentators conferred on a contemporary work a status previously accorded only the established canon of auctores. By adding a commentary, the Trecento glossators sought to elevate Dante and his poem to authoritative status. Before turning to a consideration of Dante's earliest commentators, it is appropriate to recall the salient features of medieval commentary. In the prologue to his commentary to Peter Lombard's Libri sententiarum (written

Interpreting the Commentary Tradition to the Comedy 241 1250-2), St Bonaventure distinguishes between the different functions of the scribe, compiler, commentator, and author. The commentator, explains St Bonaventure, is someone 'who writes both the materials of other men, and his own annexed for the purpose of clarifying them' (quoted in Minnis and Scott 229). From the twelfth century on, commentaries to the Bible, to classical works, and to patristic authors were accompanied by a prologue (accessus ad auctores). Scholastic prologues typically addressed six questions, which clarified the author's intention (intentio auctoris), the work's title (titulus), its stylistic and didactic mode of procedure (modus agendi or modus tractandi), its subject matter (materia), the branch of learning to which it belonged (cui parti philosophiae supponitur), its arrangement (ordo), and its moral worth (utilitas).1 Through this apparatus, medieval commentators strove to elucidate the structure and content of a work. All of Dante's Trecento commentators employ this introductory apparatus. The accessus was followed by a detailed explication of the text itself. This method, derived from late classical commentaries such as that of Servius to Virgil, continued up to the Renaissance. Commentators typically sought to clarify the literal meaning of a text, annotate references to pagan myth and Roman history, and explain various rhetorical figures. Such explanations would often turn into long digressions, as commentators were prone to turn any suitable word or allusion into an extended and learned exposition.2 By 1400 roughly twelve commentaries to the Comedy had appeared. To date there is little consensus concerning their chronology or the dependencies among them. Moreover, the identity of some of their authors has yet to be satisfactorily established. Among the more important glosses are Jacopo Alighieri's Chiose to the Inferno (1322), written in Italian; Graziolo Bambaglioli's Latin gloss to the Inferno (1324); the Anonimo Lombardo's incomplete Latin commentary (1322-5); Guido da Pisa's Latin commentary to the Inferno (dated as early as 1321-2 by some, as late as 1333 by others); Jacopo della Lana's commentary in Italian, the first to cover all three canticles (1324-8); the Ottimo commento, also written in Italian, commonly believed to have been composed by the Florentine notary Andrea Lancia (first version, 1329); Pietro Alighieri's Latin commentary (first version, 1340); Boccaccio's incomplete Italian exposition (1373) of the first sixteen cantos of the Inferno; Benvenuto da Imola's Latin commentary (1373-80); the grammarian Francesco da Buti's Italian gloss (1385-95); Filippo Villani's exposition of Inferno 1 in Latin (ca. 1400); and the Anonimo Florentine's Italian commentary (ca. 1400).3

242 Deborah Parker Their approaches range from Jacopo Alighieri's predominantly allegorical reading, to Graziolo's focus on the poem's literal sense, to Jacopo della Lana's and Andrea Lancia's perception of the Comedy as a summa of doctrine, to Guido da Pisa's mixture of the traditions of classical literature and dream vision, to Pietro Alighieri's efforts to situate the poem firmly in the tradition of ancient texts like the Aeneid, to Boccaccio's eclectic blend of moralism and literal exposition, to Benvenuto's attention to the poem's historical and literary underpinnings, to Buti's interest in the poem's rhetorical dimension, to Filippo Villani's detailed allegorical investigation, to the Anonimo Florentine's amalgamation of earlier readings. As this short list suggests, the Trecento commentators differed greatly in their readings of the poem. It is important to keep these differences in mind in any account of the Trecento commentators' contribution to the poem's interpretive history. Medieval commentary should not be viewed as one homogenous block. Critics often tend to view these early expositions solely in terms of their pursuit of allegory. But while the majority of the earliest commentators shared a deep interest in producing a moral dimension to the poem, their commitments to polysemy vary. Moreover, while the early commentators refer to the four levels of exegetical interpretation in their prologues, in practice, they tend to confine themselves to pointing out the poem's moral significance. The commentators differ widely in the extent to which each seeks to uncover other levels of allegorical meaning.4 These different views of the poem seem to reflect the commentators' different professions and cultural orientations. The first Dante commentaries were composed by men of widely varying backgrounds working largely in northern Italy. Graziolo Bambaglioli was chancellor of Bologna; Andrea Lancia was a Florentine notary and a translator of classical texts; Pietro Alighieri was a jurist and, while Florentine by birth, composed most of his commentary in Verona; Guido da Pisa was a Carmelite friar. Jacopo della Lana's identity has yet to be successfully determined. Little is known of Lana aside from the fact that he was from Bologna and that the commentary was likely completed in Venice. Unfortunately biographical information on these early figures is scarce, which complicates considerably any attempt to contextualize their work. Roughly put, there are three moments for Dante commentary between the Trecento and the end of the Cinquecento: first is the Trecento's attempt to make the poem authoritative; the second is the Renaissance commentators' accommodation of this authoritative poem to specific social questions; in the third moment, commentators' interests shift from social, political, and philosophical questions to more strictly linguistic matters.

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As opposed to commentators from the first two groups, Trifone Gabriele (ca. 1526-7), Bernardino Daniello (1565), and Ludovico Castelvetro (ca. 1571) tend to contest the authority of the Comedy on such issues. This shift, in which commentators address a set of questions that are more pressing aesthetically than socially, ought to be considered in any account of Cinquecento commentary and the genre's eventual demise. By the last quarter of the Cinquecento, the utility of the commentator, if we can use so crude a term, has lessened considerably. Commentary is moving in a circle that is not only smaller but less central. The material form taken by commentaries codifies this shift: instead of the earlier monumental folio editions, such as those of Landino, by the latter half of the Cinquecento we have an outpouring of treatises and pamphlets addressing concerns more and more removed from civic life. Compared to Trecento expositions, commentary in the Renaissance tends to be less anonymous and more attuned to specific, local conditions; it is written, even commissioned, under the auspices of powerful families like the Este, Visconti, and Medici. Many of the Quattrocento and Cinquecento commentators were either courtiers writing for a ruler or teachers lecturing in an institution. These men moved in influential social circles and often engaged in literary debates with other intellectuals. Benvenuto da Imola, while a pre-Renaissance figure, wrote the final version of his commentary at the court of Niccolo II of Este; Guiniforte Barzizza, son of the eminent teacher and courtier Gasparino Barzizza, wrote his commentary at the request of Filippo Maria Visconti; the courtier Martino Nidobeato edited Jacopo della Lana's commentary for Guglielmo, Marquis of Monferrato; Cristoforo Landino held the chair of rhetoric and poetry at the Florentine Studio and wrote his commentary under the patronage of the Medici. Others, while not working for a specific patron, were well integrated in prominent intellectual, ecclesiastical, or artistic circles. Giovanni Serravalle, a Franciscan, also a preRenaissance figure, wrote his commentary at the Council of Constance at the request of two English bishops; Trifone Gabriele was at the centre of an elite community of Venetian intellectuals which included Pietro Bembo; Bernardino Daniello was a student of Gabriele; and Lodovico Dolce was a well-known popularizer who worked as an editor for the important printing firm of Giovanni and Gabriele Giolito. Similarly, Alessandro Vellutello, while less well-connected than men like Gabriele and Daniello, was the author of the most popular Petrarch commentary of the Renaissance and worked as an editor for the da Sabbio printing establishment.5 As a result of their greater civic integration, we have more

244 Deborah Parker information about these men and their professional ties - this in sharp contrast to the paucity of documentation on the earliest commentators, which constrains our understanding of the socio-historical and cultural circumstances informing various readings. It is important to recall that commentaries, like the works to which they are directed, are social acts. They are not produced in some neutral or objective critical realm: they are shot through with the preoccupations and tensions of the moment. As recent work on the dynamics of reception has repeatedly shown, works whether literary or critical do not present one unchanging face through history.6 Their meaning is variously constructed and reshaped by successive readers working under different social imperatives. II. The Critical Tradition As various political and cultural influences shape the writing of commentaries, so do such factors shape the differing evaluations that literary critics and historians have made of the commentary tradition. Views of commentary are intimately linked to specific critical positions and approaches. The first studies of the early commentaries, which began around the middle of the nineteenth century, were carried out under the impulses of nationalism, antiquarianism, and scientific positivism. The impact of nationalism in Italy is of particular importance. In the charged climate of the Risorgimento, authors perceived as patriotic, like Dante and Machiavelli, experienced a tremendous resurgence in popularity. In the words of the revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini, Dante represented 'il cittadino, il riformatore, 1'apostolo religioso, il profeta della nazione' [the citizen, the reformer, the religious apostle, the nation's prophet (quoted in Vallone 2:748)]. Prompted by renewed interest in the Middle Ages and the national origins of Italy, critics turned to early historical documents, including the Trecento commentaries, for information on Dante. As many of the Trecento commentaries had never been edited, critical interest in these documents inspired numerous editorial ventures. The majority of the present critical editions of the early commentaries in use today were produced in the nineteenth century. The publication of many of these editions was facilitated by the English philanthropist and dantophile Lord George Vernon, who provided the funds for the printing of editions of Pietro Alighieri, Jacopo Alighieri, Graziolo Bambaglioli, and the "false' Boccaccio. The antiquarian activities of men like Vemon should not be underestimated in any account of the renewed interest in commen-

Interpreting the Commentary Tradition to the Comedy 245 tary in the nineteenth century. After his death, George Vernon's son, William, continued the philanthropic activities of his father; William Vernon financed the publication of J.P. Lacaita's five-volume edition of Benvenuto. The Vernons were intimately acquainted with Dante scholars such as Pietro Fraticelli, Brunone Bianchi, Edward Moore, Paget Toynbee, and Charles Eliot Norton.7 This interest in Dante on the part of aristocratic connoisseurs and scholars was a boon to scholarship. The sudden availability of critical editions facilitated considerably critical evaluations of the commentary tradition. Such editorial activity was enhanced by historical researches influenced by scientific positivism. Much of the pioneering work on Dante's historical milieu and literary culture was produced by scholars associated with the historical school of criticism in Italy such as Alessandro D'Ancona, Adolf o Bartoli, Giuseppe Vandelli, and Isidore del Lungo.8 The confluence of these forces - antiquarian interest in the poet, the preparation of critical editions of the commentaries, and the flourishing of historical researches - produced a virtual cult of Dante. By the turn of the century, a number of societies and journals devoted to the poet had been founded. Such actions cannot be read outside the context of nationalistic fervour. To do so is to mistake the dynamics of reception entirely. As ever, scholarly and critical motivations are not objective or neutral; they are conditioned by powerful, yet often overlooked, social and cultural impulses. One can glean some sense of the way in which socio-historical conditions shape scholarship through a consideration of one of the milestones of the commentary tradition - La 'Divina Commedia' nella figurazione artistica e nel secolare commento. Edited by Guido Biagi, Enrico Rostagno, and G.L. Passerini, this three-volume compilation included selections from seven centuries of commentary. The first volume was published in 1924. Biagi dedicated it to Vittorio Emanuele III 'che die all'Italia i termini auspicati da Dante/ Typically, the nationalism which had inspired many of the late-nineteenth-century studies of Dante resurfaces in patriotic sentiments after the First World War. The Secolare commento constitutes the first systematic attempt to codify the commentary tradition. The compilation enabled students everywhere to consult the contributions of twentythree commentators ranging from Jacopo Alighieri to Raffaele Andreoli. The anthology made it possible for critics to gauge at a glance the varied interpretive history of a given passage. The Secolare commento was not the only project inspired by nationalistic impulses. Jarro's [Giulio Piccini] edition of Jacopo Alighieri's Chiose to the Inferno was also dedicated to Vittorio Emanuele III. Again we see how critical activity is shaped by

246 Deborah Parker specific social conditions. The kind of work done on commentary in the nineteenth century greatly influenced subsequent studies of the genre. Positivist research on Dante tended to focus on the text of the poem, the reconstruction of the poet's historical moment, and on uncovering the Comedy's myriad sources. Since the pioneering activities of nineteenthcentury scholars, much work has been done on the status of the codices, questions of attribution and dating, interdependencies among commentaries, and the relation between (or among) different versions. The work of such scholars as Michele Barbi, Francesco Mazzoni, Carlo Dionisotti, and Aldo Vallone has contributed greatly to the clarification of these matters, providing a base from which subsequent interpretive studies of Dante's commentators can begin. In the last ten years, we have witnessed a renewed interest in medieval and Renaissance commentaries.9 The most recent criticism covers a wide range of activity, including new editions or reissues of medieval and Renaissance commentaries (Jacopo Alighieri, the Anonimo Lombardo, the Chiose Ambrosiane, Francesco da Buti, Filippo Villani, Bernardino Danielle, and Trifone Gabriele); detailed investigations into Guido da Pisa's, Andrea Lancia's, and Pietro Alighieri's sources (Caglio, De Medici, Caricato); new attempts to settle questions of dating, dependencies, and attribution; in-depth studies of a period of commentary or particular commentator (see, for example, Aldo Vallone's Storia della critica dantesca, Domenico Pietropaolo's Dante Studies in the Age of Vico, Michael Caesar's Dante: The Critical Heritage, and Lino Pertile's series of articles on Trifone Gabriele); as well as, more generally, examinations of medieval poetics and exegetical techniques (see the recent work of Zygmunt Baranski and Michelangelo Picone's recent volume on allegory as an interpretive procedure). The most ambitious undertaking is undoubtedly the Dartmouth Dante Project, a computerized database of the commentaries directed by Robert Hollander. As this range of activity attests, Dante commentary is being explored on a number of levels: theoretical, historical, editorial. Much work is also being done on commentary in other fields. On the theoretical level, Alastair Minnis's Medieval Theory of Authorship examines medieval concepts of authorship and authority. An anthology which Minnis helped edit, Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c. 1100-1375: The Commentary Tradition, includes sections on Dante's self-commentary and the poet's earliest commentators. Annabel Patterson's study of the reception history of Virgil's Eclogues is also noteworthy. In Pastoral and Ideology: Virgil to Valery, Patterson shows how intellectuals over several centuries appropriated

Interpreting the Commentary Tradition to the Comedy 247 the Eclogues to ongoing schemes of cultural and social legitimation. Patterson's study exemplifies the pertinence of Rezeptionskritik in any evaluation of a text's meaning. III. Recent Uses of Dante Commentary Dante scholars have put commentaries to various uses. Critics wishing to identify sources for the Comedy have searched the commentaries for echoes of earlier texts. Since Trecento commentaries were composed by men whose literary culture was similar to that of Dante, they are especially valuable in this kind of enterprise. As many of the Renaissance commentators wrote expositions on ancient authors like Virgil in addition to 'modern' writers like Dante and Petrarch, their commentaries, notably those by Landino, Gabriele, Daniello, and Castelvetro, are also helpful in uncovering the poet's classical sources. These Renaissance commentators are all the more valuable because, as a recent study by Daniel Javitch on the initial reception of the Orlando furioso shows, Renaissance commentators typically sought to point out parallels between modern Italian authors and their classical predecessors. Illustrations of Dante's or Ariosto's echoing of Virgilian lines, for example, explicitly link the achievement of contemporary and near contemporary poets with a venerable classical tradition. Ultimately such moves serve to authorize a writer's work. Dante scholars frequently refer to the commentary tradition in order to cite precedents for their interpretations. For example, in her study Tntertextualities in Arcadia: Purgatorio 30.49-51,' Rachel Jacoff, following an observation made by Robert Hollander, notes that Bernardino Daniello was the first commentator to point out that Dante's triple mention of Virgil's name in the Earthly Paradise may have been modelled on Orpheus's calling out to Eurydice three times in Georgics 4.525-7.10 For Jacoff, Danielle's earlier observation helps substantiate a likely source for Dante's triple repetition of Virgil's name in the poignant scene of the Roman poet's departure from the poem. Through an exploration of various intertextual echoes, Jacoff's reading builds on Daniello's observation. Reference to the preceding critical tradition also forms a common point of departure for a new reading. Such a use of commentary is typified by William Stephany in his article 'Dante's Harpies: '"Tristo annunzio di future danno.'" Before signalling his departure from earlier readings of Dante's presentation of the harpies as agents of divine justice, Stephany, employing a time-honoured procedure, briefly summarizes how this passage had been interpreted by early commentators such as Jacopo

248 Deborah Parker Alighieri and Lana. Elsewhere in his study, Stephany has recourse to the commentary tradition when underscoring the idea of conversion as the organizing principle which undergird's the Comedy's poetic structure. Stephany notes that Boccaccio, Benvenuto, Francesco da Buti, and the Anonimo Fiorentino all concur that 'the "Strophades" are the place of turning, the place of strophe' (43). Two recent books by Peter Armour, The Door of Purgatory: A Study of Multiple Symbolism in Dante's 'Purgatorio' (1983) and Dante's Griffin and the History of the World (1989), offer perhaps the most systematic and extensive consideration of medieval commentary in the service of a larger interpretive project. Armour considers commentaries an indispensable basis for any critical study. In The Door of Purgatory, voicing the opinion of many scholars, Armour assesses the role of commentary in criticism: The real problem is not so much one of deference to the fourteenth-century commentators as the ultimate obligation to be true to Dante and to the text. This requires that we put ourselves, as far as is possible, into the position of Lana or of Pietro di Dante and try to look at the text as if for the the first time. Then, in the company of those early commentators, we may attempt to produce an analysis of which we hope Dante would have approved. (15)

For Armour, the Trecento commentators provide valuable insight into Dante's Weltanschauung; they furnish contemporary accounts of historical events, of the philosophical background underlying doctrinal passages, and of the meaning of Dante's words. Dante scholars also use the commentaries to adjudicate critical and textual disputes. Critics who wish to support a particular interpretation of a passage often cite similar readings from commentaries. In a series of recent articles, Robert Hollander meticulously adduces earlier readings of interpretive and textual cruces.11 For example, in his article, '"Ad ira parea mosso": God's Voice in the Garden of Eden (Inf. XXIV, 69),' Hollander surveys the entire tradition of commentary before arguing for a return to an earlier reading of Inferno 24.69. As Hollander points out, while commentators before the publication of the 1921 sexcentenary edition of Dante's Opere preferred the reading 'Ad ira parea mosso,' subsequently the tendency has shifted in favour of 'Ad ire parea mosso/ As Hollander summarizes the issue, we have 'near unanimity for some six hundred years, a quarter century of uncertainty and debate, and now a quarter century of near unanimity for the new reading' (31). The permutations of the debate are clearly presented in a convenient table showing

Interpreting the Commentary Tradition to the Comedy 249 precisely who supported which reading when. Hence the weight of the entire commentary tradition is effectively brought to bear on a textual point, which is further substantiated by Hollander's proposal of a hitherto overlooked biblical source for Dante's presentation of the thieves. One of the most noteworthy observations made by Hollander concerns the circumstances surrounding the substitution of 'ad ira' for 'ad ire.' The revision was introduced by Michele Barbi after the rediscovery of the Vatican redaction of Pietro Alighieri's commentary, which read 'ad ire/ Earlier in 1842 Foscolo had proposed the same change after having consulted a manuscript of the Chiose cassinesi, which, as is well known, was largely based on Pietro's exposition. This attention to the time and occasion of the introduction of a particular reading is important. Only through a heightened awareness of the critical tradition which has come to shape our present views can we hope to understand the complex of influences which inform not only an individual commentary but any critical act. While the overwhelming majority of articles tend to employ commentaries in a subordinate capacity - to buttress or reorient a reading - a number of recent studies have focused on the commentators themselves. Many of these studies are devoted to Benvenuto and Landino. The best of these analyses not only furnish new information on a particular commentator, but also engage larger literary and cultural issues. Lino Pertile's series of articles on Trif one Gabriele, for example, while ostensibly seeking to reinsert the Venetian's contribution into the commentary tradition, also takes issue with current views of the extent to which Bembo singlehandedly articulated a new linguistic program based on purity of diction. Similarly, Zygmunt Baranski's articles on Benvenuto have enhanced our understanding of the Imolese's independence from Boccaccio's views. In a similar vein, Paolo Procaccioli's book-length study of Landino's commentary casts new light on the Florentine's dependence on Benvenuto and Buti. Procaccioli's documentation of the Comento's incorporation of earlier readings testifies to his insistence on not seeing - as many critics have - Landino's work in 'splendido isolamento' (36). Moreover, as the work of Roberto Cardini, Manfred Lentzen, Annabel Patterson, Craig Kallendorf, and Arthur Field on Landino has shown, it is not enough to confine our consideration of Landino's commentary to its relation to earlier expositions. Landino's relation to the Medici and his participation in Neoplatonic circles also greatly influenced the tenor of his commentary. Given the recent interest in commentary in both Dante studies and other fields, the moment is propitious for a reconsideration of the use to which

250 Deborah Parker these expositions will be put in future discussions of the poem. The study by Robert Hollander alluded to earlier was greatly facilitated by his use of the Dartmouth Dante Project. The project will eventually enable scholars worldwide to consult all the major commentaries on the poem. As Lino Fertile summarizes the project's capabilities: Invece di essere obbligati a localizzare, richiedere, ottenere e scartabellare personalmente circa sessanta opere, alcune delle quali rarissime, equivalent! a un totale di circa 150.000 pagine dattiloscritte, sara presto possibile da qualsiasi biblioteca, o addiritttura dal proprio studio, interrogare contemporaneamente tutta la tradizione esegetica (in italiano, latino e inglese) su una parola, o un verso, o un episodic o canto della Commedia e ottenere in un attimo, o quasi, una risposta completa da leggersi su video o, se si preferisce, su carta. (Fertile, 'Dartmouth' 102) [Instead of being obliged to locate, recall, obtain, and personally skim through roughly 60 works, many of which are extremely rare, equivalent to a total of 150,000 typed pages, it will soon be possible from any library or even from one's own study, to examine simultaneously the entire exegetical tradition (in Italian, Latin and English) on a word, a line, an episode, or a canto of the Comedy and obtain in an instant, or almost, a complete answer which can be read on screen, or if one prefers, have printed out.]

The coincidence of current theoretical and philological approaches and the facility of access to the commentaries which the Dartmouth Dante Project offers will radically influence the direction of future Dante criticism. Future evaluations of the commentaries will have to take into account the larger complex of influences which informs the writing of any commentary. This can best be achieved through a heightened awareness of the critical tradition which has come to shape our present views. Only through an understanding of our own unconscious formation as critics can we hope to understand the way in which commentary functions as a genre - as a flexible, often creative response to Dante's poem. The continuous, multif aceted tradition of Dante commentary provides an expansive field upon which to examine the sociology of the text. The study of commentary inevitably shifts the attention of the critic from the author and the poem to the latter's reception and circulation. To read commentary is to move from a consideration of the Comedy as a text to a consideration of its use as a culture-bearing work - that is, as a social act with a variety of ramifications for successive social formations. Dante

Interpreting the Commentary Tradition to the Comedy 251 commentary - both in terms of sheer quantity and of propitious formal features - affords a rich legacy to anyone interested in mapping the shifts and starts in the poem's varied interpretive history. The nature of the investment that has been made in this extraordinary poem over time has produced a rich field for analyses of the dynamics of reception or of cultural history more generally. To do this there must be a dialectic between the recent work done on commentary and more interpretive undertakings - in essence a kind of dialogue between historical and philological studies, on the one hand, and hermeneutics, on the other. We have a wealth of new critical tools - new critical editions, comprehensive overviews, in-depth studies of individual commentators, fuller accounts of the nature of medieval literary theory - and they ought to be used. Notes 1 For discussions of the medieval accessus, see Quain, Allen, and Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship. The majority of studies on the Trecento commentators' deployment of the accessus focus on the relations between these prologues and the Epistle to Cangrande. See, for example, Mazzoni, 'Per 1'Epistola a Cangrande'; Nardi; Jenaro-MacLennan; Kelly; and Barahski, 'Comedia. Notes on Dante, the Epistle to Cangrande, and Medieval Comedy.' 2 For a discussion of the prevalence of digression in medieval and Renaissance commentaries, see Grafton; and Parker, The Medieval Roots to Commentary in the Renaissance,' in Commentary and Ideology: Dante in the Renaissance. 3 For overviews of Dante's Trecento commentaries, see Hegel, Witte, Rocca, Cavallari, Luiso, Francesco Mazzoni's series of articles on the early commentators, Sandkuhler, Rossi, Vallone, and Rigo. 4 For an overview of Trecento commentators' use of allegory, see Hollander and Picone. 5 Given the numerous investigations of Benvenuto's commentary, I will confine myself to mentioning some of the more important recent studies. In addition to Palmieri's and Paolazzi's collection of articles, see Barbi, Toynbee, Dionisotti, La Favia, Caliri, and Paoletti. For overviews of Dante commentary in the Quattrocento and Cinquecento, see Rossi, Grayson, Dionisotti ('Dante nel Quattrocento'), Garin, Vallone, and Bigi. For an examination of Barzizza's commentary to the Inferno, see Ferrau. For assessments of

252 Deborah Parker Landino's commentary, see Cardini, Santoro, Gennai, Bigi, Vallone, Field, Procaccioli, and Parker, 'Commentary as Social Act: Trifone Gabriele's Critique of Landino.' For discussions of Gabriele's exposition, see Lino Pertile's series of articles. The best account of Vellutello's literary culture is provided by Belloni. For an excellent general overview of Dante's fortune, see Dionisotti, 'Varia fortuna di Dante,' in Geografia e storia, 255-303. 6 See, for example, the recent work of Hans Robert Jauss. 7 For an idea of the intellectual exchange between aristocratic connoisseurs like the Vernons and scholars, see the correspondence between William Vernon and Charles Eliot Norton. 8 For discussions of the historical school, see Russo and Neri. 9 I do not wish to give the impression that there was no critical interest in the commentaries between Biagi's project and the present. The scope of this study does not allow for a detailed examination or listing of other critical treatments of commentary. For a fuller treatment of the subject, see Vallone; and Parker, 'Dante's Medieval and Renaissance Commentators: 19th and 20th Century Constructions,' in Commentary and Ideology. For a fuller bibliography on recent studies of commentary, see the notes to Parker's Commentary and Ideology. 10 In fact, Trifone Gabriele, Danielle's teacher, was the first commentator to point out that Dante's triple mention of Virgil's name was modelled on Orpheus's calling out to Eurydice three times in Georgics 4.525-7. Given Danielle's well-known and amply documented dependence on his teacher, care must be taken to compare the two commentaries before crediting Danielle for any observations. Danielle often repeats Gabriele in his definition of Dante's words, his notation of what he perceives to be forced rhymes, his identification of literary and patristic sources, and his praise of the poet. Emilio Bigi (181) noted that Danielle copies Gabriele on this passage from the Purgatorio in his 1981 study, 'La tradizione esegetica della Commedia nel Cinquecento.' More recently Parker ('Bernardino Daniello' [115]) and Fertile ('II Daniello di Dartmouth' [103]) have also pointed out Danielle's reliance on his teacher on this passage. The fact that Gabriele's annotations have remained unpublished has hampered efforts to distinguish his contributions from Danielle's work. Lino Pertile's edition enables critics to determine precisely the extent and quality of Danielle's debt to his teacher. 11 In addition to the article discussed, see also the following studies by Hollander: 'Dante's "Georgic"'; 'An Index of Hapax Legomena'; and 'Dante on Horseback?' For Hollander's description of the database, see The Dartmouth Dante Project.'

Interpreting the Commentary Tradition to the Comedy 253 Bibliography Primary Sources Alighieri, Jacopo. Chiose all'Inferno. Ed. Saverio Bellomo. Padua: Antenore, 1990. Alighieri, Pietro. Petri Allegherii super Dantis ipsius genitoris Comoediam Commentarium. Ed. V. Nannucci. Florence: G. Piatti, 1845. Anonimo Fiorentino. Commento alia Divina Commedia d'Anonimo Fiorentino del secolo XIV. Ed. Pietro Fanfani. 3 vols. Bologna: G. Romagnoli, 1866-74. Anonymous Latin Commentary on Dante's 'Commedia': Reconstructed Text. Ed. Vincenzo Cioffari. Spoleto: Centre italiano di studi sull'alto Medioevo, 1989. Bambaglioli, Graziolo. II Commento dantesco di Graziolo de' Bambaglioli dal 'Colombino' di Siviglia con altri codici raffrontato. Ed. A. Fiammazzo. Savona: D. Bertollotto e Co, 1915. Barzizza, Guiniforte. Lo Inferno della Commedia di Dante Alighieri, col comento di Guiniforto delli Bargigi. Ed. G. Zac[c]heroni. Marseille: L. Mossy; Florence: G. Molini, 1838. Benvenuto da Imola. Benvenuti de Rambaldis de Imola Comentum super Dantis Aldigherij Comoediam. Ed. J.P. Lacaita. 5 vols. Florence: G. Barbera, 1887. Boccaccio, Giovanni. Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante. Ed. G. Padoan. Verona: Mondadori, 1965. Castelvetro, Ludovico. Sposizione di Ludovico Castelvetro a XXIX Canti dell'Inferno dantesco. Ed. Giovanni Franciosi. Modena: Societa tipografica, 1886. Le chiose ambrosiane alia 'Commedia.' Ed. Luca Carlo Rossi. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 1990. Chiose anonime alia prima Cantica della 'Divina Commedia' di un contemporaneo del Poeta. Ed. Francesco Selmi. Torino: Stamperia Reale, 1865. Danielle, Bernardino. Dante con I'espositione di M. Bernard[in]o Daniello da Lucca ... Venice: Pietro da Fino, 1568. - L'espositione di Bernardino Daniello da Lucca sopra la Comedia di Dante. Ed. Robert Hollander, Jeffrey Schnapp, Kevin Brownlee, and Nancy Vickers. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1989. Francesco da Buti. Commento di Francesco da Buti sopra la Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri. Ed. Crescentino Giannini. 3 vols. 1858-62. Reprint. Pisa: Fratelli Nistri, 1989. Gabriele, Trifone. Annotationi nel Dante fatte con M. Trifone Gabriele in Bassano. Ed. Lino Fertile. Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1993. Giovanni da Serravalle. Fratris Johannis de Serravalle Ord. Min. Episcopi et

254 Deborah Parker Principus Firmani Translatio et Comentum totius libri Dantis Aldigherii. Ed. Marcellino da Civezza and Teofilo Domenichelli. Prato: Giachetti, 1891. Guido da Pisa. Expositiones et Close super Comediam Dantis. Ed. Vincenzo Cioffari. Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1974. Jacopo della Lana. Commedia di Dante Allaghieri col Commento di Jacopo della Lana bolognese. Ed. L. Scarabelli. 3 vols. Bologna: Tipografia Regia, 1866-7. Landino, Cristoforo. Comento di Christophoro Landino fiorentino sopra la Comedia di Danthe Alighieri Poeta fiorentino. Florence: Nicholo di Lorenzo della Magna, 1481. L'Ottimo Commento della Divina Commedia di un contemporaneo di Dante. Ed. A. Torri. 3 vols. Pisa: N. Capurro, 1827-9. Vellutello, Alessandro. La Comedia di Dante Alighieri con la nova espositione di Alessandro Vellutello. Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1544. Villani, Filippo. Espositio sen Comentum super 'Comedia' Dantis Allegherii: Filippo Villani. Ed. Saverio Bellomo. Florence: Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 1989. Secondary Sources Allen, J.B. The Ethical Poetic of the Later Middle Ages. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982. Armour, Peter. The Door of Purgatory: A Study of Multiple Symbolism in Dante's 'Purgatorio.' Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1893. - Dante's Griffin and the History of the World: A Study of the Earthly Paradise. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. Barariski, Zygmunt G. "'Significar "per verba": Notes on Dante and Plurilingualism.' The Italianist 6 (1986): 5-18. - 'Dante's (Anti-)Rhetoric: Notes on the Poetics of the Commedia.' In Moving in Measure; Essays Presented to Brian Moloney. Ed. J. Bryce and D. Thompson. Hull: Hull University Press, 1989.1-14. - 'La lezione esegetica di Inferno 1: allegoria, storia e letteratura nella Commedia.' In Picone, ed., Dante e le forme dell'allegoresi. - 'Benvenuto da Imola e la tradizione dantesca della Comedia.' In Palmieri and Paolazzi, eds., Benvenuto da Imola. - 'Comedia. Notes on Dante, the Epistle to Cangrande, and Medieval Comedy.' Lectura Dantis 8 (1991): 26-55. - 'A Note on the Trecento: Boccaccio, Benvenuto, and the Dream of Dante's Pregnant Mother.' Forthcoming. Barbi, Michele. Dante nel Cinquecento. Pisa, 1890. Reprint. Rome: Polla, 1975. - 'Benvenuto da Imola e non Stefano Talice da Ricaldone.' Problemi di critica dantesca. Prima serie 1893-1918. Florence: G.C. Sansoni, 1965.

Interpreting the Commentary Tradition to the Comedy 255 -

'La lettura di Benvenuto da Imola e i suoi rapporti con altri comment!.' Problemi di critica dantesca. Seconda serie 1920-1937. Florence: Sansoni, 1965. Belloni, Gino. 'Un eretico nella Venezia del Bembo: Alessandro Vellutello.' GSLI157 (1980): 43-74. Biagi, G., G.L. Passerini, and E. Rostagno, eds. La 'Divina Commedia' nella figurazione artistica e nel secolare commento. 3 vols. Torino: UTET, 1924-39. Bigi, Emilio. 'Dante e la cultura fiorentina del Quattrocento.' 'La tradizione esegetica della Commedia nel Cinquecento/ In Forme e significati nella 'Divina Commedia.' Bologna: Cappelli, 1981. Caesar, Michael, ed. Dante: The Critical Heritage, 1314(?)-1870. London and New York: Routledge, 1989. Caglio, Anna Maria. 'Material! enciclopedici delle Expositiones di Guido da Pisa.' IMU 24 (1981):213-56. Caliri, Francesco. 'Guido da Montefeltro nel commento di Benvenuto.' In Dante nel pensiero. Cardini, Roberto. La critica del Landino. Florence: Sansoni, 1973. Caricato, Luigi. Tl Commentarium all'Inferno di Pietro Alighieri.' IMU 24 (1983): 124-50. Cavallari, Elisabetta. Lafortuna di Dante nel Trecento. Florence: Societa anonima editrice Francesco Perella, 1921. 'Correspondence between Charles Eliot Norton and the Honorable William Warren Vernon: 1869-1908.' Prepared for publication by William Coolidge Lane. Dante Studies 47-8 (1930): 18-48. Dante nel pensiero e nella esegesi dei secoli XIV e XV. Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1975. De Medici, Giuliana. 'Le fonti dell'Ottimo commento alia Divina Commedia.' IMU 26 (1983): 71-122. Dionisotti, Carlo. 'Dante nel Quattrocento.' Atti del congresso internazionale di studi danteschi. Florence: Sansoni, 1965. - Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana. Torino: Einaudi, 1967. - 'Lettura del commento di Benvenuto da Imola.' Atti del convegno internazionale di studi danteschi. Ravenna: Longo, 1971. Ferrau, Giacomo. Tl commento all'Inferno di Guiniforte Barzizza.' In Dante nel pensiero. Field, Arthur. 'Cristoforo Landino's First Lectures on Dante.' Renaissance Quarterly 39 (1986): 16-48. - The Origins of the Platonic Academy of Florence. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Garin, Eugenio. 'Dante nel Rinascimento.' Rinascimento 7 (1967): 3-28. Gennai, Silvio. 'Cristoforo Landino commentatore di Dante.' Atti del convegno di studi su aspetti e problemi della critica dantesca. Rome: De Luca, 1967.

256 Deborah Parker Grafton, Anthony. 'On the Scholarship of Politian and Its Context.' Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 40 (1977): 150-88. Grayson, Cecil. 'Dante and the Renaissance.' Italian Studies Presented to E.R. Vincent. Ed. C.P. Brand, K. Foster, U. Limentani. Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, 1962. Hegel, Karl von. Uber den historischen werth der alteren Dante-Commentare. Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1878. Hollander, Robert. Allegory in 'Dante's Commedia.' Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969. - '"Ad ira parea mosso": God's Voice in the Garden of Eden (Inf. XXIV, 69).' Dante Studies 101 (1983): 27-49. - 'Dante on Horseback? (Inferno XII, 93-126).' Mica 61 (1984): 287-96. - 'Dante's "Georgic" (Inferno XXIV, 1-18).' Dante Studies 102 (1984): 111-21. - 'An Index of Hapax Legomena in Dante's Commedia.' Dante Studies 106 (1988): 81-110. - The Dartmouth Dante Project.' Quaderni d'italianistica 10 (1989): 287-98. Jacoff, Rachel. 'Intertextualities in Arcadia: Purgatorio 30.49-51.' In Jacoff and Schnapp, eds., The Poetry of Allusion. Jacoff, Rachel, and Jeffrey T. Schnapp, eds. The Poetry of Allusion: Virgil and Ovid in Dante's 'Commedia.' Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991. Jauss, Hans Robert. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Trans. Timothy Bahti. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982. Javitch, Daniel. Proclaiming a Classic: The Canonization of Orlando Furioso. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Jenaro-MacLennan, Luis. The Trecento Commentators on the 'Divina Commedia' and the Epistle to Cangrande. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974. Kallendorf, Craig. In Praise of Aeneas: Virgil and Epideictic Rhetoric in the Early Italian Renaissance. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1989. Kelly, Henry Ansgar. Tragedy and Comedy from Dante to Pseudo-Dante. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989. La Favia, Louis. Benvenuto Rambaldi da Imola: Dantista. Madrid: Jose Porrua Turanzas, S.A., 1977. Lentzen, Manfred. Studien zur Dante-Exegese Cristoforo Landino. Cologne and Vienna: Bohlau, 1971. - 'Le lodi di Firenze di Cristoforo Landino.' Romanische Forschungen 97 (1985): 36-46. Luiso. P.P. 'Per la varia fortuna di Dante nel secolo XIV.' Giornale dantesco 10 (1902): 83-97. - 'Tra chiose e commenti antichi alia Divina Commedia.' Archivio storico italiano 33 (1904): 1-52.

Interpreting the Commentary Tradition to the Comedy 257 Mazzoni, Francesco. 'Per la storia della critica dantesca I: Jacopo Alighieri e Graziolo Bambaglioli (1322-1324).' Studi danteschi 30 (1951): 157-202. - 'L'Epistola a Can Grande/ Atti dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei 10 (1955): 157-98. - "Guido da Pisa interprete di Dante e la sua fortuna presso il Boccaccio.' Studi danteschi 35 (1958): 29-128. - 'Per 1'Epistola a Cangrande.' In Studi in onore di Angela Monteverdi. Modena: Societa tipografica editrice modenese, 1959. - Tietro Alighieri interprete di Dante.' Studi danteschi 40 (1963): 279-360. - 'La critica dantesca del secolo XIV.' Cultura e scuola 13-14 (1965): 285-97. - 'Jacopo della Lana e la crisi nell'interpretazione della Divina Commedia.' In Dante e Bologna nei tempi di Dante. Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1967. Minnis, A.J. Medieval Theory of Authorship. 2nd ed. Aldershot, England: Scolar, 1984. Minnis, A.J., and A.B. Scott, eds. Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c.1100-1375: The Commentary Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Nardi, Bruno. II punto sull'Epistola a Cangrande. Florence: Le Monnier, 1960. - 'Osservazioni sul medievale accessus ad auctores in rapporto all'Epistola a Cangrande.' In Saggi e note di critica dantesca. Milan: Ricciardi, 1966. Neri, Ferdinando. 'La scuola del Bartoli.' Rivista d'ltalia 2 (1913): 673-92. Palmieri, Pantaleo, and Carlo Paolazzi, eds. Benvenuto da Imola: lettore degli antichi e dei moderni. Ravenna: Longo, 1991. Paolazzi, Carlo. Dante e la 'Comedia' nel Trecento. Milan: Pubblicazioni della Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 1989. Paoletti, L. 'L'esegesi umanistica di Benvenuto da Imola.' In Psicanalisi e strutturalismo difronte a Dante. Florence: Olschki, 1972. Parker, Deborah. 'Bernardino Danielle and the Commentary Tradition.' Dante Studies 106 (1988): 111-21. - 'Beyond Plagiarism: New Perspectives on Bernardino Danielle's Debt to Trifone Gabriele.' Modern Language Notes 104 (1989): 209-15. - 'Commentary as Social Act: Trifone Gabriele's Critique of Landino/ Renaissance Quarterly 45 (1992): 225-47. - Commentary and Ideology: Dante in the Renaissance. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993. Patterson, Annabel. Pastoral and Ideology: Virgil to Valery. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987. Fertile, Lino. 'Le edizioni dantesche del Bembo e la data delle "Annotationi" di Trifone Gabriele.' GSLI60 (1983): 393-402.

258 Deborah Parker -

"Trifone Gabriele's Commentary on Dante and Bembo's Prose della volgar lingua.1 Italian Studies 40 (1985): 17-30. - 'Appollonio Merenda, segretario del Bembo, e ventidue lettere di Trifone Gabriele.' Studi e problemi di critica testuale 34 (1987): 9-48. - 'II Danielle di Dartmouth.' Italian Studies 46 (1991): 102-9. Picone, Michelangelo, ed. Dante e le forme deH'allegoresi. Ravenna: Longo, 1989. Pietropaolo, Domenico. Dante Studies in the Age o/Vico. Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1989. Procaccioli, Paolo. Filologia ed esegesi dantesca net Quattrocento. L'Inferno nel Comento sopra la Comedia di Cristoforo Landino. Florence: Olschki, 1989. Quain, Edwin A. 'The Medieval Accessus ad Auctores.' Traditio 3 (1945): 215-64. Rigo, Paola. 'Commenti danteschi/ In Diziona.no critico della letteratura italiana. Ed. Vittore Branca. Vol. 2. Torino: UTET, 1986. Rocca, Luigi. Di alcuni commenti della 'Divina Commedia' composti nei primi vent'anni dopo la morte di Dante. Florence: G.C. Sansoni, 1891. Rossi, Vittorio. 'Dante nel Trecento e nel Quattrocento.' In Saggi e discorsi su Dante. Florence: G.C. Sansoni, 1930. Russo, Luigi. Alessandro D'Ancona e la scuola storica italiana. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1936. Sandkuhler, Bruno. Diefruhen Dantekommentare und irh Verhaltnis zur mittelalterlichen Kommentartradition. Munich: Hueber Verlag, 1967. Santoro, Mario. 'Cristoforo Landino e il volgare.' GSLI131 (1954): 501-47. Stephany, William. A. 'Dante's Harpies: "Tristo annunzio di future danno."' In Jacoff and Schnapp, eds., The Poetry of Allusion. Toynbee, Paget. 'Benvenuto da Imola and His Commentary on the Divina Commedia.' Dante Studies and Researches. London: Methuen, 1902. Vallone, Aldo. Storia della critica dantesca dal XIV al XX secolo. 2 vols. Padua: Vallardi, 1981. Witte, Karl. Essays on Dante. Trans, and ed. by C. Mabel Lawrence and Philip H. Wicksteed. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1898.

Reader's Application and the Moment of Truth in Dante's Divine Comedy1 WILLIAM FRANKE

The question of truth has riddled reception of Dante's poem from the beginning of a tradition of commentary as old as the poem itself. How are the truth-claims made by the poem to be taken? For a very numerous company of critics stretching from Dante's contemporaries to our own, they are typically poetic posturings, one more fine example of the art of selfstaging which Dante masters to perfection. For no less imposing a constituency of interpreters, however, everything depends on recognizing that some kind of claim beyond the compass of poetic art is being made: a claim that actual historical experience or true religious vision is being reported. Even that such issues should be raised, insistently across seven centuries of interpretation, marks the Commedia as an exceptional case among the works we study as literature in our academic curriculum. Like perhaps no other literary work, Dante's poem imposes itself as somehow more than imaginative literature according to the usual conception, as in some way religious truth, divine revelation. Dante's poem is not content simply to be a poem, without raising expressly and clamorously the whole question of poetry and its potential for truth and even for true religious revelation. We need to ask how on earth it does this. We are guided in this inquiry by the premise that insight into interpretation gained through contemporary hermeneutic philosophy and theology may enable us to understand some things about Dante's poetic and interpretive procedures perhaps even better than he understood them himself.2 Understood hermeneutically, in terms of a dialogue between past and present, the question of the truth of the Commedia does not concern merely a textual artifact; it interrogates the questioner and places modernity en face of a claim out of its past. Of course, it is perfectly possible to accept

260 William Franke that a claim is being made to authentic religious revelation and nevertheless to view this as all part of a poetic pretending, a rhetorical hypothesis or hyperbole. Yet such a neutralization of the claim already entails a decision as to what is at stake and as to what kind of interest it is possible, or at least preferable, for the poetry of the Commedia to hold for us. It refuses to face frontally the question of truth, which the poem has posed so forcefully to its readers, provoking decisions and divisions, pretending rather to analyse it neutrally from the outside. It manifests a refusal to allow oneself to be claimed by this truth and so to enter into the event of the poem. Can we be sure that the poem, with its Christian medieval ethos, no longer can make any claim upon us as moderns? This is often simply assumed in the scholarship, but must rather be responsibly assumed as an interpretive decision, not just a given, as if 'modernity' were an orthodoxy in itself impenetrable to beliefs arriving from 'elsewhere.' This would obviously be an egregious misreading of modernity, which has in fact been the scene of numerous religious revivals, some of them Christian. A past we simply assume we are liberated from may only have been forgotten and thereby bind us the more insidiously. Although in general we have long ceased to consider the question of truth as relevant to the understanding and appreciation of poetry, in Dante criticism even presently it can still be described as 'the one fundamental question for all readers of Dante's poem.' Teodolinda Barolini reviews recent Italian and American criticism in order to show that both in different ways have come to an impasse over 'the one central issue of the poet's truth claims.'3 Why should the question of truth be so peculiarly important and so vexed in the case of the Commedial4 For a start, it is observed on all sides that Dante's poem makes exceptional and exceptionally insistent claims for its status as true revelation, vision, or experiential record. Can these claims be comprehended as simply part of the pretending that we grant as a charter right to poetry? Or do they rather outstrip the poetry as assertions of truth of a theological order to which poetic inventions can but serve as handmaiden? Even the apparently straightforward claim to be reporting faithfully a first-personal experience - where the speaker actually was ('fu'io') and what he really saw ('vidi') - sunders into the two seemingly incompatible possibilities of either the fictive discourse of poetry or (allegedly) true religious witness.5 Formulated naively, the question is easily dismissed as a natural response of wonderment such as might be expected of children - 'Did it really happen?' - and not the sort of thing the literary critic need be seriously

Reader's Application and the Moment of Truth 261 concerned about. But the peculiarly affecting power of Dante's poem is inseparable from these claims, in such a way that they have proved unavoidable even in evaluating his poetry and its effectiveness as such. Of course, the poem itself cannot answer the question as to whether its truth-claims are within it or beside it, whether they are just poetic postures or 'serious' in a sense exceeding poetry as a rhetorical form altogether. This is an interpretive choice, and on it depends what the poem is for us. Suffice it to say that Dante creates for us this choice. Although there is always the possibility that 'believing' readings err in taking seriously what was intended only as a literary fiction, the invitations within the poem make this an option that cannot simply be ignored. It has entailed undeniable consequences in the history of reading which, intended or not, belong to the poem and its life down through the ages. From its origins and ever since, discussion of the Divine Comedy has been haunted by the supposition or the claim, whether it is affirmed or denied, that this poem is somehow more than a poem, more than an imaginative fiction; readers of all persuasions have had to reckon with the insinuation that it is a true account of an actual historical journey, an elevatio ad coelum, whether in the body or out of the body one knows not, God knows, to echo the passage from 2 Corinthians 12.2-4 about Paul's being rapt to the third heaven that Dante himself echoes in the proem to the Paradiso. The question of the truth of the Commedia actually comprises many questions. Is it a true story? Does the narrative relating Dante's journey through the three realms of the world to come purport to be literally true and so to be an historical account? Was Dante a prophet? Is his poem inspired? Is it supposed to be a true revelation of a metaphysical order of being or of an eschatological dimension of existence? And these formulations cover only what might be termed 'religious truth,' whereas the poem certainly has no less pretensions to disclosing philosophical, psychological, social, existential, etc., truth and truths, although a powerful compulsion to unity in Dante's Christian, semiologically centred universe would make all these appear as facets of the poem's Truth. The question specifically of the truth or 'historicity' of its narrative - the question whether and in what sense it may be, or at least be given out as, a true story - has insistently asserted itself as the central question concerning its truth throughout the history of interpretaton of the poem. It was already an issue for the first generation of commentators including Dante's own son, Pietro. Evidently concerned to ward off accusations of heterodoxy and madness which seem to have dogged Dante to his grave, Pietro explains that his father only poetically feigns ('poetando fingit') to

262 William Franke have gone on the journey through the other world to the Empyrean narrated in the Commedia. Pietro is joined by other fourteenth-century commentators, such as Benvenuto da Imola and Francesco da Buti, in their somewhat nervous and hedging explanations that Dante visited Paradise 'mentaliter etnon corporaliter' [mentally butnotbodily], that he was there 'intellettualmente, ma non corporalmente, ma finge secondo la lettera ch'elli vi fusse corporalmente' [intellectually, but not corporeally, but he feigns according to the letter that he was there corporeally].6 Today critical reflection on this issue is largely beholden to the accounts of Dante's poetics produced around mid-century by Erich Auerbach and Charles Singleton. Both critics strongly maintained that the Commedia is fundamentally different from other poems in that the story it relates is presented not as poetic fiction but as true history; as in the case of Scriphire, the narrative of the Commedia must be taken to be literally and therefore historically true. Both critics stressed the primacy of the literal, historical sense of the narrative as the basis for all the others (its allegorical senses). For both critics, the poem's claim to being true was founded upon the claim that its narrative is true as story or, in other words, that it is history.7 The synonymy of the literal and historical senses of a narrative, thitherto in Christian exegetical tradition reserved for Scripture as the writing of the Author who can write with things in the language of real events rather than just with words, was thereby extended to a poem of human authorship but unique, therefore, among sub-canonical Christian writings. Auerbach's seminal study of Dante's figural realism established that the Divine Comedy's mode of signifying was like that of the Bible, known in exegetical hermeneutics as 'typology/ in that the literal sense of the narrative was given as true and historical, in such a way that the supposedly real persons and events literally designated by the narrative were then used to prefigure other realities to come in the historical, moral, and eschatological orders: 'in a figural relation both the signifying and the signified facts are real and concrete historical events ... neither the prefiguring nor the prefigured event lose their literal and historical reality by their figurative meaning and inter-relation.'8 The emphasis upon 'reality' of an historical nature, so strong in both Singleton and Auerbach, was promoted by Dante's significance for them as the quintessentially Christian poet. For Judeo-Christianity is distinguished as an historical religion, and Dante's poetics are conceived within and in order to mediate a world-historical dispensation opened up by the

Reader's Application and the Moment of Truth 263 Incarnation of Christ. The Word made flesh or the truth become substantially manifest in visible, palpable form is the master model of revelation by which any claim to reveal truth in poetry must inevitably be measured. Singleton framed the question in terms, going back to Dante himself, of the contrast between poetic and theological allegory. Construed according to the allegory of the poets, the literal sense of the poem, the story it tells, is no more than a fictional construct. Beneath this 'beautiful lie' [bella menzogna] are hidden realities or concepts only obliquely referred to, that is, allegorically signified, as opposed to being mimetically represented or presenced in the narrative. For example, Orpheus's taming the beasts with his music is treated by Dante in Convivio 2.1 as a myth whose true intention is to represent the real power music has to subdue the brutishness in men's souls. The story about Orpheus has no truth except as a sign of a condition that does really obtain in the human race. The allegory of the theologians, on the other hand, postulates the literal and historical truth of the narrative, specifically on the model of the Bible, held to be historically inerrant. For instance, when Psalm 113 states, 'When Israel went out from Egypt, the house of Aaron from a barbarous people,' this describes an historical event, the Exodus. This event is further laden with allegorical significances having to do with the prefiguration of Christ's rising up out of death's kingdom, the moral agent's being liberated from the bondage of sin, and the soul's exit from this ephemeral world into eternity, but all of these the Exodus story signifies on the basis of its being first itself given as a real historical event. The letter of the narrative describes in verbis an actual happening which then signifies in factis these allegorical meanings. Thus the autobiographical event verbally described by Dante's poem would in fact stand for theologically conceived events at each of the three levels of allegorical meaning. Singleton devoted himself to the cause of establishing as a fact beyond dispute that Dante had adopted the allegory of the theologians as his mode of signifying in the Commedia. Accordingly, the narrative of Dante's journey to the other world was asserted as literally true, and valid interpretation of the poem depended above all on first recognizing this fact. Still, Singleton allowed that this very assertion of truth belonged to the poem as a fiction, so that the convention of theological allegory and its literal/historical truth-claim was itself operative within the jurisdiction of another convention, namely that of poetry or fiction, which can makebelieve whatever it pleases. It is possible for poetry to pretend even that it is not pretense but rather truth, and this is exactly what happens in the

264 William Franke peculiar allegorical mode of the Commedia. Hence, in Singleton's famous and paradoxical formula, "the fiction of the Divine Comedy is that it is not a fiction' (Elements of Structure 62). To the extent we keep in focus this outer frame in which the claiming of historicity for the literal sense of the narrative according to the allegory of the theologians amounts to a poetic posturing, however serious and sincere it may be conceded to be, the mode of the narrative must be qualified as 'realism' rather than as the literal signification of reality. Both Auerbach and Singleton exalted Dante's art of realism as something of an original departure in the history of culture. They saw the expression and manifestation of the poem's assertion of literal, historical truth in the realism which they recognized as distinguishing Dante's art from that of his contemporaries and predecessors, indeed as the outstanding breakthrough of his genius, both in the history of literature and in the pursuit of his theological ends. The mimetic life-likeness of Dante's representations seemed implicitly to assert that they were real and true, and so realism seemed to be of a piece with the poem's claim to truth and historicity. Indeed it might be inferred that this claim was actually made principally only in and through the realism itself. Nowhere does the poem make any tmrhetorical statement that it is a true account. Indeed how could it do any such thing, being a poem? Furthermore, realism seemed uniquely appropriate as a style of art for representing an empathically Christian truth. Christianity proclaimed that truth had been revealed in an historically incarnate form. The man from Nazareth, of the lineage of David, had declared that he was the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And how could an historically embodied truth be represented, if not in realistic terms? Dante's realism was so important to Auerbach and Singleton because it seemed to respond to the exigency of revealing a Christian truth in a Christian way, that is, as incarnate in concrete, historical form. The abstract, rational truths of Platonism could well be expressed in a symbolic language and allegorical code that did not try to imitate the world as we know it, but rather gestured beyond it towards an ideal world of pure forms. But the incarnate truth of the Christian religion demanded to be represented in the full historical concreteness that only realism was capable of achieving. This association of realism as Dante's style of representation with the poem's claim to represent reality has often proved too patent to be resisted. The characteristics which make the narrative of the Commedia 'realistic' were thus at the same time supposed to be those which certified it as being true, and this brought it about that realism was taken as a warrant

Reader's Application and the Moment of Truth 265 for literal or historical truth. Although both Singleton and Auerbach underscore the 'margin' between them,9 refusing to forget that for Dante poetry is in any case, following the definition in De vulgari eloquentia, a 'fictio rhetorica musicaque poita' [a rhetorical fiction made with music], it became all too tempting for criticism under their sway to take this connection between realism and historicity as perfectly natural and obvious: why else would Dante make his creations so lifelike except in order that they be taken as actual, real-life, historical agents and events, since just this historicity of the literal meaning of his poem is what is demanded by the allegory of the theologians or the figural realism which Singleton and Auerbach respectively were convinced was the poem's mode of signifying? In her review of critical viewpoints on the truth-claims of the Commedia, Teodolinda Barolini concentrates on realism as "the consequence' of the poem's claim to being true. Yet realism is only one of many techniques including some with tendencies towards the fantastic - that Dante uses in presenting his poem as true. The poem's truth-claim is not to be narrowly identified with the presumed historicity of its literal sense but more broadly embraces also its prophetic truth, which for one like Nardi, whom Barolini cites, can consist in its being true vision (Visione verace'). This sort of truth need not necessarily be conveyed through realistic representation. We might rather expect the opposite of a realistic style for the representation of an extraordinary visionary experience, in religious terms a miracle granted by exceptional grace. In the interest of maintaining the literal truth-claim, the consensus about Dante's realism sometimes tended to overlook or play down, or else ingeniously to reinterpret as "pre-emptive psychology,' still in the interest of maintaining the literal truth-claim, all the disclaimers which punctuate the narrative with deliberate exposures of its artificiality, of the fact that it is not real however much it may seem so; the continual reminders that it is only a verbal construct, grossly inadequate to the task at that (see, for example, Inf. 4.145-7, Purg. 9.70-2, Par. 23.55-69); and those junctures where the narrative becomes frankly fantastic, the very opposite of realistic. The poem is instinct with warnings, both subtle and blatant, against mistaking realism for reality. One of the most conspicuous is the episode concerning the monster Geryon, who rises out of the depths and out of many texts, a sort of literary collage, to ferry Dante and Virgil down to the eighth circle of Hell. Aware that he is severely straining credibility, Dante reminds his reader that truth often has the face of a lie and ironically swears by the notes of his 'comedia' that he actually saw the

266 William Franke marvelous monster, just as he describes it, come swimming up from the infernal ditch. There are no limits to how far a fiction can go in vouching for its own truth. Not only what is said in story but even the poet's own affirmations in propria persona are within the poem and participate in its condition as fiction, so that the narrator can swear an oath and have this too belong to the playful pretending of a fictive mode. He exploits the fact that the most realistic narration and the most solemn profession alike are nonetheless wholly fictive in the discourse of a poem. This need not be taken to mean that the literal sense of the narrative is definitely not historical and purely a fiction. The narrative oscillates between these two possibilities of interpretation, and finds its true sense only within its appropriation by the reader in an act of interpretation and decision. Only so can it become truly revelatory. There is a suggestion that Dante may really have gone to the other world, a possibility of taking this in the most direct, literal way, which however cannot be definitively affirmed on the basis of the poem's representations. Belief in this is possible only on the basis of a kind of faith. But whether it is believed or not, the narrative opens up possibilities of existence for its readers, which can be taken over and made their own. Such appropriation is the event in which the poem assumes concrete historical reality, and in this event the poem can happen as a personally experienced revelation of truth, based on re-enactment of Dante's 'essemplo' (Par. 1.70-2). Singleton and Auerbach made it unmistakably clear that Dante's poetry is in its essence historical and incarnational. This followed directly from its essentially Christian inspiration. But what is truly historical, more than the literal sense of the narrative, which becomes overtly and conspicuously fictive, preposterous, impossible, for example in the episode involving Geryon, is the historicity of the reader. The main locus of history in the poem is not the literal sense and mimetic surface of the narrative - as if by ever more perfect imitation this might pass out of the realm of fiction into the real - but the existence of a reader who can really and historically appropriate a text, bringing its implications to fruition in life and action. This is what Christian incarnation ultimately entails, as when the Church in the world becomes the embodiment of Christ by its receptivity to and enactment of his Word and Spirit. Thus the truth of the poem only happens through appropriation, when the narrative and its possibilities for existence are appropriated into the life-story and personal history of individuals presumably discovering the authentic historicity of their existence in Christian conversion.10

Reader's Application and the Moment of Truth 267 This is to understand the event of the narrative as historical in an existential sense.11 The historicity in question pertains to the existence of the reader, an individual who exists as a relation between a personal past and a future destiny. Dante-protagonist as literal, historical presence in the narrative is vitally important as an image of the concrete historicity which each reader possesses or can attain.12 He illustrates how relating one's past tradition and future horizon through a present of decision works to construct the historical reality of an individual life. Hardly any more compelling illustration of this historical character of personal existence could be imagined than Dante's own life-story as represented in the Commedia, in its trajectory between the dark wood of a past of error and the anticipation of the divine vision for endless eternity. But even beyond this image, readers find a model for the historizing (historymaking) structure of their existence in Dante's activity as author, interpreting his whole life as directed towards a final destination, synthesizing the narrative from a point beyond it, articulating his own existence into that of a protagonist and a distinctly figured authorial persona who interprets the protagonist's journey. I suggest Dante felt the truth of his poem was fully historical, as he seems to have implied in the Letter to Cangrande, as incredible as that perhaps seemed even to him, because he devined the existential grounds of the sense and very intelligibility of history. In other words, he felt that he could claim historicity for the experience proposed by his poem on the basis of his sense that, for all its use of fictions, the story of his journey and its making was the very reality of his own life as an interpretive venture. The same would hold, presumably, for the story of any Christian conversion. It is a multi-dimensional, a polysemous historicity, truer than any one-dimensional narration of facts could be, for it is laden with all the possible ways of construing one's past and relating it to a future one projects in a present one decides. Even the pure fictions have everything to do with Dante's interpretation of his past and his defining for himself his future, and in this sense they have everything to do with his real, personal historicity. This is historicity in a sense ultimately more important than that which may or may not belong to an historical ride on the back of a monster composed out of literary pastiche or the historical fart of a devil called Malacoda. Historicity in this sense is completed in the application of Dante's adventures in interpretation to the life of the reader, for it is a historicity that comes about always in conjunction with a present act of interpreta-

268 William Franke tion, determined by and determining past, present, and future in an event of understanding in which they come to be understood. The claim to historicity, then, cannot be reduced to a claim to know past fact (including the future prophetically disclosed as if it were fact). If the history in question were to be merely a past event, it could not be experienced as religious truth by anyone, not even by Dante the author. Hermeneutic access to the truth of history as an ultimately religious truth can be secured only through its event in the present. To understand how this is so - and it is something Dante profoundly understood - we are greatly aided by the hermeneutical-existential theology of modern times, which has explored the way religious truth is conditioned by, and is the expression of, the historical-existential structure of human being. The work especially of Rudolph Bultmann, along with many followers, has pointed in this direction. As read through Bultmann's existentialist hermeneutic, even the historical affirmations of the New Testament need to be understood first as appeals to understand oneself in accordance with what those affirmations disclose about the fundamental structure of human existence, before they can be understood with reference to the past. Everything that can be understood in and as history is conditioned by how one understands oneself presently. Thus Bultmann writes, 'And just as little as the proclamation [in preaching Christ] communicates something that happened at a certain place and at a certain time, but rather says what has occurred to the person being addressed, so little is faith the knowledge of some fact within the world or the willingness to hold some remarkable dogma to be true. Rather it is the obedience that obeys God not in general or in abstracto, but in the concrete now' (87). Sometimes Bultmann seems to recommend that faith disembarrass itself altogether of beliefs concerning an historical past, substituting instead understanding of oneself in the present exclusively. This emphasis risks divorcing one time dimension - that of the present - from the others. Dante, for all his keen appreciation of the retroactive shaping power of interpretation and self-understanding, of how interpretation in the present impinges upon the very reality of the past, does not elide the past nor even diminish the effect of its presentation as 'fact/ but rather holds this always together with its determination by interpretation in the present. Similarly, present interpretation, and centrally the interpretive decision of faith (i.e., to understand oneself as God's creation redeemed by Christ), is not simply an arbitrary existentialist leap ex nihilo. Although this aspect of the human situation is certainly to be experienced to the full - indeed all

Reader's Application and the Moment of Truth 269 the way to the bottom of Hell's abyss - it is not to be taken as the ultimate truth about human existence, but rather as a very basic, universal experience out of which it is also possible to participate in a continuation of the past and particularly of the act of faith of Christ himself transmitted through gospel and tradition. Belief in the historical facts of the gospel is certainly not irrelevant to the articulation of this faith, but neither can it be divorced from the act of understanding oneself in the present in relation to the Saviour. The historical veracity of the gospel story, as of Dante's miracle story, to be neither proved nor dismissed, makes for the tension of faith, and Dante exploits and renders such tension explicit poetically. Read in the perspective of existentialist theology, the New Testament, mythology and all, serves to manifest an interpretive understanding of human existence. The mythology represents otherworldly realities as objective, historical events and entities of this world. Existential interpretation uncovers these representations as embodying an implicit interpretation of human existence in its character, for example, as openness to the future (or hopefulness), full acceptance of one's being as contingent and as given together and shared with that of one's fellows (or love), and resolute commitment to assume one's destiny freely (or faith). It is in this, their existential import, that the affirmations of the New Testament, then, would have their religious truth. Does this mean that their supposed historical truth is null and void? No. It means that the positivist myth of history is exploded and that the historicity of faith belongs in the first instance to the interpretive acts which constitute the historical being of one who believes. History can never be reached except through a present act of interpretation reactivating the past as it is meaningful presently in human existence. This insight reflects broadly on phenomena of religious understanding, for example upon why Jesus' miracles, as recounted in the gospel, are generally not even discernible except to the eyes of faith. That Jesus is Lord of my life now, as witnessed by faith, not documentary historical evidence, is the basis for affirmations about his miracles and resurrection. In this sense, all the statements of the Bible are to be read fundamentally as interpellations, appeals not to accept objective facts but to define oneself in such a way as opens a whole new field of objectivity from a perspective of faith: "Therefore, faith also, like the word, is revelation because it is only real in this occurrence and otherwise is nothing.' It is 'no disposition of the human soul, no being convinced, but rather the answer to an address' (Bultmann 87).

270 William Franke Precisely this emphasis on address in Bultmann's thought has been pursued further by Gerhard Ebeling. In Word and Faith he writes, '[T]he content of what God says always unconditionally concerns the person of the hearer ... God's Word rightly understood is never statement but always address' (quoted in Funk 25). The same needs to be said in some sense of the Divine Comedy, if it is to be understood in a manner commensurate with modern hermeneutical insight, itself a recovery, I would suggest, of a sense of interpretation as intrinsic to history and its truth that was second nature to Dante. Particularly the addresses to the reader make evident the extent to which Dante himself was conscious of this dimension of address in which, necessarily, the significance of his discourse is realized. It is especially in the addresses to the reader that Dante shows how the historical sense and meaning of the whole poem becomes actual precisely at the locus of the individual whose existence in the past, present, and future is engaged by the event of the poem. Dante as poet understands that history can never be attained as an achieved fact, over and done with in the past. History always reaches us out of the past through the mediation of an interpretation in the present, an appropriation determined by what is meaningful in a new situation. Dante refuses to overlook this dynamic factor of interpretive activation of the past, the historizing in the present and with a view to the future that alone gives a meaning to history and lets 'facts' emerge, because significant in these relations, as what they are. He compellingly illustrates this by the way Statius and he himself appropriate Virgil, discovering latent Christian meanings in Virgil's ostensibly pagan text. The basis for this appropriation even by misprision is a present context of interpretation. Statius explains how the whole world was pregnant with the true faith sown by the gospel message, with which Virgil's words consounded ('consonava'): Gia era '1 mondo tutto quanto pregno de la vera credenza, seminata per li messaggi de 1'etterno regno; e la parola tua sopra toccata si consonava a' nuovi predicant!; ond' io a visitarli presi usata. (Purg. 22.76-81) [Already the world was completely impregnated with the true faith, sown by the messages of the eternal kingdom;

Reader's Application and the Moment of Truth 271 and your word, touched on above, chimed with the new preachers; whence I took to visiting them.]

The episode illustrates how what shows up as history always depends radically on an act of reading, in this case Dante's reading of how Statius might have read Virgil. Dante's poem consistently presents history as a series of just such acts of reading.13 It foregrounds how histories happen the way they do precisely because the reader is in their midst. One of Dante's most famous figures, Francesca, famous as a lover, even more fundamentally owes her fate to her actions as a reader. A contrast between her and Statius as reader is hinted at when he echoes but corrects her amorous rhetoric, which had exalted love as a sort of spontaneous combustion ('Amor ch'al cor gentil ratto s'apprende'), by an ethical rhetoric transfiguring the motif of amorous inspiration: 'Amore, acceso di virtu, sempre altro accese ...' [Love, ignited by virtue, always ignites another ... (Purg. 22.10-11)]. The courtly language of Francesca in Inferno 5 distorts her sin of lust, the subjection of reason to impulse by carnal sinners ('i peccatori carnali, / che la ragion sommettono al talento' [5.39]), through the lens ofdolce stil novo lyric with its supposedly ennobling ideal of love and sublimating of passion. She is 'reading' even as she speaks, inasmuch as she quotes from Guido Guinizelli ('Al cor gentil rempaira sempre Amore') and from Dante's own love poetry (Vita nuova 20), and it is thus exquisitely appropriate that her sin should be represented as having been abetted by a book, in which a text and its author are conflated together, sharing the role of literary intermediary as pander: 'Galeotto fu '1 libro e chi lo scrisse' [Gallehault was the author and the one that wrote it (Inf. 5.137)]. Francesca indeed rightly indicates how literary mediation lies at the root of her sin. She implies that it is by identifying herself with Guinivere that she falls into the forbidden embrace. What she does not seem to realize is that this shows it to be a sin not of love or lust so radically as of self-misunderstanding and misrepresentation. The story she tells reveals in indirect ways a meaning of its own, realized in the very act of its being told by Francesca, that undermines her interpretation of her lapse as inspired by a noble ideal of love. Renato Poggioli has effectively explored how Francesca's failure to recognize her own ineradicable difference from her courtly models and her own belonging rather to a corrupt world of the petty bourgoisie is betrayed unwittingly by the cruder language, the 'questi' [this one] for her beloved and the anatomical terms like 'bocca'

272 William Franke [mouth] that unmask the ugly lust behind her high, refined citations.14 Moreover, she begins the story with a description of her place of origin 'su la marina dove '1 Po discende / per aver pace co' seguaci sui' (5.97-8) - through an idyllic image of peace and amity that is totally belied by the tempestuous languishing to which she is perpetually condemned in her end. To the extent that the distortions in question are achieved in the present moment of her appearing to and conversing with Dante, her essential sin of self-misinterpretation, wilful or unconscious as it may be, is textually embodied, and in this sense 'carnally' enacted, by her own words in this very text. This sort of textually achieved sin propagates itself. Francesca's seductive self-presentation, dressed in attractive rhetoric, unmans Dante. Already self-deceived by a romantic perception of the rout of the lustful, whom he describes as 'le donne antiche e' cavalieri' [the ancient ladies and the knights (5.71)], he completely falls for Francesca's mendacious narrative in what is marked in the final stroke of the canto as a moral falling into mortal sin, a symbolic death associated with the body and hence with sensuality: 'E caddi come corpo morto cade' [And I fell as a dead body falls (5.142)]. Thus Dante, too, as character in this text misinterprets himself, characterizing his sympathy for Francesca as motivated by pity or even, as we might also translate, by 'piety': 'Francesca, i tuoi martiri / a lagrimar mi fanno tristo e pio' [Francesca, your sufferings make me sorrowful and pitying / pious to the point of tears (5.116-17)]. His libidinous interest is unmistakably betrayed, nonetheless, by the eager accents with which he asks for details, the how and when, evidently anticipating something spicy: 'Ma dimmi: al tempo d'i dolci sospiri, a che e come concedette amore che conosceste i dubbiosi disiri?' (5.118-20) [/But tell me: at the time of the sweet suspirations, by what and in what way did love concede that you 'realized' your dubious desires?']

The sin of lust here represented as mediated by reading ('Per piu fiate li occhi ci sospinse / quella lettura...' [5.130]) is actually re-enacted in the readings that Francesca, and following her Dante, perform in the canto and potentially also in the reading that we, its readers, perform upon it. At each of these levels, the sensuality which perverts rational understand-

Reader's Application and the Moment of Truth 273 ing and motivates misinterpretation is made manifest in an act of reading and in fact coincides with it. This transfer of the happening of the sin from a past that can only be represented (and whether truly or not cannot but remain moot) into the immanent event of reading and interpretation constitutes one of the compelling ways in which Dante apprehends history as interpretation and as therefore accessible to the present. This is not to deny the reality of the historical past, but only to shift the point of focus to our present endeavour of interpretation in progress whenever we are engaged in representing the historical, and to the way that all history and its truth is leveraged from this pivot-point. In these ways, then, Dante's text contrives to lay open an extensive background of interpretation, and of interpretations of interpretations, at work in the story Francesca tells, and it succeeds by linguistic nuances in implying a whole history contrary in meaning and moral significance to the one Francesca self-consciously relates. The truer history, the one resulting in visible punishment, is made manifest, not so crucially in any facts or events represented by Francesca as in the interpretations performed in and by the text, and in turn by the reader upon the text, in the first instance by Dante himself and behind him by the rest of us, vulnerable to the seductions of the story Francesca is nevertheless exposed as fabricating. We may admit that there is also something immediately compelling about the image of Francesca and Paolo enveloped in turbulence -but this is not where we touch history fundamentally in this canto. It is rather in the interpretations by which Francesca makes up her own story, dissembling her sin with lovely language, together with Dante's interpretive unveiling of this history of deception by the subtle suggestions of his poetry with its direct involvement of reading in determining the dynamic force of all such facts as can be represented, that the historical character of the poem is achieved. And here reading is directly involved in determining the dynamic force of all such facts as can be represented. The poem as an event of reading gives us direct access to human historicity being constituted by interpretation, rather than just to history as represented by realistic mimesis. In episode after episode, Dante presents the true sense of his characters' histories in and through their modes of interpreting themselves presently in the text. It is no exaggeration to say that the destinies of characters throughout all three realms of the afterlife - which destinies reveal in full, as in the sight of God, the final truth about each character's earthly existence - coincide with their own readings or misreadings of themselves and of their places in God's plan. Everything in Dante's poem and its

274 William Franke implicit ontology is interpretation, and is revealed as such. The characters' self-interpretations are the rationale for their being just where they are in eternity. From Francesca to Brunette, from Capaneo to Ulysses, the denizens of Hell are shown as sinning fundamentally by obstinate, irreversible misunderstandings of themselves and what they really are. The judgments manifest in them show how God sees them, but they generally do not see themselves that way; all have trapped themselves in an eternal struggle against the truth, their truth. This holds even when they are lucid about having missed becoming what they were created to be through their own false interpretations of themselves. Of course, the sinners are punished for what they have done, yet this is consistently presented in its inextricable relation to how they understand themselves and the significance of what they do. Fundamentally, understanding oneself as separate from God is what makes certain ways of behaving sinful. By exposing the act of self-interpretation that is bound up with the external act in which sin is manifest, Dante reveals how an ongoing reality of constituting oneself as historical through self-interpretation in a certain freely chosen way, rather than just some nefarious deed that might simply be forgiven and let rest in peace as 'history/ is the direct cause of unending suffering for damned souls. The most serious problem, then, with the view that situates the poem's claim to historical reality primarily in its mimetic realism is that it shallows out history into a narrative surface, the so-called 'first sense.' Equating historicity as the ground and anchor for Dante's truth-claims with mimesis in this way defrauds Dante's richly hermeneutic understanding of history by a narrow, positivistic conception of it as what manifestly happens on the scene of history, like a sequence of images across a movie screen. For Dante, it is no longer necessary to take history as something flatly given like a spectacle on a screen. Dante's poetry's greatness resides perhaps principally in its opening to view the interpretive depths out of which historicity emerges as a complex product, a poiesis, that is, a 'making,' in the etymological sense of the word Dante himself seems to have in mind in De vulgari eloquentia. Singleton's final statement on the poetics of the Commedia was entitled 'The Irreducible Dove.' This title alludes to St Thomas Aquinas's famous qwestio as to whether the dove which descended upon Jesus at the moment of his baptism, according to the Gospels, was a real dove. Singleton echoes Thomas's resounding affirmation that the literal sense of the Scripture designates an unequivocally real and historical event, and he maintains that the same must hold for the Commedia, if we accept its

Reader's Application and the Moment of Truth 275 special, quasi-scriptural mode of signifying. What is irreducible, then, for Singleton is history. As Singleton construes it for Dante, history is the writing of God, which Dante imitates, so that his journey through the other worlds is taken as historically real and the narrative which recounts it as literally true, all within the convention of the poem as a fiction. We should certainly agree that history is what makes the difference between Dante's prophetic poetics and the Platonic poetics of his predecessors together with all other forms of poetic allegory. But history in the Commedia is anything but irreducible. Where Singleton sees history and the real as something given, 'irreducible,' concrete, Dante illustrates dramatically and compellingly the nature of the historically real as hermeneutically constructed. The history that Singleton assumes as an extra-poetical given, an irreducible ground of truth in the poem, is opaque, but Dante opens up history to view in its making; and where Singleton's theory shallows out the historical sense of the poem to the literal, mimetic surface of its narrative, Dante reveals its hermeneutical depths. The poem does not hypostatize history, as Singleton does; it interprets history dynamically through investment in the movements of meaning in language of which history, in specific case after specific case, is shown to be an effect. Dante suggests beneath the visible spectacle of the narrative the conflict of interpretations, the complications and continuities, as well as the exclusions and mutations and misprisions of tradition, which show through the mimetic action at every point. Both verbally and visually Dante's mimesis is full of depths of allusion and a referentiality reaching way beyond the immediate literal sense of the narrative, revealing and concealing far more than is present in the here and now of the narrative action. Indeed the locus of the making of history is not the plot of the poem so much as the act of reading. The more significant implications of the poem's claim to truth and historicity concern not the historical sense of the narrative so much as the existential historicity of the reader as the basis for the interpreting that makes history and discloses truth. This is pointed up in instance after instance within the poetic fiction, as well as being instanced by Dante's poem itself as a monumental work of interpretation. Generally, it is only at the theoretical level that the constriction of the sense of history to the literal sense of the narrative has been operative. Singleton and Auerbach themselves have led the way in discovering the interpretive constructions of history that are so powerfully manifest in Dante's poem. Singleton's championing of the Augustinian principle of retrospective comprehension of the meaning of an historical, as of any

276 William Franke syntactical, sequence, the meaning of the whole becoming comprehensible from the end-point which completes its sense ('Vistas'), belongs to the appreciation of history as a structure of meaning rather than as an empirical given. And to Auerbach we owe the understanding of history in the Commedia as 'figura.'15 Moreover, Singleton is profoundly right and virtually visionary in his perception that Dante's hermeneutic - call it allegory of the theologians (or perhaps theological poetics) - aims to reach a truth that transcends history (projected, we must add, from within the very historical conditionedness of all understanding in language). This is of capital importance, and it is worth quoting Singleton at some length: ... our faith in the ability of the word to contain a changeless truth continues to diminish until we find it hard and some of us find it intolerable to see things timelessly. When we shall have completely lost the belief in the possibility of transcending the world of change which is the world of history, then we shall have lost a space, a dimension, which is needed not only by religion and metaphysics but by myth and poetry as well. When there is no transcendence of change, no escape from the flux of things, how can we have anything but history? (I will not press the question, that being true, how we can have history either!) How, in short, can the word any longer hold truth as it did for Plato and for Dante? (Elements of Structure, 78)

This gestures towards what has been largely lost from the contemporary hermeneutic horizon. It is fairly typical of contemporary philosophers and critics to embrace hermeneutics as the good news of a radical and irreparable breaking away from 'any transcendental standpoint beyond historical consciousness' (Marshall 73). Dante well understood, at least in poetic practice, what has been rediscovered and elaborated theoretically by the modern hermeneutic revolution: namely, how history is constructed through retrospective projections of significance, with all the contingencies of language and interpretation that this entails. The interpretive dynamics of his text can be more sharply focused today than ever before on the basis of what is in some respects a more finely articulated theoretical understanding of the hermeneutic principles of historical interpretation. But Dante also understood something about truth and history that has become almost impossible for us to think today, in our conceit of being disabused of illusions in having achieved a 'postmetaphysical' standpoint. We stand to understand our own interpretive reality much better by heeding the phenomenon of interpretation revealed

Reader's Application and the Moment of Truth 277 with a certain primordial wholeness in Dante's poem. His belief in eternal truth lies beyond, not shy of, the 'revelation' of historical contingency, and specifically of the historicity of truth, which has had so great an impact on the present age that no recovery from this insight - blinding like all insight - seems yet to be in sight. Notes 1 This essay, having appeared originally as 'Dante and Modern Hermeneutic Thought' in Lectura Dantis: A Forum for Dante Research and Interpretation 12 (1993), forms a segment (chapter 4, sect. 1) of the argument presented entire in Dante's Interpretive Journey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); reprinted with permission. 2 The saying that a latter-day interpreter may understand a text better than its own author became a slogan of modern hermeneutic tradition through its adoption by Schleiermacher. 3 Barolini, 'Detheologizing Dante: For a "New Formalism" in Dante Studies,' 35. Likewise Hollander, in 'Dante Theologus-Poeta/ considers the debate over the allegory of the theologians versus the allegory of the poets, which means over the literal and historical truth of the narrative, to be 'what can fairly be considered the central problem in the interpretation of the Commedia' (61). The topic is developed extensively in Hollander's Allegory in Dante's 'Cornmedia', as well as in Pepin 15-51. 4 Actually, the Commedia represents only an outstanding case of the sort of question which is raised by texts in general on being approached 'hermeneutically.' Gadamer, in criticizing the opposite approach, namely 'historical objectivism' ('Der historische Objektivismus'), concentrates on just its tendency to suspend the claim of traditionary texts to say something true: The text that is understood historically is forced to abandon its claim to be saying something true. We think we understand when we see the historical situation and try to reconstruct the historical horizon. In fact, however, we have given up the claim to find in the past any truth that is valid and intelligible for ourselves. Acknowledging the otherness of the other in this way, making him the object of objective knowledge, involves the fundamental suspension of his claim to truth' (303-4). 5 The opening verses of Paradiso 1 have become a crux for these questions, thanks to commentaries on them by Pietro di Dante and perhaps by Dante himself in the Letter to Cangrande. See Padoan. 6 On these early commentators and for references to their works, as well as for

278 William Franke the attack by the Dominican Guido Vernani upon Dante for his fraudulent 'poeticis fantasmatibus et figmentis/ see Padoan 41-2. Caesar concurs that, 'in practice, the fourteenth-century commentators are unanimous in rejecting or circumventing this claim [that the journey is historically true], if such it is, and in insisting to various degrees on the fictionality of Dante's invention, not least, it seems, in order to protect the poem from suspicions of heterodoxy or worse' (8). 7 It should, of course, be remembered that Auerbach and Singleton were not working out a common program of interpretation, but rather working both in highly original ways; their approaches became even more differentiated in practice than in their theoretical paradigms. As Baranski notes, 'lo spazio fra il figuralismo di Auerbach e 1'esegesi morale di Singleton e notevole, malgrado la loro comune ascendenza biblica' [the space between the figuralism of Auerbach and the moral exegesis of Singleton is considerable in spite of their common biblical derivation (83)]. 8 Auerbach, 'Figura.' The quotation is actually from a brief restatement by Auerbach of his views in American Critical Essays on the 'Divine Comedy,' 108. 9 Singleton sagely remarks, 'The poem is distinguishable from Scripture and from reality and from history in its being a fiction. Its distance from its three models (and, that is, the distance from existence) is the very condition by which it can be true' (Elements of Structure, 62). 10 This dimension of meaning in the Bible and in Dante's text has been brought out especially by Charity. 11 'Existentialism/ having become passe as a trend or movement, is acutely assessed with regard to the reasons for its enduring intellectual validity by Pareyson (227-47). 12 The vocabulary of 'historizing,' 'historicality/ etc., comes out of the writings of Martin Heidegger (see especially Being and Time, sect. 72-7). Such terms refer, according to their grammatical inflections, to various aspects of history as constructed by interpretation. I use 'historicity' as part of the same semantic family, preferred only for grating a little less harshly against the ear of ordinary English usage. 13 A plethora of compelling exegetical instances of this can be found, for example, in Mazzotta. 14 A penetrating reading of the 'interpretive poetics' of canto 5 of the Inferno is offered also by Gellrich, chapter 4, and a connection between the treatments of Francesca and Statius in terms of Dante's poetic of truth is suggested by lannucci, 'Dante's Theory of Genres,' 17-18. 15 A sense of the depth of history, with explicit reference to Auerbach's description in 'Odysseus' Scar' of the biblical history of Abraham as unfolding

Reader's Application and the Moment of Truth 279 against a 'background frought with depth/ in contrast with the wholly foregrounded existence of the Homeric hero, is registered by lannucci. lannucci also points to the relevance of Christian interpretations of history such as Bultmann's for Dante's transformation of the Ulysses' myth, as well as to Dante's apprehension of the reading process as a 'historical and ethical act.' Bibliography Auerbach, Erich. 'Figura/ In Neue Dante-studien. Istanbul 1944. Trans. R. Manheim. In Scenes from the Drama of European Literature: Six Essays. New York: Meridian, 1959. - American Critical Essays on the 'Divine Comedy.' Ed. R.J. Clements. New York: New York University Press, 1967. Baranski, Zygmunt. 'Allegoria, storia e letteratura nella Commedia.' In Dante e le forme dell'allegoresi. Ed. M. Picone. Ravenna: Longo, 1987. Barolini, Teodolinda. 'Detheologizing Dante: For a "New Formalism" in Dante Studies.' Quaderni d'italianistica 10 (1989). Rpt. as 'Detheologizing Dante: Realism, Reception, and the Resources of Narrative.' In The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Bultmann, Rudolph. Existence and Faith: Shorter Writings of Rudolph Bultmann. Ed. S.M. Ogden. Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1960. Caesar, Michael. Dante: The Critical Heritage, c. 1314(?)-c. 1870. New York: Rutledge, 1989. Charity, A.C. Events and Their Afterlife: A Dialectics of Christian Typology in the Bible and in Dante. London: Cambridge University Press, 1966. Funk, Robert W. Language, Hermeneutic, and the Word of God: The Problem of Language in the New Testament and Contemporary Theology. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Trans. J. Weinsheimer and D. Marshall. 2nd ed. rev. New York: Crossroad, 1989. Gellrich, Jesse. The Idea of the Book in the Middle Ages. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. J. Macquarie and E. Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1962. Hollander, Robert. Allegory in Dante's 'Commedia.' Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969. - 'Dante Theologus-Poeta.' In Studies in Dante. Ravenna: Longo, 1980. lannucci, Amilcare. 'Dante's Theory of Genres and the Divina Commedia.' Dante Studies 91 (1973): 1-25.

280 William Franke - 'Ulysses' "folle volo": The Burden of History.' Medioevo Romanzo 3 (1976): 10-45. Marshall, Donald. 'Truth, Tradition, and Understanding.' diacritics 7 (1977): 70-7. Mazzotta, Giuseppe. Dante, Poet of the Desert: Allegory and History in the 'Divine Comedy.' Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. Padoan, Giorgio. 'La "mirabile visione" di Dante e 1'Epistola a Cangrande.' In II pio Enea, I'empio Ulisse. Ravenna: Longo, 1977. Pareyson, Luigi. 'Rettifiche suH'esistenzialismo.' In Scritti in onore di G. Bontadini. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1974. Pepin, Jean. Dante et la tradition de I'allegorie. Montreal: Institute d'etudes Medievales, 1970. Poggioli, Renato. 'Paolo e Francesca.' In Dante: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. J. Freccero. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965. Schleiermacher, Friedrich D.E. Hermeneutics: The Handwritten Manuscripts. Ed. H. Kimmerle. Trans. J. Duke and J. Forstman. Montana: Scholars Press, 1977. Singleton, Charles S. Dante Studies I: Elements of Structure. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957. - 'The Irreducible Dove.' Comparative Literature 9 (1957): 129-35. - 'The Vistas in Retrospect.' In Atti del congresso internazionale di studi danteschi [20-7 April 1965]. Rpt. in Modern Language Notes 81 (1966): 55^80.

Notes on Contributors

JOHN AHERN is professor of Italian in the Dante Antolini Chair at Vassar College. Previously he taught at Stanford University and has served as visiting professor at Brown University. He is the author of numerous essays on Dante. ALBERT RUSSELL ASCOLI is professor of Italian studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His publications include Ariosto's Bitter Harmony: Crisis and Evasion in the Italian Renaissance (Princeton University Press, 1987) and Machiavelli and the Discourse of Literature (ed., with Victoria Kahn, Cornell University Press, 1993), as well as essays on Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Ariosto, Tasso, and Pirandello. ZYGMUNT G. BARANSKI is professor of Italian studies at the University of Reading and has regularly served as visiting professor at North American universities. He is editor of the interdisciplinary journal The Italianist. He has published extensively on Dante and Dante's influence, on fourteenth- and twentieth-century Italian literature, on the cinema, on mass and popular culture, and on literary theory. TEODOLINDA BAROLINI is professor of Italian and chair of the Italian Department, Columbia University. Professor Barolini has taught at the University of California at Berkeley (1978-83) and New York University (1983-92), and has served as a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins and Brown Universities. She serves as councillor and vice-president of the Dante Society of America, and is on the editorial board of Dante Studies and Romanic Review. As well as numerous articles on Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, she is the author of Dante's Poets: Textuality and

282 Notes on Contributors Truth in the Comedy (Princeton University Press, 1984), winner of the Marraro Prize and John Nicholas Brown Prize, and The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante (Princeton University Press, 1992). STEVEN BOTTERILL is associate professor of Italian and chair of Italian Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. After completing his doctorate at Cambridge University, where he was Research Fellow of Queens' College, he taught at Cambridge and at the Universities of Aberdeen and London before coming to Berkeley in 1986. He has published numerous articles on Dante, on contemporary Dante studies, and on the fourteenth-century lyric poet Cecco Nuccoli; his book, Dante and the Mystical Tradition: Bernard ofClairvaux in the 'Commedia/ appeared in 1994. JOAN FERRANTE is professor of comparative literature at Columbia University, where she has taught medieval literature for thirty years. She was president of the Dante Society of America during 1985-91, and served on the boards of Dante Studies and the Lectura Dantis Americana. Her writings on Dante include articles about language and prosody, structure and sin, and cities and politics in the Comedy. She published The Political Vision of the Divine Comedy in 1984. WILLIAM FRANKE is associate professor of comparative literature and Italian at Vanderbilt University, where he teaches literary theory and humanities. He has published mainly philosophical and theological interpretations of poets, including Dante, Milton, Blake, Leopardi, Manzoni, Montale, Racine, and Yeats. His book, Dante's Interpretive Journey (1996), in the Religion and Postmodernism series of the University of Chicago Press, interprets Dante's poetic and theological hermeneutic in dialogue with modern theories of interpretation. AMILCARE A. IANNUCCI was director of the Canadian Academic Centre in Italy from 1981 to 1983 and chair of the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Toronto from 1984 to 1988. He is the author of Forma ed evento nella 'Divina Commedia' (Roma, 1984), and of numerous articles on medieval and Renaissance Italian literature. Cofounder of the journal Quaderni d'italianistica, he is also the editor of Dante Today (1989) and Dante e la 'bella scola' della poesia: autorita e sfida poetica (Ravenna, 1993), as well as several other volumes on topics which range from Petrarch to McLuhan. One of the associate editors of

Notes on Contributors 283 The Dante Encyclopedia, he is at present completing a book on Dante's Limbo and producing an educational video series on the Divine Comedy. Two programs - on Inferno 5 and Inferno 26 - are now complete. CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ is professor of Italian and chair of the Medieval Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Among his teaching and research interests are thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italian lyric poetry (The Early Italian Sonnet, 1986), Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, palaeography, and philology (Medieval Manuscripts and Textual Criticism, 1976), and the relationship of art and literature in the Middle Ages. His current research focuses on Dante and the Bible. He is editor of Dante Studies and former book review editor for Italica, and serves as vice-president of the American Association of Teachers of Italian and president of the American Boccaccio Association. RICHARD LANSING is professor of Italian and comparative literature at Brandeis University. His publications include From Image to Idea: A Study of the Simile in Dante's 'Commedia' (Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1977), a translation of Dante's // Convivio (The Banquet) for the Garland Library of Medieval Literature (1990), and essays on Dante, Ariosto, Manzoni, Lampedusa, Leopardi, and Montale. He is editor of The Dante Encyclopedia, to be published by Garland Publishing. CAROLYNN LUND-MEAD is an independent scholar who has published articles in Quaderni d'italianistica and Lectura Dantis. Her research interest in intertextuality is reflected in her doctoral dissertation, which explored the relationship of fathers and sons in Virgil, Dante, and Milton, and in her present engagement in a project with Amilcare A. lannucci at the University of Toronto on Dante's biblical allusions. DEBORAH PARKER is associate professor of Italian at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Commentary and Ideology: Dante in the Renaissance (Durham, 1993). Her articles have appeared in Renaissance Quarterly, MLN, Dante Studies, and Modern Language Review. Her research interests centre on the reception of the Commedia and the incorporation of history in literature. LINO FERTILE, a graduate of the University of Padua, has taught in Great Britain (1968-95) at the Universities of Reading, Sussex, and Edinburgh, and is now professor of Romance languages and literatures

284 Notes on Contributors at Harvard. His extensive contributions on Dante have appeared in many periodicals, including Dante Studies, Filologia e Critica, Italian Studies, The Italianist, Lectura Dantis, and Lettere italiane. Among his recent publications is the critical edition of Trifone Gabriele's Annotationi nel Dante (Bologna, Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1993) and the Cambridge History of Italian Literature (co-edited with C.P. Brand, Cambridge University Press, 1996). He is co-editor of the Writers of Italy series (Edinburgh University Press). MICHELANGELO PICONE is at present professor of Italian literature at the 'Romanisches Seminar' of the University of Zurich, after having taught for many years at McGill University and various American universities (Florida, UCLA, and Arizona State). He is the author of Vita nuova e la tradizione romanza (Padova, 1979) and II racconto (Bologna, 1985), as well as numerous articles on medieval Romance literature. He has also edited several volumes, including La Nouvelle: formation, codification et rayonnement d'un genre medieval (Montreal, 1983), I cantari: struttura e tradizione (Firenze, 1984), Dante e le forme dell'allegoresi (Ravenna, 1987), II giuoco della vita bella: Folgore da San Gimignano (San Gimignano, 1988), Ovidius redivivus: von Ovid zu Dante (Stuttgart, 1994), L'Enciclopedismo medievale (Ravenna, 1994), and Guittone d'Arezzo: nel settimo centenario della morte (Firenze, 1995).

Index

Numerals in bold refer to sections of works. Aaron, 263 Abelard, 44 Abraham, 278 Abulafia, David, 44 Achilles, 102 Adam, xvii, 85,113,114,116,126, 128,134,135,137,139,144,178, 191,196,200,202,203,207 Adrastus, King, 59 Adriano V, Pope, 143 Aeacus, 60 Aeneas, 52,60,66,67,101,128,141, 145,209 Agamben, Giorgio, 13 Agathon, 65 Ahern, John, xi, 127,232 Aimeric de Peguilhan, 58 Alain de Lille: Antidaudianus, 140 Alberigo da Rosciate, 227,238 Aldobrandeschi, Umberto, 138 Alessandro, Count of Romena, 183 Alessio, Gian Carlo, 54,69 Alexander, the Great, 128 Alighieri, Jacopo, 241,242,244,245, 246,247-8

Alighieri, Pietro, 75,227,241, 242, 244,246,249, 261,262,277 Allen, Judson Boyce, 17, 251 Anchises, 141,145, 209 Andrea Lancia, 241,242,246 Andreas Capellanus, 104 Andreoli, Raffaele, 245 Angela da Foligno, 159 Anonimo Fiorentino, 225,241,242, 248 Anonimo Lombardo, 241, 246 Anselmi, Gian Mario, 188 Antiphon, 64 Aphrodite. See Ares and Aphrodite Apollo, 68, 94,95 Ares and Aphrodite, 94, 95, 96 Ariosto, Ludovico, 230,247 Aristotle, 6,27,29,30,59,133,187, 203; Poetics, 1447a: 229; Politics,

4.8.1294a.20-l: 32 Armour, Peter, 15,189,248 Arnaut Daniel, 42,154,229 Arthur, King, 107 Ascoli, Albert Russell, x, xiv, xv, xvi, 30, 35,40,42,43, 44,167

286 Index Astell, Ann, 196,197,200 Auden, W.H., 109 Auerbach, Erich, xii, 14, 26,41,42, 43, 70, 75,98,232,262,264-6,266, 275-6,278 Augustine, Saint, 4, 27,42,108,151, 155,187,199; Confessiones, 11.15: 121; De civitate Dei, 109; 18.2:100;

De doctrina Christiana, 1.3.3-1.5.5: 199; 3.10:98; 4.22:12; In loannis evangelium, 3.21:155 Augustus, 141,145 Avalle, D'Arco Silvio, 107,128 Averroes, 44 Baer, Richard Arthur, 202 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 40 Bambaglioli, Graziolo, 241,242,244 Barariski, Zygmunt, xiv, 5, 7, 8,11, 12,13,14,15,17, 43,168, 246, 251, 278 Barberi Squarotti, Giorgio, 205 Barbi, Michele, 40,159,210,246,249, 251 Barchiesi, Marino, 130 Bareiss, Karl Heinz, 14 Bargagli Stoffi-Muhlethaler, Barbara, 11 Barkan, Leonard, 40 Barlaam, 231 Barolini, Teodolinda, xv, xvi, xviii, xix, 9,15, 40,41,42,43,69,109, 260,265,277 Barthes, Roland, xiii, 40 Bartoli, Adolfo, 245 Barzizza, Gasparino, 243 Barzizza, Guiniforte, 243,251 Battaglia Ricci, Lucia, 5 Battifolle, Countess of, 183 Bauml, Franz H., 230

Beall, Chandler B., 232 Beatrice, xvi, xviii, xix, xx, 8,24,27, 29,40,41,53,61,64,68,77,80,85, 89,107,109,110,119,124,125, 133,134,135,136,137,138,139, 140,141,143,144,146,149,154, 158,169,183,185,186,188-91, 200,201,202,203-8,210 Belloni, Gino, 252 Bembo, Pietro, 243 Bene da Firenze, 14 Benedict, Saint, 88 Benoit de Sainte-Maure, 96,101-2; Roman de Troie, 28426-33:102 Benson, Larry Dean, 230 Benvenuto da Imola, 7,8,96,102, 113,241,242,243, 245,248, 249, 251,262 Bernard de Clairvaux, Saint, xx, 150, 151,152,158,160,170,173-5,178, 179,197,198,200,208,209; On Loving God, 21-2:150,151; On the Song of Songs, 1.4:197; 49.4:158; 84.1:150,152,155; Sermons, 9: 200; 10: 200; 26:197 Bernardus Silvestris, 101; De mundi universitate, 140 Bernardo, Aldo, 146 Berndt, Ronald Murray, 231 Bettridge, William Edwin, 231 Biagi, Guido, 245,252 Bianchi, Brunone, 245 Bible, xvi, 4,18, 23,25, 66, 75, 76, 82, 90,136,138,139,141,241,262, 268,269,278; Apocalypse, 145; 2 Corinthians, 12.2-4:261; Ecclesiastes, 24.29:155; Ephesians, 5.21-33:196; Ezekiel, 140; Galatians, 3.28:199; Genesis, 67,136,202; 1.26-7: 202; 2: 202;

Index 287 2.7, 21-3: 202; 2.23:196, 207; 2.24: 196,202,203; 3.7:85; Isaiah, 11.2-3:144; 12.3:151; 55.1:151; Jeremiah, 7.4: 88; 7.7: 88; 7.10: 88; 7.11: 88; John, 70,140,206,207; 1.1-12,1.23: 206; 2.3: xvi, 78; 3.16: 74; 4.5-15:151; 4.6-15:155; Luke, 1: 83; 1.28-38: 82; 3.1-4: 206; Mark, 1.1-3:206; 16.15: 85-6; Matthew, 3.1-3: 206; 5.9: 81; 7.15: 88; 10: 84; 21.9: 80; 25.34: 77; 26.73: 84; Psalms, 79; 30.20:151; 33.9:151; 43: 89; 91: 79, 80; 113: 82,130, 263; 113.1: 81; 113.3-4: 126; 114:130; 1 Timothy, 2.11-15: 203 Bigi, Emilio, 251,252 Billanovich, Giuseppe, 219, 230, 231 Blake, William, ix Blanpain, Jacques, 152,157 Bloom, Harold, 40 Boccaccio, Giovanni, ix, x, xi, xvii, 40, 75, 96,98,103,107,108,116, 215,220,229,230,233,242,248; Amoroso, visione, Redaction A, 27.86-7:116; Decameron 3, concl. 8: 229; 6, intr. 3: 229; 7, concl. 6: 229; Filostrato, 230; Genealogy of the Gods, 9: 96; Life of Dante, xi; 20: 221; Teseida, 229 Bochet, Isabelle, 151 Boethius, 25; Consolation of Philosophy, 56 Boiardo, Matteo Maria, 230; Orlando innamorato, 27 Bonagiunta da Lucca, 68,119 Bonaventure, Saint, 155,190,200, 241; Itinerarium mentis in Deum, 4: 203; 7.6:159; Vitis mystica, 46,169: 155

Boniface VIII, Pope, 35, 87,88,182, 185,186,189 Borges, Jorge Luis, 130 Borsellino, Nino, 145 Bosco, Umberto, 116,128,130,145 Botterill, Steven, xix, 40 Bovary, Emma, 104 Boyde, Patrick, 42,130 Bozzoli, Adriano, 128 Branca, Vittore, 226, 232 Bronzini, Giovanni, 230 Brownlee, Kevin, 42,167 Brugnoli, Giorgio, 15, 69 Brunet, Adrien M., 70 Brunette, Latini, 115,173,187, 274; Tesoretto, 54 Brunetto, Master, 221-3 Bruni, Francesco, 69, 70 Bruni, Leonardo, 215; Vita di Dante, 183 Bruns, J. Edgar, 208 Bultmann, Rudolph, 268-9, 270, 279 Buonarroti, Michelangelo, ix Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti, 102 Bynum, Carolyn Walker, 196, 203, 208 Cacciaguida, 86,119,141,142,152, 154,187 Caecilius Statius, 64, 65 Caesar, Gaius Julius, 67,184 Caesar, Michael, 246,278 Caglio, Anna Maria, 246 Caliri, Francesco, 251 Cangrande della Scala, 188 Capaneus, 100, 274 Capitani, Ovidio, 185,186 Cardini, Roberto, 249,252 Caricato, Luigi, 246

288 Index Carlo Martello, 154 Carroll, John S., 143,146 Carugati, Giuliana, 118,128,168, 175,177 Casagrande, Carla, 230 Casella, 24,42,224,225,226, 232 Cassell, Anthony K., 75,114,115, 127,188 Castelvetro, Ludovico, 243,247 Cato, 60,128 Catry, Patrick, 151 Catto, Jeremy, 187 Cavalcanti, Guido, 24,25,27,33,42 Cavallari, Elisabetta, 251 Cavedoni, Celestino, 75 Cecchini, Enzo, 230 Cephalus, 60 Cestaro, Gary, 40,201 Chaitor, Henry John, 230,231 Charity, Alan C, xii, 42,75,98 Charlemagne, 186,220 Charles of Valois, 182 Charles the Cripple, 145 Chiampi, James T., 118 Chiarenza, Marguerite Mills, 42 Chiavacci Leonardi, Anna M., 129, 185 Chronos, 95 Chydenius, Johan, 75 Ciacco, 115 Cicero, 59; Ad Herennium, 4.11.16:12; De oratore, 1.16.70:12 Cino da Pistoia, 33,58 Clay, Diskin, 109 Clement V, Pope, 35,135,182,185 Clemenza, Queen, 190 Cleopatra, 101 Cloetta, Wilhelm, 14 Collodo, Silvana, 219 Colombo, Manuela, 129,157,176

Comparetti, Domenico, 69 Conrad of Saxony, 139,140,143 Contini, Gianfranco, xii, 8,9,13,23, 24,41,42,43,104,108,216,227 Cook, Peter Alan Wilson, 231 Cornish, Allison, 42 Corti, Maria, 40,41,42,43,114,127, 159 Cotter, James, 210 Croce, Benedetto, xii, 116 Crociani, Lamberto, 200 Crosby, Ruth, 230 Cuini, Carlo, 188 Culianu, loan Petru, 209 Cupid, 105 Curschmann, Michael, 231 Curtius, Ernst Robert, 4, 69, 70,176 D'Alfonso, Rossella, 13,161 Dali, Salvador, ix D'Ancona, Alessandro, 245 Danielle, Bernardino, 130,243,246, 247,252 Dante - Commedia: Inferno, 63, 85,91,94-107,114-18, 168-74,179,182,185,186,187, 188,191,226,240,241,251, 269,274; 1: 51,52,169,188, 265,274; 1.17-18: 51; 1.61-3: 51; 1.63: 54; 1.73-5: 52; 1.79-80: 170; 1.82-7: 52; 1.87: 53,170; 1.94-113:188; 2: 53, 66,190; 2.67-9:169; 3.18: 99; 4: 61, 63-5,68,108; 4.42:149; 4.64-105: xv; 4.86-90: 62; 4.100-2: 63; 4.145-7: 265; 5:25, 95,96,98-101,103,109; 5.34-6: 100; 5.39:271; 5.54:100; 5.55-7: 100; 5.61-2:101; 5.64-5:101;

Index 289 5.70-2:102; 5.71: 272; 5.73-8: 104; 5.100:106; 5.100-6:104; 5.116-20: 272; 5.124-38:105; 5.130:272; 5.137:271; 5.142: 272; 8.7:171; 8.67-9.105:171; 8.115-17:171; 9.7-9:171; 9.10-15:172; 9.52-60:172; 9.64-105:172; 9.100-5:172; 9.102:228; 10: 34,84; 10.65: 130; 12.31-45:100; 13:34; 13.143-51:102; 14.51:100; 16: 133; 16.16: 207; 16.128:12; 17: 133; 18.91-3:170; 19:186; 20.113:13; 21.2:12; 23.37-45: 209; 24.69: 248; 26:115; 26.121-3:173; 26.122:173,174; 26.186:186; 27: 25; 31: 85,128; 32:128; 32.7-8:117; 33.66: 232; 34:28,44; 34.1:86 Purgatorio, 54,61,63,64, 65, 68, 77, 78, 79, 80-2, 91,98,117, 118,133-12,143,145,146,170, 182,186,188,191,240,252; 1: 70; 2: 41,128; 2.46-8: 81; 2.106-19: 224; 3: 34; 6:190; 9.70-2:265; 10: 82; 10-12:138; 10.40-5: 82; 12:129; 12.25-72: 228; 13.25-7: 77; 13.28-30: xvi, 78; 16:28,36,39,142,143; 16.16:207; 16.91-6:37; 16.106-12: 37; 16.115-20: 38; 17: 81,142; 17.68-9: 81; 18.28-33:153; 19:115; 20.91: 146; 21: 64; 21.1:159; 21.37-8: 151; 22: 61, 64, 65,70; 22.10-11: 271; 22.67-72: 63; 22.76-81: 270; 22.97-9: 64; 22.100-8: 64; 24: 34,117; 26:126,128; 26.117: 229; 27:190; 27.37-9: 96; 27.58: 77; 27.108: 78; 28: xviii; 28-33:

134,135; 28.76-81: 79; 29: xviii, 135; 29.85-7:139; 30: xviii, 80, 201; 30.11:198, 205; 30.13-18: 136; 30.21:141; 30.44-50: 209; 30.49-51: 247; 30.55:143; 30.70-111:228; 31: xviii; 31.91: 228; 31.128-9:156,159; 32: xviii, 134,135; 32.37:144,191; 32.102: 99; 32.103: 76; 32.109-60:146; 33: xviii; 33.10-12: 207; 33.43:146; 33.52-7:14; 33.69-70: 96 Paradiso, xvi, xvii, xviii, xix, 15, 28,39, 62,63, 91,98,117-25, 128,129,134,138,148-63, 174-6,179,182,184,185,187, 190,191, 204, 261, 262; 1: 277; 1.4-9:156; 1.70-1:119,176; 1.70-2: 266; 1.76-7:153; 1.77-8: 156; 1.82-4:157; 1.83:158; 1.94: 158; 2.3:123; 2.10-12:157; 2.37-42:161; 2.40-1:157; 2.133-6:161; 2.139:161; 2.140-1:161; 3: 34; 3.73-85: 154; 3.88-9:150; 4.10:158; 4.16: 158; 4.64:158; 4.72:158; 4.117: 158; 4.124-5:159; 5.76-8:139; 5.86:154; 6:185; 6-7: 28; 6.129: 185; 7.25-7:191; 8.1-9:101; 8.35-6:154; 8.97-8:154; 9.1: 190; 10:117; 10.22-7: 228; 11: 83; 11.58-62: 84; 12:120; 13: 191; 14:120; 14.40-2:160; 14.103-8:121; 14.114:168; 15-17:145; 15.65-6:154; 15.73-84:119,152; 15.82-3: 120; 16.136-47:102; 17.127-9: 14; 17.128-32: 86; 19:129; 19.91-6: 209; 19.115-41:145, 228; 22:122^; 22.26:151;

290 Index 22.77: 88; 22.94:125; 22.109-10: 122; 23:121-5,129,148; 23.1-12:154; 23.16-26:124; 23.31-6:160; 23.32:122; 23.34-9:124; 23.43-8:124; 23.50-1:124; 23.55-60:125; 23.55-69: 265; 23.58-9:119; 23.61-3:125; 23.62:119; 23.64-9:123,125; 23.73-4:206; 23.78:153,160; 24.1-3:154; 24.130-2:154,157; 25.1-2:14, 90; 25.24:154; 25.38-9:130; 25.118-21:160; 26: xvii, 128; 26.115-17:116; 26.117:177; 26.121-3:173; 27: 87,115,186, 188; 27.22-7: 87; 27.55-6: 88; 27.57: 89; 27.82-3:119; 27.125-6: 89; 27.142-8: 90; 28: 190; 28.16-18:160; 28.44-5: 154; 28.55-6:119; 28.109-11: 158; 29: 85, 86; 29.106-7: 86; 29.109-10: 85; 29.113-14: 87; 30: 24; 30.64-9:156; 30.88-9: 159; 31: xviii; 31.1-3:198; 31.1-18:156; 31.17:154; 31.31-40: 99; 31.59-33.51:173; 31.103-11:197; 32.1:151; 32.3: 173; 32.85-7:198; 32.151:174; 33:122,124,128; 33.1-6:205; 33.24:125; 33.46-7:156; 33.85-93:107; 33.86-7: 4,14; 33.115-20:161; 33.127-31:161; 33.137-8:161; 33.137-9:153; 33.140-1:161; 33.143-5:154; 33.145:117 - Convivio, xiv, xv, xviii, 10,11,23-5, 28-36,38,40-4, 53,54,58-60,66, 70,114,116,127,156,167,168, 181,185,190; 1.4.3:103; 1.5.7:11; 1.9.2-4: 218; 1.9.5:190,231; 1.10.5:

33; 1.11.10-12:218; 1.11.11:229; 1.13.12:11; 2.1:263; 2.2.1:29; 2.3.9:157; 2.8.8: 29; 2.13:145; 3: 225; 3.9.15-16:225; 3.11.9-10: 225; 3.12:225; 3.15.3:153; 4:29,31, 183-5; 4.2.6:121; 4.3:30,33; 4.3.5-10: 31; 4.3.6: 35; 4.4-5: 30; 4.4-6:145; 4.6.8-9: 30; 4.6.17-20: 30; 4.9.9-10: 30; 4.13.1ff.: 159; 4.18-19: 29; 4.21.12:144; 4.21-40: 31; 4.25-8:59; 4.26:101; 4.28.8: 25 - De vulgari eloquentia, xv, 11,23,28, 29,33, 34,36,40-3, 54,58,60,70, 94,168,222,265,274; 1:169; 1.1.4: 11; 1.2.3:171; 1.12.1-4: 33; 1.12.4: 34; 1.18.2-5: 33; 2.3.4-5: 221; 2.4.2-5:11; 2.4.5-6: 232; 2.4.5-8: 6; 2.4.9: 221; 2.6.6: 42; 2.6.7: 58, 59; 2.8: 42; 2.8.3-4: 222; 2.8.5-6: 223; 2.11.3: 221; 2.13: 221 - Eclogue, 1.6-13:215; 2.51.4:16; 2.52-3: 216 - Epistolae, 1:183; 1.5-24:16; 5:183; 7:17,183; 8:17,18,183; 9:183; 10: 183; 10.7.108-19: 82; 11:183; 12: 183; 13:6,9,15,16,17,41,43,82, 91,251,267,277; 13.1-33:15; 13.10: 6,13,16; 13.25:142-3; 13.37:232 - Monarchia, xiv, xv, 23,24,27-33, 35-9,44,167,181,183-5; 1:185; 1.2.4-8: 31; 1.3-5: 31; 1.3.6-7: 41; 1.7-10: 31; 1.11: 31; 1.12.6:184; 2: 30, 35,185; 2.1.7-8: 31; 2.2.4: 32; 2.2.7-8: 5; 2.5.5: 209; 2.7: 31; 2.7.1: 38; 2.7.4: 5; 2.7.4-9: 38; 2.7.12: 5; 2.8.3-4: 96,100; 2.9.1: 38; 3: 30-1, 185; 3.2: 31; 3.3,11-3.4.11: 5; 3.4: 28; 3.4.6-11: 5; 3.15: 31; 3.15.7:41; 3.15.17-18:184 - Vita nuova, xv, 8,10-12,24,27-9,

Index 291 40,41,53-8,61, 69,107,109,129, 167,168,183,190,202,204,206, 210,271; 1.1:10; 24: 207; 24.4-5: 206; 24.5:110; 25: 55,56,59; 25.1: 55; 25.3: 55, 69; 25.3-6:11; 25.4: 69; 25.5: 70; 25.7: 55; 25.8:55; 25.10: 9,10, 56; 28.109-11:158; 30: 183; 30.55: 207; 40:198; 40.1-5: 198; 40.12:198; 40.56:198; 40.94: 198; 40.104:198 - Quaestio de aqua et terra, 44 - Rime, 221-2 Dares Phrygius, 96,102; Hi&toria de excidio Troiae, 109 David, King, 126,138,264 Davidsohn, Robert, 187 Davis, Charles, 185,186,187,188, 189,231, 233 Davus, 215 De Bartholomaeis, Vincenzo, 216 De Benedetti, Santorre, 226 de Bruyne, Edgar, 4 Deiphobus, 141 Delcorno Branca, Daniela, 143 Del Lungo, Isidore, 233,245 Del Popolo, Concetto S., 189 de Lubac, Henri, 4 De Medici, Giuliana, 246 Democritus, 59 De' Negri, Enrico, 137,143 De Robertis, Domenico, 69,223 De Rosa, Mario, 207 de Rougemont, Denis, 109, 205 De Sanctis, Francesco, 105,232 Deseille, Placide, 154 Dictys Cretensis, 96,102; Ephemeris belli Troiani, 109 Dido, 101,103,106,141 Dioneo, 229 Dionisotti, Carlo, 246,251,252

Di Ricco, Alessandra, 217 Di Scipio, Giuseppe, 200,204 Dolce, Lodovico, 234 Dolfi, Anna, 127 Dominic, Saint, 120,200 Dragonetti, Roger, 33, 34, 36 Dronke, Peter, 15 Duggan, Joseph J., 230 Durling, Robert M., 40,41,43 Ebeling, Gerhard, 270 Eco, Umberto, xiii, xiv Eliot, T.S., x Esther, 208 Euclid, 59 Euripides, 64 Eurydice, 247, 252 Evarts, Peter G., 217 Eve, 85,178,191,196,202,203 Fallani, Giovanni, 75,158 Faral, Edmond, 232 Farinata degli Uberti, 84,115,183 Farnell, Stewart, 182 Ferguson, Margaret, 40 Ferrante, Joan, x, xx, 108,109,143, 184,185,186,187,188,189,191, 195,200,205,209 Ferrau, Giacomo, 251 Ferrucci, Franco, 13,153 Fiammazzo, Antonio, 232 Fido, Franco, 42,128 Field, Arthur, 249,252 Finnegan, Ruth, 216,231 Fiorelli, Piero, 185 Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schussler, 199, 202,209 Fiske, John, xiii Fiumi, Enrico, 231 Fletcher, John B., 187

292 Index Folena, Gianfranco, 221,226, 232 Foligno, Cesare, 231 Forti, Fiorenzo, 127,189 Fortin, Ernest L., 182 Foscolo, Ugo, 249 Foster, Kenelm, 42 Francesca da Rimini, 103-7,115,173, 189,271^, 278. See also Paolo and Francesca Francesco da Barberino, 226, 228 Francesco da Buti, 113,241,242, 246, 248,249,262 Francesco da Firenze, 217 Francis of Assisi, Saint, 83, 84,200, 205,217; I FioretH, 230 Franke, William, xii-xiii, xvi Frankel, Margherita, 75 Frasso, Giuseppe, 217 Fraticelli, Pietro, 245 Freccero, John, 24, 25, 27, 42,43, 44, 75,114,127,161 Frederick II of Aragon, 145 Frederick II of Swabia, 25,27,29, 31-6, 38,44 Frontinus, 59 Frugoni, Arsenio, 183,231 Fubini, Mario, 114,115,116,127,128 Fulgentius, 101 Funk, Robert W., 270 Gabriel, 83 Gabriele, Trifone, 243,246,247,251, 252 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 277 Gardiner, Frank C., 151 Garin, Eugenic, 251 Gartner, Bertil, 199 Gellrich, Jesse, 278 Gennai, Silvio, 252 Gentili, Bruno, 217

Geryon, 265,266 Giacomo da Lentini, 33 Giannantonio, Pompeo, 75 Gilbert, Allen, 44 Gilson, Etienne, 30,44,109,160,181 Giolito, Gabriele, 13 Giolito, Giovanni, 243 Giotto, ix Giovanna, 206 Giovanni da Serravalle, 243 Giovanni del Virgilio, 16, 215,216, 217,226,227,229 Giraut de Bornelh, 58 Glauche, Giinter, 70 Gmelin, Hermann, 69 Gotto da Mantova, 221 Graff, Harvey J., 230, 231 Grafton, Anthony, 251 Grayson, Cecil, 11,251 Greene, Thomas M., 40 Gregory I, Pope, 130,151,152,155; Homeliae in Evangelia, 2.25.2:152; 2.27.4:151; 2.30.1:151; Homeliae in Hiezechel, 2.2,270-91:153; Moralia, 5.4, 31-4:153; 8.54, 25-7: 151; 16.27,14-19:152; 18.54, 125-9:155; 18.54,129-33:155; 23.21,85-6:151; 26.19,13-17:152; 26.19,15:153 Gregory of Nissa, 154 Grendler, Paul F., 230,231 Griselda, 221 Groppi, Felicina, 75 Guglielma of Milan, 205,208 Guglielmo, Marquis of Monferrato, 243 Guide da Montefeltro, 25,113,114, 115 Guido da Pisa, 75,241, 242,246 Guido da Polenta, 97

Index 293 Guido delle Colonne, 58, 96 Guinivere, 107,271 Guinizzelli, Guido, 24,68,104, 271 Guittone d'Arezzo, 59 Gutenberg, Johann, xi Hacheborn, Gertrude, 196 Hacheborn, Mechtild, 196 Hall, Ralph G., 15 Haller, Robert S., 5 Hardt, Manfred, 143 Harrison, Robert P., 40,41,42,210 Havelock, Eric, 216,231 Hawkins, Peter, 42, 75,118,129, 187

Healy, Emma Therese, 200 Hegel, Karl von, 251 Heidegger, Martin, 278 Helen of Troy, 95,101,102,106 Henry VII, Emperor, 28, 35,181,182, 183,184,185,186,188 Hephaestus, 94 Hercules, 113,114 Hermaphroditus. See Salmacis and Hermaphroditus Hollander, Robert, xii, xiv, xv, 9,15, 30,41,42, 69, 71, 75,168,175,187, 246,247,248,249,250,251,252, 277 Holmes, George, 185 Homer, 61,62,65, 68, 94, 95, 99; Odyssey, 57; 8.266-369: 94 Horace, 16, 57,58, 62,65,68, 71,215, 220; Ars Poetica, 17,57; 9-11:12; 93-6:12,16; 95:13; Epistles, 16, 220; Satires, 220 Hortensius, 60 Hrabanus Maurus: De videndo Deo, 155 Hugh of St Victor, 141; Allegoriae in

Evangelia, 78; De quinque septenis sen septenariis, 143 Hyde, John K., 219,230 lannucci, Amilcare A., xiv, xv, xvi, xviii, 9,13,42,43, 70, 75, 96,107, 108,109,127,278,279 Icarus, 67,115 Isaiah, 206 Iseult, 103,106. See also Tristan and Iseult Jacoff, Rachel, xv, 42, 71, 75,189, 190,200,201,202, 205,247 Jacopo Alighieri. See Alighieri, Jacopo Jacopo della Lana, 227, 232,241, 242, 243,248 Jacopone da Todi, 159 James, Saint, 154 Jason, 67,170,171,174 Jauss, Hans Robert, 156,216,252 Javitch, Daniel, 247 Jean de Meun: Le Roman de la rose, 96,108 Jeauneau, Edouard, 70 Jenaro-MacLennan, Luis, 251 Jerome, Saint: Epistolae, 54.9:14 John XXII, Pope, 184 John of Garland, 13 John the Baptist, 206 John the Evangelist, 206 Judith, 208 Juno, 102 Justinian, 186 Juvenal, 59,65 Kallendorf, Craig, 249 Kantorowicz, Ernst, 32,44,185 Kaske, Robert E., 75,135,136

294 Index Kay, Richard, 189 Kelly, Henry Ansgar, 14,15,230, 232,251 Kezich, Giovanni, 217 Kirk, Geoffrey S., 231 Kirkham, Victoria, 189 Kirkpatrick, Robin, 200 Kleinhenz, Christopher, xvi, 85,90 Kristeva, Julia, 40,202 Lacaita, James Philip, 245 La Favia, Louis, 251 Lancelot, 104,107,214,220 Landino, Cristoforo, 243,247,249, 252 Lansing, Richard, xviii, xix, 101,103 Leah, 78, 79 Leclercq, Jean, 149,151,160 Lemme da Pistoia, 232 Lentzen, Manfred, 249 Lenzi, Domenico, 226,232 Leo, Ulrich, 30 Leonardi, Claudio, 69 Levy, Bernard S., 200 Lewis, C.S., 109 Lippo, 221 Livi, Giovanni, 226 Livius, Titus, 59 Lobricon, Guy, 4 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, x Lopez, Roberto S., 230 Lord, Albert, 216 Lotman, Jurij M., 128 Lovato, Lovati, 218,219,220,221, 222,224 Lucan, 57,58,59,60,62, 65,67, 71; Pharsalia, 57, 67; 2: 60 Lucifer, 86,113,128,129 Lucy, Saint, 200 Ludwig of Bavaria, 184,188

Luiso, Francesco Paolo, 251 Lund-Mead, Carolynn, xx Luther, Martin, 188 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 244 Madden, John, 74 Magoun, Francis P., 230 Malacoda, 267 Malatesta, Gianciotto, 97,107 Malatesta, Paolo. See Francesca da Rimini Mancusi-Ungaro, Donna, 182 Mandelbaum, Allen, 91 Manfred, 34 Manzoni, Alessandro, 217 Marcellus, 141,145 Marcia, 60 Marco Lombardo, 36,134,186 Marco Polo, 217; II Milione, 230 Margaret, Empress, 183 Mark, King, 102 Mars, 96,97,100,101,102,103,109, 120. See also Venus and Mars Marshall, Donald, 276 Marti, Mario, 226,232 Martianus Capella: De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, 140 Martinez, Ronald L., 40,41,42,43, 44 Mary, The Virgin, 78, 82, 83,138, 139,189,190,191,196,198, 200, 204,206,207 Marzot, Giulio, 75 Mastrobuono, Antonio, 43, 75 Matelda, 78, 79,134,189,191 Matter, E. Ann, 152,197 Matthew of Vendome: Ars versificatoria, 2.7:13 Maurer, Karl, 181 Mazzamuto, Pietro, 188

Index 295 Mazzeo, Joseph A., 162 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 244 Mazzoni, Francesco, 69,108,184, 246,251 Mazzotta, Giuseppe, 25,26,28, 39, 42,43, 75,108,128,145,278 McDougal, Stuart Y., ix McMahon, Philip A., 14 Medusa, 172 Meeks, Wayne A., 199,202 Meli, Elio, 226 Menelaus, 95 Mengaldo, Pier Vincenzo, 11,70 Metastasio, 217 Mills Chiarenza, Marguerite, 118 Minnis, Alastair J., 3,10,17,43,167, 240,241,246,251 Minos, 99 Moggio de' Moggi, 227 Momigliano, Attilio, 232 Mommsen, Theodor E., 232 Moore, Edward, 69, 75,143,245 Moses, 82,177 Muses, 68,125 Mussolini, Benito, 188 Myrrha, 189,190 Narcissus, 42, 67 Nardi, Bruno, 24, 28, 29,30, 40, 41, 42,44,113,114,115,116,127,128, 184,251, 265 Naumann, Walter, 157 Nelson, William, 230 Neri, Ferdinando, 252 Niccoli, Niccolo, 215 Niccolo da Prato, Cardinal, 183 Niccolo II of Este, 243 Nidobeato, Martino, 243 Nimrod, 85,115,128 Noah, 90

Noakes, Susan, xii Norton, Charles Eliot, 245,252 Oderisi da Gubbio, 129,138 Ong, Walter, 231 Origen, 152 Orpheus, 68,247,252,263 Ovid, xv, xvi, 25,42,53, 57,58,60, 62, 65, 67,69,71,195; Ars amatoria, 2.561-92: 96; Metamorphoses, 54, 59, 67; 4.55-166: 96; 4.58:100; 4.167-89: 96; 7: 60; Remedia amoris, xvi, 57 Padoan, Giorgio, 7, 69, 96,127,230, 277,278 Pagels, Elaine, 209 Pagliaro, Antonino, 127 Palinurus, 141 Pallas, 102 Palmieri, Pantaleo, 251 Pampaloni, Guido, 187 Panofsky, Erwin, 44 Paolazzi, Carlo, 15,251 Paoletti, Lao, 251 Paolo and Francesca, xvii, xviii, 96-8,103,105-10,195, 273 Papante, Giovanni, 214 Paparelli, Gioacchino, 129 Paratore, Ettore, 69, 96 Pare, Gerard Marie, 70 Pareyson, Luigi, 278 Paris, 95,102 Parker, Deborah, xi, 203,251,252 Parks, Malcom B., 230 Parry, Milman, 216 Parvey, Constance F., 199 Passerin d'Entreves, Alessandro, 181 Passerini, Giuseppe Lando, 245

296 Index Pastore Stocchi, Manlio, 69,183 Patterson, Annabel, 246,249 Paul, Saint, 66,126,196,199,202, 205,207,261 Paulus Orosius, 59; Historiae adversus Paganos, 1.4.7-8:100 Pellegrin, Elisabeth, 70 Pepin, Jean, 4, 5, 71, 75, 277 Persius, 64,65 Fertile, Lino, xix, 15,43,127,129, 148,153,157,160,246,250, 252 Peter, Saint, 84, 87,88,119,154,184, 186,188 Peter Damian, Saint: Rhytmus de gloria paradisi, 155 Peter Lombard: Libri sententiarum, 240 Peterman, Larry, 185 Peters, Edward M, 187 Petrarch, Francesco, ix, 40,105,116, 215,218,220,226,227,231; Africa, 9.451-77: 232; Canzoniere, 221; 73.76-8:149; 360: 231; Familiares, 21.15: 214,215,220,227,230,232; Secretum, 105; Seniles, 5.2:220; 17.3:221; Triumphs, x; Triumphus Fame, 2.18:116 Petrocchi, Giorgio, 90,163,179,182, 188,226 Phaeton, 115,128 Philip the Fair, 135,146 Philo of Alexandria, 202; Legum Allegoria, 2.50:202 Piccarda Donati, 153 Piccini, Giulio, 245 Picone, Michelangelo, x, xiv, xv, 8,9, 69, 70,246,251 Pier della Vigna, 33,34,173 Pietro Alighieri. See Alighieri, Pietro Pietrobono, Luigi, 24,40,41

Pietropaolo, Domenico, 246 Pinto, Giuliano, 226 Pirotta, Nino, 221 Pius XII, Pope, 130 Plato, 59,190, 215 Plautus, 64, 65 Pliny the Elder, 59 Fiona, Stefania, 232 Poggioli, Renato, xvii, 103,104,108, 110,271 Poliziano, 217; Stanze, 27 Polynices and Tydeus, 59 Polyxena, 102 Pontius Pilate, 146 Porcelli, Bruno, 143 Porena, Manfredi, 13 Poseidon, 94, 95 Potter, Joy Hambuechen, 202,204, 207 Predelli, Maria, 217 Procaccioli, Paolo, 252 Prudentius: Psychomachia, 140 Ptolemy, 59 Ptolemy of Lucca, 187 Pulci, Luigi, 230 Pygmalion, 190 Pyramus and Thisbe, 96,100 Pythagoras, 59 Quaglio, Antonio E., 13,108 Quain, Edwin A., 251 Quinones, Ricardo J., 188 Quint, David, 40 Quintilian: Institutio Oratoria, 1.8.7: 13; 8.3.21:12; 10.1.65:13; 11.3.181: 12 Rachel, 78 Rajna, Pio, 13 Rand, Edward Kennard, 69

Index 297 Ransom, Daniel}., 42 Remigio dei Girolami, 187 Renucci, Paul, 69 Ricci, Pier Giorgio, 44,184 Richard of St Victor, 130,160; De gradibus caritatis 2:155 Riche, Pierre, 4, 5 Richter, Lukas, 221 Ricoeur, Paul, 129 Rieger, Dietmar, 230 Rigo, Paola, 251 Robertson, Durant Waite, 108-9 Rocca, Luigi, 251 Rodin, Auguste, ix Roland, 220 Roncaglia, Aurelio, 216 Ronconi, Alessandro, 69 Rossi, Aldo, 13,230 Rossi, Louis R., 187 Rossi, Vittorio, 251 Rostagno, Enrico, 245 Ruggiers, Paul G., 14 Russo, Vittorio, 183,184,252 Sacchetti, Franco, 226, 229, 230; Novelle, 214 Saenger, Paul, 222 Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, 195 Salvani, Provenzan, 138 Sandkuler, Bruno, 7,251 Sanguineti, Edoardo, 104 Santagata, Marco, 227 Santoro, Mario, 252 Sapegno, Natalino, 114,127,130 Sarolli, Gian Roberto, 75,109 Scaglione, Aldo, 129 Scartazzini, Giovanni Andrea, 143 Schevill, Ferdinand, 187 Schiaffini, Alfredo, 13, 70

Schleiermacher, Friedrich D.E., 277 Schnapp, Jeffrey T., xv, 42, 43, 71, 109,189,200, 201,209 Schumacher, Thomas, ix Scipio, 188 Scorrano, Luigi, 187 Scott, A. Brian, 3,10,17, 241 Scott, John A., 42,43,44,127,128, 184,185,186 Scotus Eriugena, 154 Segre, Cesare, 40 Semiramis, 100,101,105,189 Seneca, 59 Servius, 241 Shakespeare, William, x Shapiro, Marianne, 40,189,201, 204, 205,222 Shaw, James, 44 Shaw, Prudence, 184 Shearman, John, 40 Shoaf, Richard Allen, 42 Siger of Brabant, 127 Silvius, 141 Simonides, 65 Sinclair, John D., 163 Singleton, Charles, xii, 15,23,25, 75, 77, 79, 81,109,142,163,190,200, 262-6,274, 275, 276,278 Sistrunk, Timothy G., 184 Smalley, Beryl, 4, 70 Smithers, Geoffrey V., 151 Solomon, 128 Sowell, Madison U., xv, 15,42, 71 Spicq, Ceslas, 4 Spitzer, Leo, 232 Spivak, Gayatri C, 202,207 Stabile, Giorgio, 167 Statius, Publius Papinius, xv, 42,58, 59, 60, 62,63, 64, 65,143,270,271, 278; Thebaid, 1:59

298 Index Stephany, William A., 75,190,247, 248 Stephens, Walter, 167 Stillinger, Thomas Clifford, 40, 41 Stock, Lorraine Kochanske, 201,208 Strubel, Armand, 5 Sturm-Maddox, Sara, 42 Sychaeus, 101 Tambling, Jeremy, 28,118,168 Tateo, Francesco, 69 Tatlock, John S.P., 228 Taylor, Karla, 118,129 Telephus and Peleus, 16 Terence, 64,65 Thibaut de Champagne, 58 Thisbe. See Pyramus and Thisbe Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 81, 83,140, 154,155,159,160,190,203,274; Summa Theologiae, I.II.68.al.rl: 144; LH.68.a2.r: 145; I.II.68.a8.r: 144; II-II, q. 158, a.2, resp.: 81; la 2ae.67.4 ad 3:155; la.12.6 resp.: 159; la.92.1: 203 Thompson, David, 114,127 Thomson, Sally, 203 Toffanin, Giuseppe, 187 Took, John, 29,40,44 Torraca, Francesco, 108 Toynbee, Paget, 245,251 Trajan, 138 Tremblay, Pierre, 70 Trevi, Emanuele, 69 Tristan and Iseult, xvii, 97, 98,102, 114,220 Trovato, Mario, 10,31,40,227 Truijen, Vincent, 161 Tydeus. See Polynices and Tydeus Ugo Capeto, 143

Ugolini, Francesco A., 217, 230 Ugolino della Gherardesca, 115,232 Ulysses, xvii, xviii, xix, 61, 70,96, 109,113,114,115,116,117,119, 126,127,128,129,130,173,174, 175,177,274,279 Utley, Francis Lee, 231 Valency, Maurice, 104 Valli, Luigi, 113,114 Vallone, Aldo, 143,145,184, 246, 251,252 Vance, Eugene, 230 Van Cleve, Thomas Curtis, 44 Vandelli, Giuseppe, 245 Vanossi, Luigi, 96 Varius (Publius Terentius Varro), 64 Vasoli, Cesare, 44,185 Vattasso, Marco, 227 Vecchio, Silvana, 230 Velli, Giuseppe, 230 Vellutello, Alessandro, 139,143,252 Venantius Fortunatus, 86 Venus and Mars, xvii, 96,97,100-5, 108,109 Verdicchio, Massimo, 188 Vernani, Guido, 278 Vernon, George, 244,245,252 Vernon, William W., 146,245,252 Veronica, 198 Villa, Claudia, 14,69 Villani, Filippo, 221,241,242,246 Villani, Giovanni, 183, 233; Cronica, 9.94: 218, 230; 9.136:183 Virgil, xv-xvii, xx, 9,13, 25,28,42, 52-4,57-9,60-9,82, 99,104,107, 114,128,141,142,145,149,169, 171-3,188,208,209, 241,247, 252, 265,270,271; Aeneid, ix, xv, 30, 54,57,66,67,101,108,141,201,

Index 299 209,242; 1: 223; 1.1: 214; 1.1-2: 52; 4: 60; 5: 60; 5.213-17:104; 6: 60, 141; Eclogues, 246-7; 4: 62; Georgics, 4.525-7:247,252 Visconti, Filippo Maria, 243 Vitagliano, Adele, 217 Vittorio Emanuele III, 245 von Moos, Peter, 71 Vulcan, 97 Wagner, David L., 5 Walker, Roger M., 230 Waller, Marguerite, 208 Walsh, Gerald G., 109

Weiss, Roberto, 219, 220 Wessley, Stephen, 203,205, 208 Wetherbee, Winthrop, 42 Whitman, Jon, 4 Wieruszowski, Helene, 69 Wilkins, Ernest Hatch, 220 William of St-Thierry, 151,160; De contemplando Deo, 154 Williams, Charles, 205 Witte, Karl, 251 Ziltener, Werner, 143 Zumthor, Paul, 216