This episode is an interpolated one. I promised some of these from the start of this podcast. It’s a chance to see Canto I in its trajectory, strangeness, and interpretive “knottedness.”

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I offer a bit about the shape of the plot and the mechanics of the poetry. I want you to see how the language lies (even if we’re reading the poem in English, not in medieval Florentine). In other words, I want to get away from the passages, the fragments of the canto, and take it as one big gulp of poetry.

I also want to fill you in on some of the poetics of the COMEDY. This may seem inordinately technical to some, but it helps you understand the way the COMEDY is put together. Mostly, it helps you understand the almost epic task Dante-the-poet set for himself. He created a new poetic form, standardized a Tuscan dialect, wrote in an unbelievably complicated system of rhythm and rhyme, AND (not yet but soon) began to make up words because there were none to fit what he wanted to say. See: the greatest work to date of Western culture. Hands down.