PURGATORIO, Episode 71. Three Steps Up To The Gate And Into An Interpretive Quagmire: PURGATORIO, Canto IX, Lines 94 - 105

December 13, 2023 by Mark Scarbrough

Dante and Virgil see the three steps to the entrance of Purgatory proper with an angel sitting on up at the very threshold to the next realm. But these steps have caused 700 years of interpretive fury. They’re allegorical, to be sure. But maybe there’s a way to scrape the critical apparatus off the steps and see these steps in a new way.

PURGATORIO, Episode 66. Asleep In A Messy Bed Of Classical Imagery: PURGATORIO, Canto IX, Lines 1 - 12

November 26, 2023 by Mark Scarbrough

Dante opens the incredibly important canto of the gate of Purgatory—that is, PURGATORIO, Canto IX—with a complete mess of classical imagery. This tangle has befuddled scholars and readers for centuries. There are proposed solutions, none of them quite adequate. Perhaps the difference here is that Dante is now free to play with classical imagery, rather than to be controlled by it.