Did Dante think the characters in classical poems like those by Virgil, Statius, and Ovid were real, historical people? The answer lies at the heart of our problem of reading Dante across the scientific-revolution divide. He may find texts more reliable than we do . . . and may find meaning less stable than we do.
Read MoreOur pilgrim, Dante, arrives on the sixth, empty terrace of Mount Purgatory without a lot of fanfare. Instead, Statius and Virgil go ahead of him and talk about the craft of poetry. The passage is caught in the essential structural issue (and thematic one, too!) of COMEDY: circularity and linearity, fused into one state of being.
Read MoreVirgil wants to know how Statius could have become a Christian since there’s no evidence of faith in his poetry about Thebes. Statius replies that it’s through Virgil’s poetry that he both became a poet and became a Christian. Damned Virgil lights the path to redemption.
Read MoreAn interpolated episode about Dante and irony: what it is, what are its literary forms, and how does Dante use irony in his own text to create the depths of meaning we find in COMEDY. Simple v. situational irony. Then dramatic, cosmic, and creative irony, all techniques our poet uses.
Read MoreIn a very human and funny scene, Dante the pilgrim is caught between two poetic mentors, Statius and Virgil. It’s a battle of the wills . . . inside of Dante, who is finding that his emotions are more fundamental even than his will, all in a canto that is a hymn to the human will and that ends in the same spot another canto ended.
Read MoreThe unknown soul finally names himself: Statius, the epic Roman poet, a major influence on COMEDY, and a full-on shock. How could a pagan Roman poet end up on Mount Purgatory, headed to heaven? And how can this poet find himself face to face with his own poetic inspiration and apparently the bearer of God’s revelation: the damned Virgil.
Read MoreDante runs out of steam just as he crests the stair at the cusp of the fourth terrace of Purgatory proper. The sun is setting, the moon is rising, and we know he can’t climb anymore. But he still wants to know where he is and what’s going on. So he turns to the damned Virgil, ever the shocking guide to this part of the afterlife.
Read MoreDante the poet is playing with light: physical/metaphysical, revelatory/imaginary, sunrise/sunset, illuminating/concealing, angelic/cosmic. All this as COMEDY finds its center and PURGATORIO itself divides on a beautiful moment with the stars.
Read MoreDante walks into the light of the setting sun, leaving behind the smoke of the angry on Mount Purgatory's third terrace. Or is that their fog and mist? Or their clouds? Metaphoric space overlays metaphoric space as Dante begins to argue that the imagination is a mechanism of revelation.
Read MoreDante has heard Virgil’s explanation of the good becoming more, the more it’s shared (at least in heaven); yet Dante is not satisfied. So the pilgrim goes back for a second helping in this passage that continues Virgil’s lesson, turning the “good” into love and light, a move that will set us up for the grand revelations in the central cantos of COMEDY.
Read MoreThe long awaited angel finally arrives and ushers Dante and Virgil to the stairway up to the third terrace of Purgatory. As the two climb this easier ascent, Dante takes a moment to get Virgil to gloss two lines spoken by Guido del Duca in Canto XIV. Both in Dante’s question and in Virgil’s answer, we can sense the changing notion of COMEDY as we enter the middle cantos of the poem.
Read MoreDante the poet begins the complex and brilliant process of helping us convert what seems into what is. But seeming and being are interconnected in so many ways that we can feel the ground shift under our feet as we begin our exit from the second terrace of Purgatory proper. And if all that were not enough, Virgil, Dante’s guide, undertakes a redefinition of “pleasure” or “delight.”
Read MoreDante and Virgil walk away from the envious on the second terrace of Purgatory . . . and straight into the sun. Meanwhile, we walk straight into Dante’s poetics, which are becoming more and more complex as we enter the liminal space that forms the central cantos of COMEDY.
Read MoreDante has been quite cagey in saying where he’s from. His coy game has led him to use periphrasis, one of his favorite poetic techniques. He’s about to learn his lessons. One of the envious penitents is going to beat him at his periphrastic game and bring the entire prophetic denunciation of Tuscany into incredibly complicated metaphoric space.
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