PURGATORIO, Episode 176. Placing And Misplacing Your Classical Ancestors: PURGATORIO, Canto XXII, Lines 94 - 114

Virgil and Statius reconstruct limbo. The sighs from that first circle of hell are transferred from the damned to the poet Dante (and to his reader). And the entire catalogue of the lost comes down to a final irony: Manto, lost in Dante’s own poem, misplaced and reassigned, a final misreading and misquotation in a canto full of them.

Read More