Posts tagged Purgatorio XXVI
PURGATORIO, Episode 206. Sweet Becomes Truth Becomes Poetry: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVI, Lines 115 - 135

Having found his poetic father, Guido Guinizzelli, and having declared that Guinizzelli’s poetry will last as long as modern custom allows, our pilgrim, Dante, now hears Guinizzelli morph the “sweetness” of this new style into “truth” before offering a beautiful example of that style . . . which the poet Dante then uses to finish their conversation.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 205. The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVI, Lines 94 - 114

Dante is aghast when Guido Guinizzelli identifies himself. This poet from one generation before is Dante’s poetic father. The pilgrim is at first so amazed that he gets lost in a crabbed classical simile. But he and Guinizzelli eventually straight things out and come down to the sweet, new, clear style for which Dante wants to be known.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 204. Queenly Embeasting: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVI, Lines 67 - 93

Guido Guinizzelli steps out to identify himself as our spokesperson for the penitent lustful. He answers the pilgrim Dante’s questions about who is on the seventh terrace of Mount Purgatory with a dense net of classical allusions and the creation of new words, the best work a poet can do in Dante’s theory of poetry.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 202. The Episode In Which My Voice Breaks: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVI, Lines 25 - 48

The pilgrim can’t answer the question for why he’s in Purgatory while in his corporeal body because he’s interrupted by a new group of penitents. Moving in the opposite direction to anyone on the mountain, these are the homosexuals, placed right at the end of the climb to heaven. Love has truly moved the fence in Dante’s understanding of the world.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 201. Poets Make The Flames Of Lust More Colorful: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVI, Lines 1 - 24

As Dante the pilgrim walks along the narrow path between the flames of lust and the drop into the abyss on the seventh terrace of Mount Purgatory, his shadow makes the flames more colorful, about the way a poet in the troubadour tradition always makes the flames of lust glow hotter.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 194. A Read-Through Of PURGATORIO, Cantos XXV - XXVII

A read-through of PURGATORIO, Cantos XXV - XXVII, the final terrace of Mount Purgatory where the lustful do their penance in the flames. We find out more about Dante’s poetics, we hear a part of COMEDY actually in medieval Provencal, and we discover the great change in our pilgrim’s character after he walks out of the fire.

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