Pain, Solace, And Being Human: PURGATORIO, Canto XXIII, Lines 49 - 75
Having met his poetic rival, Forese Donati, Dante the pilgrim must make sense of the clear and present pain he sees in friend's face.This passage is a curious example of felix culpa, the fortunate fal...
15 Kesä 202529min
Gluttons For Poetry: PURGATORIO, Canto XXIII, Lines 28 - 48
Dante now walks with the skeletal gluttons who have God's writing on their faces.Along the way, there are increasingly complex and almost gaming literary references that litter the text until Dante th...
11 Kesä 202533min
Starved For Affection: PURGATORIO, Canto XXIII, Lines 1 - 27
Our pilgrim must move beyond the mystical tree on the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory. So he sets off behind Virgil and Statius, only to overtaken by a group of cadaverous, skeletal penitents, whose ...
8 Kesä 202527min
Did Dante Think The Characters In Classical Poems Were Real?
Did Dante think that the characters in Virgil's and Statius's poems were real? Did he believe that the characters who changed shape, being, and even substance in Ovid's METAMORPHOSES were actual and h...
4 Kesä 202519min
You Are What You Eat . . . And Read: PURGATORIO, Canto XXII, Lines 130 - 145
Virgil and Statius begin to trek around the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory but are stopped by an upside-down tree . . . that causes more questions than it provides answers.A voice in the tree warns ...
1 Kesä 202527min
Going In Circles To Go Forward: PURGATORIO, Canto XXII, Lines 115 - 129
Our pilgrim, Virgil, and Statius arrive on the otherwise empty sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory. Virgil seems more hesitant. And our pilgrim, Dante, more passive, as he listens to the two older, wiser...
28 Touko 202523min
Placing And Misplacing Your Classical Ancestors: PURGATORIO, Canto XXII, Lines 94 - 114
At the end of their first conversation, Virgil and Statius reconstruct limbo. They transform it into a neighborhood where all the lost, classical writers live.They also transfer limbo's sighs from the...
25 Touko 202529min
Statius, The Closeted Christian: PURGATORIO, Canto XXII, Lines 76 - 93
Statius finally tells Virgil what we all want to know: the story of his conversion. How did this Latin poet who dedicated his great epic to a Roman emperor become a Christian.Through a long process an...
21 Touko 202527min
