Divine Comedy. Two Lessons on Dante's Poem: When and Where the Story Takes Place

By Ferdinanda Cremascoli and Cremascoli, Ferdinanda

These lessons on the narrative structure of the Divine Comedyderive from my work as a teacher of "History of Italian Literature" in Italian high schools.
What there is not in these lessons: the general info on the Divine Comedy, on the age of its composition, on the transmission of the work, on its critical fortune, on the themes it develops. Nor is there any news on Dante's other works which also constitute capital experiences that the poet reworks in his masterpiece. I focused instead on the narrative structure of the poem: the Divine Comedyis a great story, that takes place over a week, it’s very colorful in the landscapes, crowded with characters, "splatter" in the story of the punishment of sinners, "impressionist" in painting the skies of the blessed. 
The original essay  (Il cammino e la pietate)  is written in Italian, and published on the site www.nelmezzodelcammin.it, from where it can be downloaded.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ferdinanda Cremascoli
• Release date: Jun 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9788834136898

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Ferdinanda Cremascoli

Divine Comedy. Two lessons on Dante's Poem

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Table of contents

Copyright

In limine

The Title of the Poem

Dante's journey

The story-time

The places of the story: hell

Second place: purgatory

Third place: paradise

Copyright

This work is protected by copyright law. Any duplication, even partial, unauthorized is prohibited.

First digital edition June 2019

ISBN 9788834136898

The original version of this eBook - in Italian - is available on a webpage http://www.nelmezzodelcammin.it/i-miei-ebook/

© Ferdinanda Cremascoli 2019

[e-mail]

www.nelmezzodelcammin.it

In limine

What is there and what is not in these lessons

These lessons on the narrative structure of the Divine Comedy derive from my work as a teacher of History of Italian Literature in Italian high schools.

What there is not in these lessons: the general info on the Divine Comedy , on the age of its composition, on the transmission of the work, on its critical fortune, on the themes it develops. Nor is there any news on Dante's other works which also constitute capital experiences that the poet reworks in his major work. I focused instead on the narrative structure of the poem: the Divine Comedy is a great story, that takes place over a week, it’s very colorful in the landscapes, crowded with characters, splatter in the story of the punishment of sinners, impressionist in painting the skies of the blessed.

The original essay ( Il cammino e la pietate) is written in Italian, and published on the site www.nelmezzodelcammin.it , from where it can be downloaded.

This English translation is a work in progress. The first two lessons are now available.

All the quotations from Dante's poem are taken from the translation of Robert and Jean Hollander published by Anchor Books Edition, Random House Inc., New York, 2002. The quotation from the original italian text are from Dante Alighieri, La Divina Commedia, E-Text, Terza edizione 2005, scaricabile da www.liberliber.it , edizione curata da Giorgio Petrocchi e tratta da Le opere di Dante Alighieri; Edizione Nazionale a cura della Società Dantesca Italiana.

Enjoy the reading !

Eindhoven (NL), June 2019

The Title of the Poem

Dante called his poem simply Comedy, as he says in two passages of the Inferno. The first one (Inf, XVI,127-128):

but here I can’t be silent. And by the strains

of this Comedy (...) I swear to you, reader,

The second in the XXI Canto, vv. 1-3

Thus from one bridge to the next we came

until we reached its highest point, speaking

of things my Comedy does not care to sing.

The Epistle to Cangrande, too, in which Dante dedicates the first part of Paradiso to the lord of Verona Cangrande della Scala, gives proof of the original title:

Incipit Commedia Dantis Alagherii Florentini natione, non moribus

Here begins the Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Florentine in birth, but not in manners

Why Dante chose this title can be explained according to the precepts of medieval rhetoric, inherited from classical culture: the work is called Commedia because its subject has a sad beginning and a happy outcome; because his language is vulgar and because his style is humble and modest. Commedia is a literary genre that for matter, language and style is opposed to tragedìa, the sublime genre that Dante had already described in De vulgari eloquentia, the treatise on the vernacular, written in Latin a few years before the poem.

This might suggest that Dante ascribed a modest genre to his work. However the readers of the Comedy knows that it is all but modest. In the Eight Heaven of Paradise, the sphere of the fixed stars, the poet has the vision of the triumph of Christ and immediately Beatrice invites him not be scared any more. Dante turns his gaze towards the sky acknowledging, however, that his verses will never be up to describe the paradise and he call his work the sacred poem (Par, XXIII, 61-62). And only a little further on, while undergoing an exam on the three theological virtues, the poet still defines his poem as follows (Par, XXV, 1-2):

Should it ever come to pass that this sacred poem

to which both Heaven and earth set their hand

Dante did not even a modest opinion