Book Section
Laura DiNardo
Reasoning between Possibility, Fictional Reality, and Actuality
A Case Study in Detheologizing the Commedia’s Conditionals
This essay takes its inspiration from the detheologized approach of The Undivine Comedy to consider the role of conditional constructions in the Commedia. Inferno 9 and 27 are offered as case studies to consider how Dante-poet employs the linguistic structure of the conditional as a mechanism to consider possibility and its relation to fictional reality and actuality, thus grounding the truth value of his text in a precise semantic framework.
| Title |
Reasoning between Possibility, Fictional Reality, and Actuality
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| Subtitle |
A Case Study in Detheologizing the Commedia’s Conditionals
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| Author(s) |
Laura DiNardo
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| Identifier | |
| Description |
This essay takes its inspiration from the detheologized approach of The Undivine Comedy to consider the role of conditional constructions in the Commedia. Inferno 9 and 27 are offered as case studies to consider how Dante-poet employs the linguistic structure of the conditional as a mechanism to consider possibility and its relation to fictional reality and actuality, thus grounding the truth value of his text in a precise semantic framework.
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| Is Part Of | |
| Place |
Berlin
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| Publisher |
ICI Berlin Press
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| Date |
December 2025
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| Subject |
philosophy of language
possibility
possible worlds
conditionals
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| Rights |
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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| Language |
en-GB
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| page start |
99
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| page end |
122
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| Source |
A World of Possibilities: The Legacy of The Undivine Comedy, ed. by Kristina M. Olson, Cultural Inquiry, 37 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2025), pp. 99–122
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