Teodolinda Barolini and the Signs of Newness in The Undivine ComedyAlberto Casadei

1.

Over thirty years after its publication, The Undivine Comedy continues to pose questions of fundamental importance, particularly in relation to exegeses of the poem that seek to be ‘absolutist’.11My analysis in this article will focus on Teodolinda Barolini, The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), hereafter UDC (subsequent references given in parentheses in the main text), but will keep in mind all of Barolini’s other Dantean contributions, among which one in particular complements and specifies some hypotheses from the volume: ‘Why Did Dante Write the Commedia? Or, The Vision Thing’, Dante Studies, 111 (1993), pp. 1–8. I must also note in particular Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), in which the Introduction’s polemical stance against all unilateral visions of Dante’s works underscores their constitutive eclecticism. See more recently Teodolinda Barolini, Dante’s Multitudes: History, Philosophy, Method (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2022), with further important topics, including New Historicism, philology, and ‘social and cultural difference’. So as not to overdo it in the notes, I will avoid proposing a long integrative bibliography on the themes discussed: this can be found in Alberto Casadei, Dante oltre l’allegoria (Ravenna: Longo, 2021), pp. 203–09. Already in her short but dense Preface, Barolini offers some starting points for an interpretive framework, in which she underscores Dante’s identity not as a naturalist but as a realist tout court. Among other things she calls Beginning of page[p. 136] attention to Auerbach’s claim that the poem’s theology is threatened by its poetic genius: the form becomes more determining than the content, or, better, it becomes the means by which that content (although reliant on Christian doctrine) is rendered new. The sacred poem is a ‘Ulyssean adventure’; its reality does not correspond either to a truth already revealed, or to a fiction that pretends not to be a fiction, but rather locates itself in the realm of the ‘non-false error’ or of the truth that seems to be a lie while in fact it unmasks falsehoods. The Undivine Comedy tracks the creation of this ‘detheologized’ dimension, offering an introductory chapter followed by nine others, three for each canticle. I will concentrate here, due to spatial constraints, on some implications of the book’s general structure and on its reading of the first cantos of Inferno.

In the initial chapter of her book, Barolini begins by arguing for the non-implausibility of Bruno Nardi’s thesis on the status of Dante-prophet: this move is not to be discounted given that, in 1992, the whole of Dante studies considered Nardi’s thesis with a certain dismissiveness. And yet strong reasons existed to re-evaluate it, for example on the basis of the poem’s numerous truth claims, as well as the prophetic-apocalyptic dimension manifested in various epistles. However, Barolini’s reconsideration of Nardi’s essay depended on her posing a general question, all the while knowing how problematic this question was (and is): Did Dante believe in the truth that he claims to recount? In practice, her central concern was to find a mode of reading Dante’s poem that does not result in tautology, stepping outside of its structural configuration to be able to interpret it.

Equally courageously, the chapter tackles Charles S. Singleton and the question of allegory, both of the poets or of the theologians, in relation to the Epistle to Cangrande. Authentic or not, the Epistle authorizes us to consider the credibility of the literal level of the text in a similar manner to how we consider the books of the Bible. Barolini plays a precision game, bringing to light, beyond their contrasting principles, the similarities between Nardi’s position, which presupposes a correspondence between what is narrated and what is effectively granted as ‘inspiration’ to Dante-prophet, and Singleton’s position, which defines the Commedia as a fiction that pretends not to be a fiction and holds that every aspect of the Dantean account Beginning of page[p. 137] must be read on a second allegorical (and theologically orthodox) level while accepting the truth of the literal first level. There exists, therefore, an objective truth in Dante’s text, which is a literary and rhetorical construction that is modelled on either a vision or a theological pattern.

Fittingly, Barolini reflects at length on how Dantean ‘truth claims’ can be accommodated and condemns the forced division between poeta and theologus, as well as the inflexibility surrounding the issue of the non-authenticity of the Epistle to Cangrande. The true problem is to establish how — within the narrative construction of his poem — Dante positions himself regarding the substance of his account and its truth value. The reader is certainly primed for a reception mode that must be attentive to the levels of truthfulness problematized within the work itself. Noting insightfully the limits of various other interpretations that built upon these arguments (such as those of Robert Hollander, Giorgio Padoan, Peter Dronke, Peter Hawkins, etc.), Barolini arrives at an essential assumption in her interpretative framework by turning to Augustine (who did not exclude poetic abilities on the part of a prophet): ‘In my opinion, Dante self-consciously used the means of fiction — poetic and narrative strategies — in the service of a vision he believed to be true, thus creating the hybrid he defined a “truth that has the face of a lie” — “un ver c’ha faccia di menzogna” (Inf. 16.124)’ (UDC, p. 11). In short, there is no clear distinction between poetry and theological fiction, or between authentic inspiration and imposed structure: Dante is a prophet and a poet, one who achieves a ‘non-false error’, or rather ‘a fiction that IS true’ (UDC, p. 13).

At this point, some methodological reflections come to mind. As we have seen, Barolini demonstrated that, up to the early 1990s, the primary proposals regarding the truth claims of the Commedia were connected to its content and to the possible role of the ‘real’ Dante (Nardi), or to the hypothesis that the literal level must always be combined with allegorical significance to complete its meaning (Singleton). Both these propositions, in theory, emphasize the value of the text, and yet in practice they involve a radical removal of the poem’s rhetorical and narrative aspects in and of themselves. Nardi, not coincidentally, is preoccupied with re-establishing the exact meaning of controversial passages (for example, the cord and Geryon in Inferno Beginning of page[p. 138] 16 and 17, Virgil’s speech in Inferno 34, etc.), but not with the overall form of the narrative in the three canticles. Singleton, on the other hand, who believes in a general organization to be studied a priori by way of recognizable theological principles, avoids all ‘novelistic’ and thus effectively false aspects of the poem, considering them not pertinent to the overall truth that Dante wished to communicate. From this point of view, it was absolutely necessary to move toward a multifocal reading, which also took into consideration the figural-Auerbachian approach.

Barolini’s gambit was that of finding footholds within Dante’s narrative that allow us to discern and to understand its fundamental characteristics, which are then adequately interpreted and not simply paraphrased. Thus, if the term comedìa is introduced (Inf. 16.128) in a passage that explicitly establishes the problem of the ‘ver c’ha faccia di menzogna’ (‘truth that has the face of a lie’; Inf. 16.124), such a connection must be considered essential, and must work together — creating a textual system — with the ‘non falsi errori’ (‘non-false errors’) of Purgatorio 15.117.22All citations from the Commedia are drawn from Dante Alighieri, La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata, ed. by Giorgio Petrocchi, Società Dantesca Italiana, Edizione Nazionale, 2nd rev. edn, 4 vols (Florence: Le Lettere, 1994). Translations into English, with modifications at times for clarity, are from Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. by Allen Mandelbaum, 3 vols (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980–82). Both passages address the necessity that the reader consider as truthful that which may seem instead — on a superficial reading — erroneous or untruthful. In its subject matter and in its overall narrative journey, in fact, the comedìa establishes a more profound truth than the debatable truth of Virgil’s tragedìa. Here we see how Barolini establishes an interpretation, rather than a simple paraphrase, of the explicit opposition between the two terms: tragedìa in Inferno 20.113 and comedìa in Inferno 21.2.

We are now in a position to establish a fundamental feature of Barolini’s analysis: for her, the entirety of Dante’s poem is cohesive to the point of allowing comparisons even at notable textual distances. At the same time one can move through a progressive discovery of its fundamentals by dealing with problems that present themselves as different each time, problems that the author was compelled to resolve while at the same time maintaining narrative credibility. For exampleBeginning of page[p. 139], the representational mode of Paradiso needed to prioritize the dialectic between the one and the many in a context that in theory should have been monistic, and therefore deprived of all possible narrative development, contrary to what had occurred in Inferno and Purgatorio. (I must note parenthetically that the brilliant Dantean theatrical reinterpretation of Romeo Castellucci, staged in Avignon in 2008, symbolically translated the first two realms of the afterlife but proposed a static installation for the third, demonstrating the difficulty mentioned above.) In other words, the level of truth that Dante’s text offers does not lie in its contents (which however Barolini does not discount), nor in its literal account; it lies instead in the skilled construction of a narrative modality in which the reader is called to believe, via the same paradoxical terms indicated above and without any rigid pre-established norms.

In sum, ‘because of its biblical and prophetic pretensions the Commedia poses the basic narrative issue of its truth value in aggravated form’ (UDC, p. 14). It is necessary, however, to step outside of the hall of mirrors that Dante himself creates and therefore to read the poem without reaffirming its claim to divine status, aiming instead to recognize its narrative strategies (see UDC, pp. 17–18). From this point of view, an analysis of how the text is constructed is the only way to avoid the vicious hermeneutical circle that explains Dante with Dante’s own ideology, thus rendering all features of the narrative always already coherent through the application of an a priori law, whether that law be allegory of the theologians or something else.

I believe that this move was and is, from a critical point of view, essential, even though, in the last thirty years, narrative interpretations of the poem have diminished rather than increased.33However, after Vittorio Russo, Il romanzo teologico: Sondaggi sulla ‘Commedia’ di Dante (Naples: Liguori, 1984), see the recent contribution of Nicolò Crisafi, Dante’s Masterplot and Alternative Narratives in the ‘Commedia’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), also for further bibliography. Many new studies have focused on content over method, either historical-biographical or philosophical-theological, and have generated numerous corrections to the theses of Nardi and Singleton. At the same time, even linguistic and rhetorical analyses, à la Auerbach or Contini, have been challenged in their assumptions: for example the supposed homology between Beginning of page[p. 140] stylistic solutions that are otherwise divergent, as in the case of the Fiore and the Divina Commedia; or the supposed connection between distant episodes of the Commedia that have been interpreted on the basis of very loose allegorical-figural principles, perhaps elicited from random signposts, such as the comparisons between the incident of the Argonauts in Paradiso 2.16–18 and 33.96. We find risky attempts to create bridges between religious and profane texts that are perhaps known by Dante but not explicitly acknowledged; all this with the goal of explaining — in the name of a supposed intertextuality — episodes in the poem that instead require first and foremost to be correctly placed in the narrative framework. In general, according to Barolini, Dante’s narrative must be explicated without turning to interpretative paradigms that reduce it to an average text of its historical period (as the first commentators did and, in my opinion, as did the author of the Epistle to Cangrande). Nor should we flatten its principal strength, that of not being subject to rigid blueprints, while still being structured and at the same time invariably inventive.

2.

Fully recognizing the richness of the principles articulated by Barolini, it is possible, at a distance of thirty years, to now add new considerations and to carry out further analyses that tackle the issue of historicizing Dante’s writing, a topic also very important in Barolini’s recent research (see note 1). We can take as an example those pages that discuss the beginning of the poem in the chapter ‘Infernal Incipits: The Poetics of the New’ (UDC, pp. 21–47). ‘Newness’ is a fundamental element for Dante, who emphasizes it in various ways in all of his works, up to the well-known figure of the ‘ovis gratissima’ in the first eclogue sent to Giovanni del Virgilio (see Eclogues 2.58–62), which can be interpreted correctly only if it is considered as the bucolic equivalent to Dantean poetic inspiration, resistant to barriers and to what is already known.

However, it may not be necessary to discern this general characteristic already in the incipit ‘Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita’ (‘When I had journeyed half of our life’s way’; Inf. 1.1), which first and foremost does not refer, as Singleton suggests, to the human condition Beginning of page[p. 141] in and of itself. It is a rhetorically elevated formula (suggestive of the probable hypotext Isaiah 38:10) that introduces a protagonist who has just entered his thirty-fifth year: the adjective ‘nostra’ (our) is necessary (instead of ‘mia’ [my]) to indicate the expected duration of a human life, the seventy years that, for Dante, began in 1265. For those to whom the author’s birth year was known, specifically among his Florentine audience, it then became possible to intuit that the year 1300 was being referred to, with a beginning ab incarnatione (March 25). If we hypothesize that the text addressed in primis his fellow citizens, as was already the case of the Vita nuova (knowledge of the libello is indispensable beginning with the Commedia’s second canto), we can better understand that the opening is not abstract but focused on characterizing the poet: the ‘I’ that comes to understand his sinful situation is not an ‘Everyman’ but rather the Dante already famous for the Vita nuova, where he makes known his special relationship with Beatrice. One who is saved by an exceptional otherworldly intervention and then undertakes a journey comparable only to that of Aeneas and Saint Paul is certainly not an Everyman, even if he is able to teach a great deal to each one of his readers.

Personally, I believe that Dante wrote the first four cantos of Inferno prior to exile, perhaps after a trip to Rome to take advantage of the indulgences for sins made available by that extraordinary event for all Christians that was the first Jubilee. Seeing as the cantos were later recovered and disseminated prior to any possible correction, as Boccaccio affirms on the basis of reliable witnesses (except for the number of cantos recovered), here the dominant framework could not be anything but the ‘allegory of poets’, in a narrative that is moreover marred by many incongruities with the later storyline. This does not take away from the fact that, as Barolini affirms, the beginning of the poem is ‘a carefully constructed sequence of ups and downs, starts and stops’ (UDC, p. 28), provided that the recognition of these attempts to escape the ‘selva oscura’ take into consideration the narration’s actual limitations, as described above. Here there is no alternative to the allegory of the poets, which reveals the protagonist’s inability to overcome his most pressing sins (leopard-lust and lion-pride), to which we can add, with particular emphasis, the wolf-cupidity. Against this backdrop a Veltro (greyhound) is evoked that is in part allegorical and in part Beginning of page[p. 142] auspiciously historical, though not the Emperor (who corresponds, if to anything, to the ‘Cinquecento diece e cinque’ (‘Five Hundred and Ten and Five’) of Purgatorio 33.43). We are very far, in any case, from a narrative that is already self-sufficient on its first, literal, level.44I will allow myself to point to some of my studies that refer to the considerations touched upon here in a more concise manner: Casadei, Dante oltre l’allegoria, pp. 33–70; and Alberto Casadei, ‘Ancora sui canti fiorentini dell’Inferno (e ancora sul Veltro)’, Italianistica, 52.2 (2023), pp. 11–32, with ample bibliography.

Once more we see the need to consider carefully the characteristics that make up Dante’s narration, hybrid as ever and capable of evolving. Whoever regards it as a monolithic poem, written from the first to the last verse without making any adjustments, does not understand its variations, for the text undergoes a radical modification between the first four cantos and the fifth, where narration infused with a historical background becomes paramount. Moreover, the Commedia’s beginning is quite congruous with a framework already traceable to Brunetto Latini’s Tesoretto, in which an alter ego protagonist of the author loses the correct path, in his case after having come to learn of the loss of the Florentine Guelfs at Montaperti while he is traveling between Spain and France, and finds himself in a dangerous forest, where he then sees three terrible beasts but also receives precious teachings, especially thanks to Nature, a figure that brings us back to the works of Alain de Lille. No critic voices major concerns regarding the allegorical and fictitious foundations of this literary work, which has the benefit of being certified at the beginning by ‘authentic’ historical-biographical details (a feature not attested in similar texts).

While also following the Brunettian model, in the first four cantos Dante avoids precise self-references and ennobles his allegorical account by adhering in the third canto to the Virgilian model, interwoven with the biblical echoes possibly drawn from the Visio Pauli in one of its many versions. Therefore, with respect to the Tesoretto, the text is more elaborate, boasting a wealth of features that are not merely didactic. Nevertheless, the Commedia’s different stature (owing additionally to the extraordinary invention of interlocking and rhymed terzine that substitute for Brunetto’s monotonous couplets of rhymed settenari) does not annul the strong initial similarity as to pattern with Brunetto’s Tesoretto. Of course, Brunetto’s text is situated on a plane Beginning of page[p. 143] that is prevailingly moral and notional, given its intent to synthesize his encyclopaedic Tresor, while Dante’s poem features, as Barolini has emphasized many times, both a strong Christian spirituality and respect for the great ancient pagan writers. Such respect is clearly demonstrated by his own positioning, in Inferno 4.102, as ‘sixth’ following the great poets already evoked in the famous twenty-fifth chapter (ed. Barbi) of the Vita nuova. The endorsement offered to Dante by the ancient poets derives from his new undertaking, that of creating a truly ‘epic’ poem of Christianity and employing the vernacular at its highest levels (by no means in the comic style). Here is the novel choice that leads Dante to finally exalt his protector, Beatrice, as he promised to do at the end of the Vita nuova: the criterion of ‘newness’, decisive in The Undivine Comedy, at this point in Dante’s authorial trajectory is clearly reengaged (although not yet in the form that will sustain the text beginning in the fifth canto).

3.

Barolini similarly highlights those sections of cantos 2 and 3 related to the dialectic between fictional representation and the creation of ‘non-false errors’. With respect to the manner of configuring higher judgment, in theory divine and in effect Dantean, the surprises of the narrative are and remain continuous. Moreover, they vary according to the type of reception that can be hypothesized for each. For example, among the neutrals there is only one person who is included without a name, a person who was identified as Celestine V already by the first and, in this instance, most trustworthy commentators. For Barolini, this identification does not prevent the text from contributing to his punishment by impeding certainty about his name. But, if the potential audience of readers was that of Florence in 1300, it is evident that this allusion would not fall flat, given that at this time all the White Guelfs knew that Pope Boniface VIII was by now allied to the Black Guelfs, and that this peril was caused by the scandalous abdication of his predecessor, Celestine V. The allusion, therefore, would strengthen the satisfaction of recognizing as condemned to Hell a character who was truly detested by Dante’s political faction.Beginning of page[p. 144]

Recent studies of the Florentine context demonstrate that questions on the actual state of the otherworld were being tackled that relate to problems touched on in these first cantos and that create more than one aporia if we consider them as written after the fourth book of the Convivio. What theological foundation can there be for the neutral angels of Inferno 3.37–42, given that they are untenable according to the Bible and to the common exegesis regarding the angels’ division into two groups after the rebellion of Lucifer (two groups who are mentioned again, without a nod to the neutrals, in Paradiso 29.49–54)?55On this complex question, after John Freccero, ‘The Neutral Angels’, in Freccero, Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, ed. by Rachel Jacoff (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 110–18, see most recently Fabrizio Crasta, ‘Gli angeli neutrali da Dante a Matteo Palmieri’, Lettere Italiane, 67.1 (2015), pp. 5–25. Lorenzo Dell’Oso provides new evidence in relation to Florentine culture of the end of the thirteenth century with ‘L’Inferno a Firenze? Su alcuni elementi teologici dei primi canti della Commedia (Inf. 1–4)’, Italianistica: Rivista di letteratura italiana, 53.3 (2024), pp. 12–26. Was the Dante who introduces this position, a position that is more bizarre than daring, perhaps not yet the systematic thinker of the treatise? Was he rather the still immature frequenter of the discussions of philosophers and theologians, who remained in Florence until 1301? In that case, we could hypothesize this young Dante’s willingness to sustain an original position with respect to the existence of ‘lukewarm’ figures like those of Apocalypse 3:14–16, figures who are very appropriate for the ante-Hell of the pusillanimous. If one considers the historical genesis of the claim and the audience that Dante had in mind when he came up with neutral angels, a concept so out of tune with the argumentative modalities of the Convivio, it is perhaps acceptable to circumscribe the range of interpretations of the passage, evading the reductionism that impedes us in understanding the critical points of Dante’s narrative.

4.

From investigations such as the ones summarized above, the specificity of the beginning of the poem emerges, also with respect to the allegorical modality that is then abandoned. But there are other questions that can be posed in line with new approaches, as Barolini has repeatedly done. I believe that we need to reconsider the meaning of the comic Beginning of page[p. 145] style, in relation to the entire poem and to its truth that has the face of a lie. By the same token, the tragic style of Virgil is positioned on the side of falsity. But why rely on this guide and why reuse this model in a collateral work such as the Eclogues? Virgil’s knowledge is carried out within the limits assigned to human reason,66See most recently Paolo Falzone, ‘Per Dante virgiliano’, in Dante e l’eredità dei classici, ed. by Stefano Carrai, special issue of Letture Classensi, 51 (2023), pp. 31–60. Regarding the interpretation of Virgil, see Barolini’s intervention already in Teodolinda Barolini, Dante’s Poets: Textuality and Truth in the ‘Comedy’ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 198–256, in particular 200–01 and 214. and his work is nevertheless a point of reference that has long been considered superior with respect to the infernal comedìa, which however is capable of evolving in relation to the material treated. And it is indeed this evolution that the reader will be obliged to follow closely, to the point of needing to leave one’s usual mode of interpretation behind to contemplate the exceptional truths of the third canticle, almost as though sitting at a desk in the library (see Par. 2.1–18 and 10.22–27). We might therefore propose that the poet’s pact of truthfulness is one that embraces variability, in continuity with the assertions of Barolini’s work of 1992.

To return to the analysis of the first cantos of Inferno, the question of Limbo and its castle for magnanimous souls in Inferno 4 merits its own treatment. The rather ambiguous nature of the infernal ‘lembo’ as Dante conceived it is already underscored in The Undivine Comedy, and correctly so, given that it is populated primarily by non-baptized souls who were not saved by Christ at the moment of his death and resurrection: these are souls who led honourable lives and accrued ‘onrata nominanza’ (‘honor of their name’; Inf. 4.76), and who therefore do not suffer active punishment but rather the impossibility of satisfying their desire to see the true God. This is a state of exception, one that is guaranteed by the ‘nobile castello’ (‘exalted castle’; v. 106), illuminated even though it finds itself in a circle of Hell. Here we have a sort of medieval re-elaboration of Virgil’s Elysian fields (and, to a lesser degree, of the seat of the moral virtues in the Tesoretto). Altogether, as has been noted since the first commentators, it is a rather contradictory canto with respect to various principles of the Christian faith, in particular when even Muslims such as Avicenna, Averroes, and Saladin are named among those residing in Limbo.Beginning of page[p. 146]

Barolini has returned to this topic in her commentary on the entire poem and in a recent essay,77See Teodolinda Barolini, ‘Non-Christians in the Christian Afterlife’, Digital Dante (Columbia University Libraries, 2018) <https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/inferno/inferno-4/> [accessed 5 June 2025]. The essay, published first in Italian as ‘Il Limbo di Dante e l’equità di accesso: non-cristiani, bambini, e i criteri di inclusione ed esclusiond, da If 4 a Pd 32’, Italianistica, 50.1 (2021), pp. 49–64, was later expanded on in English as Teodolinda Barolini, ‘Dante’s Limbo and Equity of Access: Non-Christians, Children, and Criteria of Inclusion and Exclusion, from Inferno 4 to Paradiso 32’, in Dante’s Multitudes, pp. 58–81. For specific bibliography, I refer again to Casadei, Dante oltre l’allegoria, pp. 62–70. in which she highlights the exceptionality of Dante’s Limbo, a place in the afterlife not imagined in the Bible but hypothesized by the Fathers of the Church and by theologians to resolve doubts regarding the destiny of children who die before baptism. The fate of these children is not of particular interest to Dante in Inferno 4, but will be recalled in the treatment of the placement of children within the Empyrean (see Par. 32.73–84, as well as Purg. 7.31–33). The destiny of those who are excluded from divine grace only on account of a lack of knowledge of Christ remains unclear. The exceptionality of Dante’s Limbo, therefore, is not so much in the doctrinal-ecclesiastical choice of this place, but rather in Dante’s need to contaminate it with another space: Limbo is the equivalent of the Elysian fields for great souls, who are in theory from any era or religion (Barolini would opt for the term ‘multiculturalism’).

This particular concession concerning the great souls of Limbo is clearly willed by Dante, since it is not corrected in the course of the poem (rather, Dante confirms his position in the additional lists of Purg. 22.97–114), and nevertheless it seems constructed on a precarious (although not deliberately transgressive) foundation as far as its theological lapses. What is most surprising is that, to take advantage of the doctrine relative to Limbo, Dante places in this circle two types of rather different ‘guilty but not guilty’ souls: children who die before baptism and are therefore in theory incapable of using reason or feeling actual desire, and adults who instead are unable not to feel the desire to reach God, once they learn the Christian truth. Therefore they live ‘sanza speme’ (‘without hope’; Inf. 4.42), in a condition that is a sort of substitute for the true infernal punishment that, in as much as they are placed in Hell, they do nevertheless receive.Beginning of page[p. 147]

Saint Thomas (Summa Theologica, Suppl. 69.6), in an observation that is often insufficiently noted, also posits two groups of Limbo-dwellers who were able to coexist in the same place: namely, the unbaptized children and the patriarchs. In 1300 this coexistence was no longer relevant because the patriarchs had long ago been transported to heaven by Christ, given that the lumen gratiae was able to work on them. But to substitute this category with that of non-Christians in general (see Inf. 4.30, almost a calque from Aen. 6.306), and of the great souls in particular, could not in any way appear plausible: one needed to hypothesize that God had reserved a sort of special treatment for these individuals, regardless of their behaviour, although not one of true grace.

Likewise in this case there are many signs that lead us to think that the entire concept of the ‘nobile castello’ dates to a time prior to the development of a true philosophical position on the part of Dante (for bibliography, see note 6). It is important, with Barolini, to emphasize the singularity of Dante’s position on Limbo; at the same time, however, we must ask whether, as with the neutral angels, we find ourselves in front of an eccentric position that has a precise purpose (to show contempt for every type of pusillanimity), or whether it is more probable that these evident uncertainties are the sign of a very personal conviction that is however still in fieri. Perhaps this conviction took shape as a result of reading the Nicomachean Ethics (in particular 4.3), after which Dante formed the desire to safeguard the great souls, and in particular the five greatest poets of antiquity: Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, and Lucan (who were previously named in Vita nuova 25) and after them the ‘new’ poet who is sixth (see Inf. 4.102). This choice of himself is indeed clear and audacious: he is ready to write the epos of the Christian afterlife, for the first time in the vernacular. This self-investiture is of fundamental importance, especially if it is detached, as it should be, from the problem of the comic style.

Many studies in recent decades have examined with great care the material dimension of Dante’s works (moments and places of writing, expected audience, etc.). Although in many cases, only generic hypotheses can be formulated, it is a task that must at least be attempted, to avoid remaining within the single dimension of Dantean ‘intratextuality’, in which we gloss Dante with Dante. The task, as emphasized even Beginning of page[p. 148] recently by Barolini (see note 1), must be that of historicizing in ways that are more flexible and more dynamic than in the past. That said, the legacy of The Undivine Comedy remains strong, for it undertook to study the inventio and not just the dispositio of Dante’s narrative. Such work must undoubtedly continue.