The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 02
The Sense of an Ending (1966; rpt., London: Oxford University Press 1968) 7. The classical injunction invoked by Kermode is Horatian (Ars poetica 148) while as biblical precedent for the Commedia's beginning, commentators cite Isaiah: "ln dimidio dierum meorum vadam ad portas inferi" (38:10). Noting that "mi ha sempre colpito il fatto che l'esordio della Commedia invece di dire In principio, come sarebbe lecito aspettarsi, dica Nel mezzo," Guglielmo Gorni suggests that the Commedia be gins in the middle out of deference to the "grandi testi ispirati" that begin at the beginning: Genesis ("In principio creavit Deus coelum et terram"), the Gospel of John ("In principio erat Verbum"), and the Vita Nuova, which begins "Incipit vita nova"; see "La teoria del 'cominciamento,'" in 11 nodo della lingua e il verbo d'amore (Florence: Olschki, 1981), 175-76.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 03
Aristotle is actually referring to the moment, which he considers indistinguish able from time: "Now since time cannot exist and is unthinkable apart from the moment, and the moment is a kind of middle-point, uniting as it does in itself both a beginning and an end, a beginning of future time and an end of past time, it follows that there must always be time: for the extremity of the last period of time that we take must be found in some moment, since time contains no point of contact for us except in the moment. Therefore, since the moment is both a beginning and an end there must always be time on both sides of it" (Physics 8.1.251b18-26; in the translation of R. 1! Hardie and R. K. Gaye, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon [New York: Random House, 1941]).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 04
Dante's concept of the new brings to mind the linguistic formulation that structures all discourse into binaries variously called given/new, old/new, known/ new; see Ellen F: Prince, "On the Given/New Distinction," Proceedings of the Chicago Linguistic Society 15 (1979): 267-78.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 05
The equivalence vita = cammino, whose primitive origins are discussed by G. B. Bronzini ("'Nel mezzo del cammin . . Y ", Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 155 [1978]: 161-77), permeates Dante's work, from the Vita Nuova's "via d'Amor" and "cammino de li sospiri" to the Monarchia's longed-for port ("Et cum ad hunc portum vel nulli vel pauci, et hii cum difficultate nimia, pervenire possint nisi sedatis fluctibus blande cupiditatis genus humanum liberum in pacis tranquillitate qui escat" [3.15.11]); again, the voyage of life may be by land or by sea. The Convivio contains a number of full-fledged parables based on the metaphor of life as a path; besides the lengthy pilgrim passage (4.12.15-19) from which I cite above, there is the "essemplo del cammino mostrato" (4.7.5-7) and the extended comparison of death to journey's end (4.28.2-8). Shorter examples from the Convivio include: "l'uomo che . . . disviato si rinvia" (3.8.19); "cammino di questa brevissima vitan (3.15.18) "proposi di gridare a la gente che per mal cammino andavano, accio che per diritto calle si dirizzassero . . . io intendo riducer la gente in diritta via" (4.1.9); "la nave de l'umana compagnia dirittamente per dolce cammino a debito porto correa" (4.5.8); "pochi per male camminare compiano la giornata" (4.13.7); "noi potemo avere in questa vita due felicitadi, secondo due diversi cammini, buono e ottimo, che a cio ne menano" (4.17.9); "cosi questi umani appetiti per diversi calli dal principio se ne vanno, e uno solo calle e quello che noi mena a la nostra pacen (4.22.6); "dico che questa prima etade e porta e via per la quale s'entra ne la nostra buona vita" (4.24.9); "cosi l'adolescente, che entra ne la selva erronea di questa vita, non saprebbe tenere lo buono cammino, se da li suoi maggiori non li fosse mostrato" (4.24.12).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 06
Augustine describes memory as a great storehouse in Confessions 10.8, noting in 10.11 that memories that have been stored too long have to be thought out again as though they were new, "nova."

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 07
A passage from the Convivio, in which the "continuo sguardare" of the angelic intelligences is compared to the "riguardare discontinuato" of man, provides an op portune gloss: Philosophy "e donna primamente di Dio e secondariamente de l'altre intelligenze separate , per continuo sguardare; e appreso so de l'umana intelligenza per riguardare discontinuato" (3.13.7).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 08
The editor and translator is Kenelm Foster, Blackfriars 1968, 9:150-57.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 09
I use "difference" as Dante uses it ("ln astratto significa il 'differire' tra due o piu elementi" [Fernando Salsano, ED, s.v. "differenza"] ), and much as St. Thomas uses distinctio: "any type of non-identity between objects and things. Often called diversity or difference" (T. Gilby, Glossary, Blackfriars 1967, 8:164). In other words, as will be apparent from the discussion of time and difference in chapter 8, my usage is essentially Aristotelian.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 10
Lucia Battaglia Ricci writes of "il momento in cui l'iter fisico e cognitivo del poeta e spezzato piu o meno violentemente dall'insorgere di un 'altro"' (Dante e la tradizione letteraria medievale [Pisa: Giardini, 1983], 122). Marino Barchiesi's reading of Inf. 20 contains three pages entitled "La poetica della 'novitate"' where, in an effort to contextualize the canto's incipit ("Di nova pena mi conven far versi"), he catalogues the same verses noted here and cites Convivio 2.6.6: "potentissima persuasione [e], a rendere l'uditore attento, promettere di dire nuove e grandissime cose" ("Catarsi classica e 'medicina' dantesca," Letture classensi 4 [1973]: 11-124, esp. 16-18). More telling is another Convivio passage that establishes the connection between the new and the path of life: "de le nuove cose lo fine non e certo; accio che la esperienza non e mai avuta onde le cose usate e servate sono e nel processo e nel fin e commisurate . Pero si mosse la Ragione a comandare che l'uomo avesse diligente riguardo ad entrare nel nuovo cammino"(1.10.2-3).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 11
The verse cited above marks the end of the encounter with Guido da Montefeltro. Other examples are "E poi ch'a riguardar oltre mi diedi" (Inf. 3.70), which signals the pilgrim's abrupt departure from the souls in hell's vestibule, who are still being described in the preceding verse, and "Noi passammo oltre" (Inf. 33.91), which marks the end of the Ugolino episode.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 12
For other relevant citations, see Vincenzo Mengaldo, ed., De vulgari eloquen tia, 33; he is glossing the passage at the end of the treatise's first chapter in which Dante affirms the superiority of the natural to the artificial (and hence of the vernacular to Latin). The first and third of the three reasons given for the vernacular's superiority (the human race used it first, the whole world uses it, it is natural) are in fact related, since both are connected to its priority. The hierarchy that informs the treatise‹first God, then nature, then art‹is articulated in Inf. 11.99-105.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 13
Gianfranco Contini traces Dante's "ricorrente topos del nuovo": ail proponimento 'di dicer di lei quello che mai non fue detto d'alcuna,' alla fine della Vita Nuova; 'la novita che per tua forma luce, / che non fu mai pensata in alcun tempo,' nella sestina doppia; 'novum aliquid atque intentatum artis,' di essa appunto nel De Vulgari, che a sua volta si apre vantando il proprio inedito contenuto ('Cum neminem ante nos de vulgaris eloquentiae doctrina quicquam inveniamus tractasse'); 'maxime latens' e 'ab omnibus intentata' la materia della Monarchia" ("Un'interpretazione di Dante," 1965, rpt. in Un'idea di Dante [Turin: Einaudi 1976], 103-4).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 14
This is the case, for instance, with respect to Inf. 7's "nove travaglie e pene, which Natalino Sapegno glosses as "impensabili, inaudite" (La Divina Commedia, 3 vols. [Florence: La Nuova Italia,1968], 1:79). Domenico De Robertis's gloss of "cosa nova" in "Donne ch'avete" is better: "mai vista, straordinaria" (125). The adjective's temporal resonance is never more present than in Dante's single use of the superlative: following Latin usage, the "novissimo bando" (Purg. 30.13) is the Last Judgment. For biblical, patristic, and Proven,cal uses of nuovo, see Alberto Del Monte, "'Dolce stil novo,'t Filologia romanza 3 (1956): 254-64.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 15
On the "dyadic beginning and ending" of Dante's cantos, see John Freccero, "The Significance of Terza Rima," 1983, rpt. in Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, ed. Rachel Jacoff (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 261. Still useful is J. S. P. Tatlock, "Dante's Terza Rima," PMLA 51 (1936): 895-903.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 16
The analogy between terza rima and the spiral is noted by Freccero, who defines the spiral as the "geometric representation of forward motion which is at the same time recapitulatory" ("The Significance of Terza Rima,n 263; see also "Dante's Pilgrim in a Gyre," 1961, and "Infernal Inversion and Christian Conversion: Inferno XXNV," 1965, rpt. in Dante: The Poetics of Conversion). Planetary motion is spiral motion for Dante by virtue of the epicycle, which is essentially a regression that then resumes its forward path; the wedding of cosmic spirals with poetic spirals in the poem "Al poco giorno" is underscored by Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez, Time and the Crystal: Studies in Dante's Rime Petrose (Berkeley University of California Press, 1990), 122-23. On spirals in general, see Pierre Gallais, who writes exuberantly that "the spiral is the fundamental characteristic‹on our planet‹of the Living" ("Hexagonal and Spiral Structure in Medieval Narrative,n Yale French Studies 51 [1974]: 116).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 17
Benvenuto glosses the encounter with Statius: "'Noi,' ambo, 'ci volgemmo subito,' ad rem novam, quia nondum viderant in toto circulo isto animam liberam, solutam et laetam nisi istam" (Comentum super Dantis Aldigherij "Comoediam," ed. J. P. Lacaita, 5 vols. [Florence: Barbera, 1887], 4:4).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 18
The ri- verbs of Inf. I (concentrated in the canto's first half: "ritrovai" [2], "rinova" [6],"ridir" [10],arimirar" [26],"ripresi" [29],aritomar" [36],"ripigneva" [60], "ritorni" [76], "rimessa" [110]) constitute the pulsing life-mimetic reminders that, for Dante, spiral motion‹and therefore, l would add, life itself‹ is "a series of conversions" ("The Significance of Terza Rima," 265). At the end of Purgatorio, however, the reiterated ri-prefix signifies achieved conversion, rebirth, the end of spiral motion, and initiation into (virtuous) circularity.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 19
In his third Epistle, to Cino, Dante answers in the affirmative the question "utrum de passione in passionem possit anima transformari" (2). For a geneology of desire from the classics to Dante, see Franco Ferrucci, "La dialettica del desiderio," 11 poema del desiderio: Poetica e passione in Dante (Milan: Leonardo, 1990), 221+,

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 20
"For time is just this‹number of motion in respect of 'before and after'" (Physics 4.11.219bl-2); "time is the number of motion or itself a kind of motion" (8.1.251bl2-13); "For time is by its nature the cause rather of decay, since it is the number of change, and change removes what is" (4.12.221bl-2); "But of time some parts have been, while others have to be, and no part of it is" (4.10.218a5-6). The first of the above definitions is cited in the Convivio: "Lo tempo, secondo che dice Aristotile nel quarto de la Fisica, e 'numero di movimento, secondo prima e poi'"(4.2.6).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 21
To the theological reading of this verse exemplified by John Freccero, "The Firm Foot on a Journey Without a Guide," 1959, rpt. in Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, we may add Ferrucci's reminder that a piede is also a metrical unit, in his metapoetical reading of Inf. 1, "II colle, il sole, il pelago, la selva," 11 poema del desiderio, 47-90.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 22
I do not agree with Anthony Cassell's view, put forth in "lnferno" I, Lectura Dantis Americana (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), that the attempt to climb the mountain is in itself wrong; nor, therefore, do I see the canto's first sixty verses as one homogeneous failure but rather as a series of failures and (aborted) successes, starts and stops, ups and downs. The net result is certainly failure, but I would stress a more textured approach to the "basso loco" reached by the pilgrim in verse 61.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 23
Antonino Pagliaro writes that canto 2 "strutturalmente costituisce una parantesi, poiche il terzo [can to ] s i puo riattaccare al primo senza che s i avverta alcuna lacuna," and that "il canto secondo costituisce un anello dialettico fra il proemio, dove si ha la proposizione del tema, e l'inizio della trattazione" (Ulisse: Ricerche semantiche sulla "Divina Commedia," 2 vols. [Messina: G. D'Anna, 1967],1 :91,113). Similarly, Rachel Jacoff and William Stephany note that "the closing line of Canto 2 is so close to that of Canto I that the plot of Inferno seems to proceed directly from the end of the first canto to the opening of the third" ("Inferno" II, Lectura Dantis Americana [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989], 3).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 24
Pagliaro calls Inf. 1 "11 proemio" and Inf. 2 "Il prologo"; see the two chapters so named in Ulisse, vol. 1. Francesco Mazzoni, Saggio di un nuovo commento alla "Divina Commedia": "lnferno," Canti 1-111 (Florence: Sansoni, 1967), comments on p. 151 that "sul piano strutturale" canto 2 is "il prologo alla prima cantica (come il precedente lo era a tutta l'opera)."

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 25
Benvenuto calls Inf. I proemial, a canto "in quo prohemizatur ad totum opus," and Inf. 2 "similiter prohemiali": "Postquam in praecedenti primo capitulo prohemiali autor noster fecit propositionem .. . in isto secundo capitulo similiter prohemiali more poetico facit suam invocationem" (Lacaita, Comentum 1:21, 73). Jacoff and Stephany refer to the "'detached' quality" of the two introductory cantos (Inferno 11, 1). It is worth noting that the first two cantos of Purgatorio and Paradiso seem to form proemial packages as well.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 26
Cominciare appears in canto 2 six times; in no other canto do combined uses >> of cominciare and incominciare exceed four appearances. For the importance of cominciare and cominciamento, see Gorni, "La teoria del 'cominciamento,tn and Jacz.. queline Risset, Dante scrittore (1982; trans. Milan: Mondadori, 1984), 22-23. For cominciare in the Vita Nuova and the analogies between this canto and VN 18-19, see my "'Cominciandomi dal principio infino a la fine': Forging Anti-Narrative in Dante's Vita Nuova," in aGloriosa donna de la mente": A Commentary on the Vita Nuova, ed. Vincent Moleta (Florence: Olschki, 1993).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 27
No noun or verb form of disio or its variants occurs in Inf. 1; the first usage is Beatrice's "vegno del loco ove tornar disio" (2.71).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 28
Jacoff and Stephany discuss the link between words and deeds in canto 2, noting that "characters move physically only after they have been moved spiritually, and it is words that move them," and point to Beatrice's verse cited above as the "paradigm for the relationship of words to motion within the canto as a whole" ("lnferno" 11, 5).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 29
Entrare denotes thematic transition‹a new beginning‹as early as the Vita Nuova: "E questo dico, accio che altri non si maravigli perche io l'abbia allegato di sopra, quasi come entrata de la nuova materia che appresso vene" (30.2).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 30
A first-time reader of the Commedia can measure his "performance" by comparing himself to the pilgrim; on this basis, swooning at Francesca is understandable, whereas weeping for Ugolino is not. Our uneducated perspective develops in synchrony with Dante's: thus, like the pilgrim, we pay little heed when we first learn, in canto 1, that Vergil will eventually leave us with Beatrice ("con lei ti lascero nel mio partire" [123]); like the pilgrim again, we will be heartbroken when Vergil's departure actually occurs.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 31
Vergil's question to Beatrice ("Ma dimmi la cagion che non ti guardi / de lo scender qua giuso in questo centro / de l'ampio loco ove tornar tu ardi" [82-84]) is not required by the "plot" of Inf. 2, i.e., the concern to justify the pilgrim's voyage, and seems to exist in order to provide the poet an opportunity to establish certain ground rules about hell before proceeding any further: "Temer si dee di sole quelle cose / c'hanno potenza di fare altrui male; / de l'altre no, che non son paurose" (88-90). This is an example of Inf. 2 functioning as prologue to the canticle, rather than as prologue to the poem.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 32
Quivi and qui are not the same word. Giovanni Nencioni points to the "frequente equivoco di ritenerlo [quivi] un sinonimo antico di qui, mentre il suo significato e 'li,' come del resto indica la sua etimologia" (11 testo moltiplicato, ed. Mario Lavagetto [Parma: Pratiche Editrice, 1982], 93).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 33
Dante's decision to create a special category of souls on the threshold of hell, to "distinguere e tener appartati di qua dall'Acheronte, nell'Antinferno, i pusillanimi, di contro a tutti gli altri dannati," has long caused critical tummoil: "l problemi suscitati dalla collocazione degli Ignavi nell'Antinferno son ben percepiti dal Buti, il quale si preoccupa da un lato di distinguerli dai Limbicoli (che vedremo nel canto 4) e dagli Accidiosi" (Mazzoni, "Inferno," Canti 1-111, 364, 358).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 34
On the Acheron as marking the division between "reality" and "vision," see Dino S. Cervigni, "L'Acheronte dantesco: morte del Pellegrino e della poesia," Quaderni d'italianistica 10 (1989): 71-89. Again, I would suggest a less absolute boundary.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 35
With reference to both groups of neutrals, human and angelic, found in canto 3, Silvio Pasquazi writes: al teologi non conoscevano tale categoria di dannati, cosi come la tradizione biblica ed evangelica non conosce la schiera degli angeli imbelli, ignorata anche dalla teologia e dall'angelologia tomistica" (ED, s.v. "A'ntinferno," 1:301).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 36
For the growth of the theology of purgatory, still very fluid in Dante's time, see Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (1981; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). With regard to the popular vision tradition, Alison Morgan notes: "The doctrine of Purgatory as a place emerged definitively only as the last visions of the afterlife were being composed. Far from adopting the conventional solution as is commonly believed, Dante created his own solution to the problem‹there does not seem to have been a convention. All visions up to and including the twelfth-century texts present Hell and Purgatory jumbled together as one realm of the other world; in 1206 Thurkill distinguishes for the first time between them, but suggests no systematic approach to the classification of sin in Purgatory" (Dante and the Medieval Other World [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990], 132).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 37
For the proposal regarding the negligent, see Silvio Pasquazi in the ED, s.v. "Antipurgatorio." For Sordello's classification, see Marco Boni, ED, s.v. "Sordello."

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 38
See The Door of Purgatory A Study of Multiple Symbolism in Dante's Purgatorio (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), 100.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 39
Canto 8's function as a thematic recapitulator is emblematized by the nostalgic bittersweetness of its third verse‹"lo di c'han detto ai dolci amici addio"‹with its quintessentially antepurgatorial pun on addio, while its programmatic recalls of Purgatorio 1 and 2 serve to complete a narrative cycle: the sweet notes of the hymn recall the singing in canto 2, while the angels hearken back to that canto's celestial boatman; the references to the four stars and to Eve recall canto 1, as do the repeated evocations of "this morning"‹"stamane."

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 40
"Sono i primi dannati che il poeta incontra, ed egli ha tenuto a istituire fin dall'inizio, mediante un esempio trasparente, il concetto del 'contrapasso"' (Mazzoni, "Infemo," Canti 1-111, 389).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 41
Intense speculation regarding the identity of this soul has marked the exegetical tradition from the beginning: although the first commentators concurred in believing him to be Celestine V, the pope's canonization created a controversy that, typically, centered on the desire to "evitare a Dante la taccia di eresia" (Mazzoni, "lnferno," Canti 1-111, 401). In my opinion, Dante would have been perfectly capable of condemning even a beatified Celestine, and I agree with Giorgio Padoan that the political climate and Dante's leanings toward the Franciscan spirituals make Celestine the most convincing candidate (see a'Colui che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto,'" 1962, rpt. in 11 pio Enea, l'empio Ulisse [Ravenna: Longo, 1977], 64102). At the same time, Mazzoni is correct to insist that the character of verse 60 is "volutamente lasciato nell'ombra" (390), although he fails to grasp the full textual implications of the poet's enforcement of anonymity.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 42
Another example of the text's participation in the reality it is seeking to represent is the famous crux of Inf. 10.63. The misunderstanding between the pilgrim and Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti, based on the linguistic obscurity of the verb ebbe, is replicated between narrator and reader: the textual obscurity of "forse cui Guido vostro ebbe a disdegno" generates an analogous "misunderstanding" on the part of the reader, who is condemned to eternal uncertainty as to its meaning‹as Cavalcante is condemned to eternal (at least in the text) premature certainty regarding his son's death. In both the "real" and the textual contrapassos, failure of communica tion and concomitant misinterpretation are the issues at stake. Still another example is the text's willful blurring of the identity of the three thieves in Inf. 25, by using l'uno and l'altro instead of their names, the poet makes it difficult for the reader to keep track of their identities, thus conferring on them textually the same loss of self that is their infernal contrapasso.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 43
The "l" of hell's portal presents itself as confidently and unquestioningly, and as mendaciously, as the al" on the computer screen of a bank's automatic teller that announces, "Sorry, I am temporarily out of service." An exception to our critical credulity regarding these verses, discussed in chapter 1, is Freccero's "Infernal Irony The Gates of Hell" (1984, rpt. in Dante: The Poetics of Conversion).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 44
Although we cannot simply take Vergil's explanation at face value, it is clear that the nature of sin for these souls is different from the rest of hell see G. Busnelli "La colpa del 'non fare' degl'infedeli negativi," Studi danteschi 23 (;938): 79-97.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 45
Canto 4's last verses also constitute an implicit commentary on the text to which they belong; for the narrative as for the pilgrim, forward motion requires that we be led "per altra via," by way of alterity, the new. This is a canto in which the poet conflates the pilgrim's journey and his own journey, the "via lunga" and the "lungo tema," by registering the inexorable forward motion of both: Vergil says to the pilgrim, "Andiam, che la via lunga ne sospigne" (22), and the narrator says to us, "lo non posso ritrar di tutti a piano, / pero che si mi caccia il lungo tema, / che molte volte al fatto il dir vien meno" (145-47). It seems appropriate that this gloss on the workings of his own lungo tema, on its adherence to the poetics of the new, should belong to the canto where Dante is accepted by Homer, Vergil, Ovid, Lucan‹those writers of lunghi temi par excellence‹as their poetic equal.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 46
The word limbo is derived from the ablative of Latin limbus meaning border, hem, edge, fringe. Mazzoni comments "etimologicamente, 'orlo' (della veste). Quindi, margine esterno dell'lnferno" ("Saggio di un nuovo commento alla Commedia: il canto IV dell'lnferno," Studi danteschi 42 [1965]: 29-206; quotation, 89).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 47
It is thus not surprising that there have been critics who have considered limbo part of "antehell," including Pasquazi, who counters the explicit determination of its status as primo cerchio by noting the features that make it different (see ED, s.v. "Antinfemo").

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 48
Giorgio Padoan attests eloquently to Dante's conscious and deliberate flouting of theological thought on limbo, and to the concerned reactions of the fourteenth-century commentators, in "11 Limbo dantesco," 1969, rpt. in 11 pio Enea, l'empio Ulisse, 103-24. Dante's concept of limbo is contrasted to that of various theologians by Mazzoni, "11 canto IV," 70-80.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 49
Dante's paradoxical handling of Vergil, the more loved as he is the more explicitly superseded, is treated by me in Dante's Poets: Textuality and Truth in the "Comedy" (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), chapter 3.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 50
do not agree with Mazzoni's contention that the ending of canto 4 should be read as a return to the limbo that exists outside the noble castle, and that anon sara da considerarsi prolettico rispetto alla atmosfera del canto seguente" ("11 canto IV," 203). The proleptic nature of canto 4's final verses is confirmed by canto 5's first word: "Cosi discesi del cerchio primaio . . ."

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 51
For Florence as the infernal city, see Joan Ferrante, The Political Vision of the "Divine Comedy" (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), esp. chapter 1

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 52
Umberto Bosco traces the growth of character development in the early cantos of Infemo, sustaining that canto 5 provides "il nostro primo incontro di lettori con un'individualita ben rilevata" and that, therefore, "Francesca segna una svolta nell'eKettuale poesia dantesca, dovuta a un impatto col contemporaneo" ("La svolta narrativa nei primi canti dell'lnferno" in Dal Medioevo al Petrarca: Miscellanea di studi in onore di Vittore Branca [Florence: Olschki, 1983], 25154; quotation, 253) Although he places the point of rupture in canto 5, Bosco offers as confirmation of his thesis canto 6: "Ormai un nuovo 'stile' di poesia e trovato: il canto 6 ha come scena Firenze.... 11 reale occupa ormai lo spazio inventivo: Ciacco, il poeta puo averlo conosciuto di persona" (253).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 53
Ettore Paratore offers a brief but cogent analysis of transitional techniques in the opening pages of his "Analisi 'retorica' del canto di Pier della Vigna," Studi danteschi 42 (1965): 281-85. E. H. Wilkins analyzes and tabulates discrepancies between cantos and regions in "Cantos, Regions, and Transitions in the Divine Comedy" (The Invention of the Sonnet and Other Studies in Italian Literature [Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura,1959],103-10). For a breakdown of the Commedia's explicits, see the Appendix.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 54
The symmetry that precedes canto 7 and the change that it inaugurates are noted by Wilkins: "Each one of the four cantos that follow the Prologue of the Divine Comedy begins with the beginning of an account of a region not previously visited, and ends precisely with the ending of an account of a regional visit" ("Cantos, Regions, and Transitions," 103). Wilkins comments on the monotony that would have resulted if the symmetry had been maintained and applauds the fact that "variation begins in Canto 7"; however, he sees the variation "not as the result of a deliberate artistic decision, but as the unforeseen outcome of a decision made for didactic reasons" (104).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 55
The adverb ormai will be frequently used to mark transitions; in verse 97 it is coupled with or, creating an untranslateable urgency.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 56
I would suggest that the adjective "diversa," for which Sapegno finds no suitable gloss ("qui sara da intendere 'aspra, malagevole'") serves to signal the presence of difference, the entrance into the new.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 57
The monsters of hell belong to the poetic synchrony of these early cantos. Up to now each new circle (and thus each new canto) has been guarded by a new monster: Minos in the second circle (canto 5), Cerberus in the third circle (canto 6), Plutus in the fourth circle (canto 7). By waiting until canto 8 to introduce the guardian of the fifth circle, Phlegyas, Dante maintains some of the symmetry between episode and canto that he violates by leaving the fourth circle before the end of canto 7.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 58
Judson Boyce Allen dedicates chapter 3 of The Ethical Poetic of the Later Middle Ages: A Decorum of Convenient Distinction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982) to the distinctio or outline as practiced by medieval writers and critics; he notes that "canto 11 of the Inferno is a distinctio on the kinds of sin" (154). Dante's sympathy with what Augustine calls the "scientia definiendi, dividendi, atque partiendi" (De doctrina Christiana 2.35.53) is evidenced by the presence of the divisioni in the Vita Nuova and surfaces throughout his work: in the Convivio, for instance, he characterizes the writer's task as a "mestiere di procedere dividendo" (2.12.10), while Vergil punctuates one of his discourses in the Commedia with "se dividendo bene stimo" (Purg. 17.112).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 59
Alessandro D'Ancona, in I precursori di Dante (Florence: Sansoni, 1874) notes the genre's previous lack of plastic realism: ala descrizione difetta di quella virtu plastica, cosi propria di Dante che a noi par quasi di conoscere graficamente e architettonicamente i luoghi da lui rappresentati" (30). In "L'Itinerarium animae nel Duecento e Dante," Letture classensi 13 (1984): 9-32, Cesare Segre sums up the differences between Dante and his visionary precursors as "Virgilio, la filosofia, la realta" (25).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 60
The vision of hell presented by Dante's Italian precursor Bonvesin de la Riva (ca. 1240-ca. 1313), in his De scriptura nigra, suffers if anything from too much order. Ruggero Stefanini compares Bonvesin's hell to Giacomino da Verona's De Babilonia civitate infernale (13th century): "The Babilonia is a pullulating chaos, bereft of any articulation or sense of perspective.... By contrast, Bonvesin distances and orders this same material, turning it into an inventory of twelve punishments which he presents one after the other, each headed by its ordinal number" (Bonvesin de la Riva, Volgari scelti, trans. Patrick S. Diehl and Ruggero Stefanini [New York: Peter Lang, 19871,129). A hypothesis as to why Dante chose precisely canto number eleven for his taxonomy of sin is offered by Victoria Kirkham, "Eleven Is for Evil: Measured Trespass in Dante's Commedia," Allegorica 10 (1989): 27-50.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 02: 61
These categories of sinners seem to anticipate Dante's concepts of antehell, limbo, and antepurgatory. Alison Morgan comments that "the Vision of Tundale shows the most complex approach to the classification of sin among the twelfthcentury texts" (110) and notes the following grounds for comparing it to Inferno: "the explicit separation of one class of sinner from another; the gradual increase in gravity of sin and corresponding torment as we travel deeper into the pit of Hell; the distinction between sins deserving of punishment in upper Hell and those deserving of punishment in lower Hell, with the offering of a principle according to which the two types are differentiated; the assignment of monsters or guardians to the various classes of sinner; and finally the change in mood as the area of purgation of minor sins is reached" (Dante and the Medieval Other World, 112). Citations are from Visions of Heaven and Hell before Dante, ed. and trans. Eileen Gardiner (New York: Italica Press, 1989), 162, 180, 181.