Absence Becomes Elevated, High-Style Presence: PURGATORIO, Canto XXXI, Lines 49 - 63

Beatrice continues to lead Dante toward contrition, pointing out both the purposes of her body (or corpse) and the ways he has failed to followed her lofty beauty.

She finishes her second salvo at the pilgrim with a rhetorical flourish, showing the reader (and Dante) that she is a master of rhetoric, someone who commands a high, elevated style of poetry--that is, a fusion of the literal and the metaphoric that will become increasingly necessary to describe the PARADISO experience.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we look at the conclusion of Beatrice's second run at the pilgrim Dante and find the ways that she is directing both him and his poetry.

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Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:09] My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXXI, Lines 49 - 63. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please find the entry for this episode on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[03:19] Glossing the full passage: "beauty" three times, high rhetorical style, low vulgar vocabulary, and an aphoristic ending.

[13:15] Rereading Beatrice's second salvo at Dante: PURGATORIO, Canto XXXI, lines 22 - 63.

[15:22] The uneasy but crucial balance between allegorical/metaphorical language and literal/realistic language.

[18:57] Beatrice: negative space made flesh.

[23:38] Renegotiating COMEDY v. intending these revelations all along.

[28:06] High rhetorical style in Dante's vernacular mouth.