Dante's Theories Of Writing Across INFERNO and PURGATORIO

As one of three sum-up episode to conclude our time on Mount Purgatory, this one’s about Dante’s conception of what he’s doing when he’s writing, outlined in nine selected passages from INFERNO and PURGATORIO.

We’ve moved far enough into the poem that we can see the ways the poet has changed, hedged, and developed his theories of how and why he’s writing COMEDY. Given that one of my theses is that COMEDY is a poem in process, we can then trace some sort of developmental curve in Dante’s thinking about what he’s doing as a poet.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we work through Dante's possible theories on his own craft.

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Here are the nine selected passages for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:21] INFERNO, Canto III, lines 1 - 12

[05:02] INFERNO, Canto XV, lines 88 - 96a.

[09:42] PURGATORIO, Canto II, lines 106 - 114.

[13:01] PURGATORIO, Canto VIII, lines 70 - 72.

[15:36] PURGATORIO, Canto XXIV, lines 49 - 60.

[19:24] PURGATORIO, Canto XXVI, lines 97 - 102.

[22:05] PURGATORIO, Canto XXXIII, lines 52 - 57.

[24:53] PURGATORIO, Canto XXXIII, lines 76 - 78.

[27:33] PURGATORIO, Canto XXXIII, lines 139 - 141.