Starved For Affection: PURGATORIO, Canto XXIII, Lines 1 - 27
Our pilgrim must move beyond the mystical tree on the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory. So he sets off behind Virgil and Statius, only to overtaken by a group of cadaverous, skeletal penitents, whose ...
8 Juni 202527min
Did Dante Think The Characters In Classical Poems Were Real?
Did Dante think that the characters in Virgil's and Statius's poems were real? Did he believe that the characters who changed shape, being, and even substance in Ovid's METAMORPHOSES were actual and h...
4 Juni 202519min
You Are What You Eat . . . And Read: PURGATORIO, Canto XXII, Lines 130 - 145
Virgil and Statius begin to trek around the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory but are stopped by an upside-down tree . . . that causes more questions than it provides answers.A voice in the tree warns ...
1 Juni 202527min
Going In Circles To Go Forward: PURGATORIO, Canto XXII, Lines 115 - 129
Our pilgrim, Virgil, and Statius arrive on the otherwise empty sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory. Virgil seems more hesitant. And our pilgrim, Dante, more passive, as he listens to the two older, wiser...
28 Maj 202523min
Placing And Misplacing Your Classical Ancestors: PURGATORIO, Canto XXII, Lines 94 - 114
At the end of their first conversation, Virgil and Statius reconstruct limbo. They transform it into a neighborhood where all the lost, classical writers live.They also transfer limbo's sighs from the...
25 Maj 202529min
Statius, The Closeted Christian: PURGATORIO, Canto XXII, Lines 76 - 93
Statius finally tells Virgil what we all want to know: the story of his conversion. How did this Latin poet who dedicated his great epic to a Roman emperor become a Christian.Through a long process an...
21 Maj 202527min
Virgil, The Damned Christian Missionary: PURGATORIO, Canto XXII, Lines 55 - 74
Given that Statius claims a passage from The Aeneid made him see the error of his ways, Virgil wants to know how this poet of the Thebes could have ever become a Christian, particularly since his poet...
18 Maj 202534min
An Interpolated Episode: Dante and Irony
Since we’ve come to a moment of (perhaps!) profound irony as Statius misquotes and even misinterprets Virgil’s AENEID to find his way to salvation, we should perhaps pause and talk a bit about irony, ...
14 Maj 202521min
