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This article has been published in: Ocula 26, Matters of holiness: semiotic perspectives on Dante

author: Magdalena Maria Kubas (Dipartimento di filosofia e scienze dell'educazione, Università di Torino, IT)

La Commedia, le litanie, la santità: alcune riflessioni tra il Purgatorio XIII e il Paradiso XXXIII

language: italian

abstract: The purpose of this contribution is to examine traces of the litanies in two of the three canticles of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Starting from a previous study of the presence of litany in the medieval poetry, and from a theoretical study dedicated both to the evolution of the litany and the Weltanschauung that accompanied such process, I examine short fragments of the Purgatorio (XIII) and the Paradiso (XXXIII). The aim is to analyze the litanic (intertextual) elements and techniques within Dante’s poem. In the Purgatorio (XIII) there is a direct quotation from the Litany of the Saints, while in the Paradiso we find tipically litanic rhetorical-semantic modes, as the prayer to the Holy Virgin in the final canto of the poem. Both litany and lauda are present in moments of prayer (Christian and pagan) in the mentioned cantos. Both litanies and laudas constitute models that build up the representations of sanctity within Dante’s poem.

citation information: Magdalena Maria Kubas, La Commedia, le litanie, la santità: alcune riflessioni tra il Purgatorio XIII e il Paradiso XXXIII, "Ocula", vol.23, n.26, December 2022. DOI: 10.57576/ocula2022-8

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