In spite of the large amount of criticism written about T. S. Eliot, no attempt has been made to point out the great debt that Eliot owes to Dante Alighieri, and the pervasive influence of The Divine Comedy on Eliot's poetical works. This thesis endeavors to illustrate the extent of that debt and influence.

The entity of Lucifer has long been an area of study and confusion throughout history. Among notable literary minds, Dante Alighieri stands out as an illuminating poet who brings to light the essence and nature of this nefarious character and his influence on mankind. In his revelatory work, the Commedia, Dante touches on but does not explicitly detail the scope and importance that music and specifically, song, has on the redemptive purgation of the soul. This work provides a more in depth investigation into the generally overlooked issue, that is, the origin and initial intent of song, the perversion of which, by whom and why, and Dante’s perception of the subject revealed in his missive to mankind. Along scientific theory, along with other works by Dante to provide a link between Lucifer, music, the sin of pride, and the corruption of the divine. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Given the importance of Paul for Dante's characterization of the pilgrim, and his invocation of the Pauline Epistles throughout the Commedia, this thesis began by asking how important Paul was to Dante's fourteenth-century readers. It examines the use of the Pauline Epistles by the Trecento commentators of Dante's Commedia in order to contribute to our understanding of how both were read in late medieval Italy. Part One examines reading practices in the Middle Ages, and introduces commentary writing as a genre. The fourteenth century commentators are then described, with a focus on personal circumstances that may have influenced their interpretations. Part Two examines the use of Paul in the commentaries, differentiating between different forms of citation, such as when the commentators used Paul because they identified Pauline references or allusions in the poem, or when they included Paul in their interpretations for other reasons. This produced close readings of selected commentaries which reveal how the commentators read Paul and understood Dante. Jacopo della Lana used Paul when copying Aquinas, and his knowledge of the Epistles themselves, it is argued, was often confused and inaccurate. Pietro Alighieri repeatedly used Paul in combination with other sources in order implicitly to link canti. Guido da Pisa viewed the Commedia as a prophetic dream vision, and equated Dante with Biblical figures, including Paul. This comparison allowed Guido to justify his use of Dante as a life model for his dedicatee. The commentators acknowledge the importance of Paul when Dante clearly alludes to the Epistles, but in general, they simply use Paul as an authoritative voice. Finally, this thesis demonstrates their understanding of Dante not just as narrator/character, but also as reader.

"Italian Readers of Ovid: From the Origins to Dante" studies the reception of Ovid's writings in medieval Italian prose and poetry, from the first vernacular poems composed in Sicily to Dante's "Divina Commedia." Starting from the very beginnings of a new literary culture, I show how the increasing availability of Ovid's texts is mirrored in the increasing textual presence of Ovid in the vernacular writings of the period. Identifying the general traits common to this Ovid-inspired literature, I discuss how medieval Italian authors used Ovid's works and his characters to address questions of poetics, openly debating the value of Ovid's poetry for their own writings. I then illustrate how, in his lyric poetry and the "Commedia," Dante inserts himself into this vernacular practice of discussing poetics through the medium of Ovid. Ultimately, I argue that Dante's reading of Ovid in the "Commedia" is deeply rooted in his own lyric poetry and that of his predecessors. Chapter 1, "Medieval Italian Readers of Ovid, Modern Readers of Reception," describes the material and cultural contexts of the reception of Ovid during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries in Italy, challenging existing notions about Ovid's reception in medieval Italian scholarship. Previous studies mostly treat Dante's "Commedia" as the starting point of this reception history, neglecting the preceding and equally important lyric tradition. Questioning this approach, I reconstruct the increasing availability of Ovid's works in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Italy and specify in which formats (commentaries, translations, anthologies, mentions in treatises, other works of literature) and contexts (schools, universities, courts, monasteries) contemporary readers could have encountered Ovid's works. By outlining these texts and contexts, I depict a growing community of Italian readers of Ovid, many of whom not only read Ovid but also incorporated the Latin poet's work in their writings. Chapter 2, "Readers Turned Writers: From the Sicilian School to the dolce stil novo," focuses on a first series of these Ovid-inspired Italian writings. This chapter explores the poetic implications of including Ovid in their works--a trait found in the poetry of Pier della Vigna, Guido Cavalcanti, and Guido Guinizzelli, among others. During this period, poets debate with their contemporaries about how to write poetry, openly addressing and even attacking fellow poets while defending their own poetics. The Italian poets explicitly evaluate their readings of Ovid's love poetry in their poems and single out his poetry as an emblem of the kind of poetry they write, or no longer wish to write. The vernacular poets treat Ovid's "Metamorphoses" similarly. By means of the simile, the Italian poets feature a select group of Ovidian characters to underline their own exceptionality: for example, the poet is similar to the male Ovidian character (but better), his lady to the female (but more beautiful). The third chapter, "Readers Turned Writers: Dante Alighieri and Cino da Pistoia," focuses on the exceptional position of Dante and Cino among this group of vernacular writers. Both Dante and Cino integrate Ovidian material in their poetry with more complexity. Including similes in their poetry, Dante and Cino radically revise this common practice by associating themselves with the female Ovidian character--a gender switch that later Petrarch will adopt. Both poets also go beyond comparing their world with that of the "Metamorphoses" (what all the vernacular poets discussed in Chapter 2 did), but truly integrate Ovidian material into their poetry, blending Ovid's world into theirs. Furthermore, this chapter challenges the notion of two phases of Dante's writing posed in Dante scholarship: one phase when he is exclusively interested in vernacular poetry, and the second phase when he turns to classical literature. Finding Ovid featured in one of Dante's earliest poem exchanges, I illustrate that it is precisely in his vernacular lyric poetry that Dante slowly starts to experiment with Ovidian material. The petrose, a series of four poems written around 1296, are central in this development. These poems test out some new techniques that Dante will use more frequently in the "Commedia": the integration of both central and peripheral elements from a larger passage in Ovid's text, and the combination of different Ovidian sources at the same time. Chapters 4 and 5 trace the development of these techniques from Dante's lyric poems to the "Commedia," where for the first time we encounter Ovidian material in a Christian context. While it is not my aim to de-allegorize Dante's reading of Ovid, I stress that the most radically allegorizing and Christianizing commentaries on Ovid are not part of the cultural context of Dante's time and, instead, illustrate how much Dante's reading of Ovid is rooted in the lyric tradition. Chapter 4, "Metapoetics in Ovid and Dante's Commedia," focuses on the role Ovid's writings play in Dante's definition of his poetics. Looking at metanarrative moments in the "Commedia" (Inf. 24-25, Purg. 24, the poetic invocations in Purg. 1 and Par. 1), I illustrate how Dante repeatedly discusses poetics through the medium of Ovid, just as the Italian lyric poets did. Chapter 5, "Shifting Shapes of Ovidian Intertextuality: Ovid's Influence in Purgatorio and Paradiso," proposes to categorize Ovidian allusions in the "Commedia" by the kinds of elements Dante drew from his Ovidian sources. The primary method with which Dante incorporates Ovidian material in the "Commedia" is the rhetorical trope of the simile, which was also repeatedly used by the vernacular lyric poets. Focusing on the Purgatorio and Paradiso, the two canticles where the poet compares himself most often with certain characters from the "Metamorphoses," I illustrate how Dante adopts and transforms this vernacular lyric practice. Of these vernacular poets, Dante is certainly the Italian reader of Ovid who integrates Ovidian material in his poetry most frequently and with the most complexity: he combines the methods of the vernacular lyric poets with other classical or theological sources and conforms these methods to the poetics of the "Commedia." But this complexity, I ultimately argue, can only be fully understood in connection within the cultural context of the reception of Ovid: an Italian literary culture that from its very beginnings reflects on Ovid's texts.

This is an interdisciplinary study that aims to reassess Dante's use of Franciscan sources in the Divine Comedy. Particularly, I focus on two important, yet marginalized, theologians: the Provençal friar Pietro di Giovanni Olivi, and his disciple, Ubertino da Casale. Both are coeval of Dante Alighieri, and served as lectores in Florence. In particular, I examine the eschatological aspects of their works, in an attempt to understand how they contribute to Dante's own eschatological vision. Ubertino and Olivi were extremely interested in understanding history through the dense symbolism of the Apocalypse. Therefore, I inspected their works, particularly Olivi's Lectura Super Apocalipsim (a commentary on the Apocalypse written in 1298, of which there exist no modern editions), and Ubertino's Arbor Vitae Crucifixae Jesu, "The Tree of the Crucified Life of Jesus," a massive work on the life of Christ, composed in 1305, in which the author incorporates and develops large parts of Olivi's commentary. I attempt to disentangle the crossed references that link these two books with Dante's Divine Comedy. I aim to revise our knowledge of Dante's appropriation of these sources, for I believe that scholars have unjustly dismissed Ubertino as an unoriginal mediator, on the ground of his ideological dependence on Olivi. Therefore I propose an amendment in Ubertino's favor. Upon a redefinition of Dante's ideological genealogy, I hope to improve our comprehension of how Dante incorporates the eschatology debate of his time in the sacred poem.

The main scope of this study consists in analyzing how the poetic and ideologic universe of Dante is implanted and transformed in the Russian culture of the late XIXth---early XXth century. Particular emphasis is made on the role of Dante's heritage in the philosophy and poetry of the first Russian philosopher and symbolist poet---Vladimir Soloviov, as well as on the further impact of dantesche images on some major representatives of the Russian Symbolist movement. / This analysis will be done through a demonstration of major point of interference between Soloviov and Dante: these can be examples of direct influence (as is the case with Theocracy) of appearance of the same archetypes (as is the case with Sofiology and theory of love). / Despite the clear and definite presence of dantesque motifs in Soloviov's heritage, no systematic analysis of the parallels between the two has been made up to date.

Ce travail interprète les deux premières parties de la Divine Comédie de Dante Alighieri (1261-1321) à partir des valeurs symboliques associées par son auteur à la lumière. L’objectif est de démontrer que, grâce à la représentation de multiples phénomènes lumineux dans l’Enfer et dans le Purgatoire, le redressement moral conçu pour le lecteur est comparable à une véritable conversion, un cheminement de l’esprit qui fuit l’erreur (ténèbres) pour se rapprocher par étapes successives du salut (lumière).Dans la première partie, la nécessité pour l’auteur de placer ces deux espaces eschatologiques chrétiens sur terre est mise en relation avec les vicissitudes rencontrées par Dante qui le conduisent à s’interroger sur le destin d’une humanité en perdition. L’égarement de l’âme ayant perdu le bien de l’intellect, de même que son rachat, sont évoqués dans le monde des vivants par la présence du royaume de la damnation éternelle, l’abîme infernal, et d’un espace de pénitence temporaire, une montagne élevée. En traversant ces deux lieux de l’au-delà, le protagoniste échappe à la forêt obscure et s’apprête à atteindre le colle illuminé ; il suggère ainsi au lecteur un modèle de conduite morale à travers l’interprétation symbolique des phénomènes lumineux.Dans la deuxième et dans la troisième partie, l’exemplarité attribuée à la représentation de la lumière se précise à travers l’expérience exceptionnelle du pèlerin, viator dans le monde des morts : dans l’Enfer, la « poétique du feu » met en scène l’évolution d’une conscience en train de constater les conséquences désastreuses d’un usage malsain de l’intellect (ingegno) ; dans le Purgatoire, la « poésie du ciel » relate la libération progressive d’un esprit à qui sont annoncés les signes de son élection au privilège de la grâce. / This work is an interpretation of the first two parts of The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1261-1321) from the symbolic meanings associated to light by the author. The objective is to demonstrate that through the representation of multiple light phenomena in Hell and in Purgatory , moral recovery designed for the reader is similar to a true conversion, a journey of the mind fleeing its error (darkness) in order to approach salvation (light) by stages.In the first part, the necessity to place part of the Christian eschatological space on earth is related to Dante’s vicissitudes that make him question the destiny of a humanity in distress. The error of the soul which has lost the good of the intellect, as well as its redemption, are evoked in the world of the living by the presence of the realm of eternal damnation (the infernal abyss) and a space for temporary penance (a high mountain). By crossing those two places of the afterlife, the protagonist escapes the dark forest and prepares to reach the illuminated colle. Thus he suggests a model of moral behavior through a symbolic interpretation of the luminous phenomena.In the second and third parts, the exemplarity attributed to the representation of light is made clear through the exceptional experience of the pilgrim, viator in the world of the dead : in Hell, the "poetics of fire " stages the evolution of consciousness : an awareness of the disastrous consequences of an unhealthy use of the intellect (ingegno) ; in Purgatory , the "poetry of heaven " traces the gradual release of a mind to which the signs of its election to the privilege of grace are revealed.

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This thesis investigates the narrative models in Dante's Commedia with the aim of opening up the poem to alternatives to the dominant narrative embedded in the text, which it terms Dante's masterplot. This is the teleological trajectory which allows the poet to subjugate earlier works or earlier parts of the poem to the revisionist gaze of its endpoint. The thesis analyses the masterplot's workings in the text and its role in the interpretation of the poem, and documents its overwhelming success in influencing readings of the Commedia. It then explores three competing narrative models that resist and counter its monopoly, which are enacted by (i) paradoxes, (ii) alternative endings and parallel lives; and (iii) the future. Paradoxes are used to neutralise the teleological hierarchy and thus allow Dante to represent contradictory ideas and experiences in the temporal medium of language. Through counterfactuals and twin episodes, Dante establishes in his poem a number of storylines that detour from and run parallel to the main narrative; this allows him to make room for an affective space within the text, which suspends narrative necessity and moral normativity. The future tense poses a problem case for the masterplot in that it indefinitely postpones the endpoint on which teleology relies, and thus exposes the poem, and its author's, vulnerability to time and circumstance. By focusing on non-linear modes of storytelling, the thesis questions interpretations of the Commedia that favour one normative master-truth, and highlights instead the manifold poetic, theological and ethical tensions which, due to the masterplot's influence, are often overlooked. The thesis concludes with a proposal that, alongside the traditional notions of Dante's characteristic plurality of linguistic registers and styles, Dante's narrative pluralism can and should come to play a key role in contemporary and future readings of the Commedia.