Dante and the sense of transgression : the trespass of the sign

217 Pages·2012·1.45 MB·English

by  Dante Alighieri

New Directions in Religion
and Literature
Dante and the Sense
of Transgression
New Directions in Religion and Literature
This series aims to showcase new work at the forefront of religion
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England’s Secular Scripture, Jo Carruthers
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Forthcoming:
Buddhism and Radical Poetics, Peter Jaeger
Faithful Reading, Mark Knight and Emma Mason
Glyph and the Gramophone, Luke Ferretter
Rewriting the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon Verse, Samantha Zacher
Dante and the Sense of
Transgression
‘The Trespass of the Sign’
William Franke
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Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2013
© William Franke, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
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William Franke has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-3691-6
e-ISBN: 978-1-4411-5028-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Franke, William.
Dante and the sense of transgression: the trespass of the sign/William Franke.
p. cm. – (New directions in religion and literature)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4411-6042-3 (pbk.) – ISBN 978-1-4411-3691-6 (hardcover) –
ISBN 978-1-4411-5028-8 (PDF) – ISBN 978-1-4411-8502-0 (ePub) 1. Dante Alighieri,
1265-1321–Philosophy. 2. Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321. Paradiso. I. Title.
PQ4412.F73 2012
851’.1–dc23
2012011971
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
A ma Béatrice
Nomina sunt consequentia rerum
(Dante, Vita Nuova, XIII.4)
vi
Contents
Preface x
Introduction
1 Dante’s Implication in the Transgressiveness
He Condemns 3
Part 1 Language and Beyond
2 The Linguistic Turn of Transgression in the Paradiso 19
3 At the Limits of Language or Reading Dante
through Blanchot 29
4 The Step/Not Beyond 35
5 The Neuter – Nothing Except Nuance 42
6 Forgetting and the Limits of Experience – Letargo and
the Argo 47
7 Speech – The Vision that is Non-Vision 60
8 Writing – The ‘Essential Experience’ 76
9 The Gaze of Orpheus 83
10 Beatrice and Eurydice 89
11 Blanchot’s Dark Gaze and the Experience of
Literature as Transgression 95
12 Negative Theology and the Space of Literature – Order
Beyond Order 98
Part 2 Authority and Powerlessness (Kenosis)
13 Necessary Transgression – Human versus
Transcendent Authority 107
14 Dante and the Popes 110
viii Contents
15 Against the Emperor? 114
16 Inevitable Transgression along a Horizontal Axis 116
17 Heterodox Dante and Christianity 119
18 Christianity: An Inherently Transgressive Religion? 123
Part 3 Transgression and Transcendence
19 Transgression and the Sacred in Bataille and Foucault 134
20 Transgression as the Path to God – the Authority of
Inner Experience 138
21 Transcendence and the Sense of Transgression 145
Appendix: Levinasian Transcendence and
the Ethical Vision of the Paradiso 151
Notes 177
Index 197
. . . the only possible transgression of current order would be a
theological one.
(John Milbank, The Future of Love)
The sign and divinity have the same time and place of birth. The
epoch of the sign is essentially theological.
(Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie)
Transgression deranges the promise of a beyond or the promise
of an otherwise: it is an act, always active and for that reason
unassignable, ungraspable otherwise than by that which it opposes.
Making the immoveable squeak and upsetting the state of things,
transgression never rests. That is why it needs to maintain that
which it annuls, and why it aims not at the annihilation of its limit,
but at rerouting it in other forms to another place. Transgressing
is always exceeding but never achieving. It is bending without
breaking, biting without consuming.
(Georges Bataille, 1958 interview, translated from sound recording)