Dante's Inferno : the Indiana critical edition PDF
Preview Dante's Inferno : the Indiana critical edition
Dante's INFERNO MARK Dante's INFERNO The Indiana Critical Edition Translated and edited by Mark Musa Indiana University Press BLOOMINGTON AND INDIANAPOLIS This book is a publication of Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA http://iupress.indiana.edu Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931 [email protected] Orders bye-mail © 1995 by Indiana University Press All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses' Resolution on PermIssions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dante Alighieri, 1265-132l. [Inferno. English) Dante's Inferno: the Indiana critical edition / translated and edited by Mark Musa. p. cm. - (Indiana masterpiece editions) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-253-33943-0 (cloth). - ISBN 978-0-253-20930-6 (pbk.) 1. Hell-Poetry. 2. Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321. Inferno. 3. Hell in literature. I. Musa, Mark. II. Title. III. Series. PQ4315.2.M775 1995 851'.1-dc20 94-20237 7 8 9 10 12 11 For Alec Marc Musa on his entrance to the world CONTENTS ix Preface The INFERNO, translated by Mark Musa / 3 Critical Essays Read It and (Don't) Weep: Textual Irony in the Inferno, 253 BY LAWRENCE BALDASSARO Dante's Beloved Yet Damned Virgil, 266 BY GUY P. RAFFA I: Breaking the Silence, 286 Inferno BY DENISE HEILBRONN-GAINES Dante's Canto IY, 299 Inferno, BY AMILCARE A. IANNUCCI Behold Francesca Who Speaks So Well V), 310 (Inferno BY MARK MUSA Iconographic Parody in XXI, 325 Inferno BY CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ Virgil and Dante as Mind-Readers XXI and XXIII), 340 (Inferno BY ROBERT HOLLANDER vii The Plot-Line of Myth in Dante's 353 Inferno, BY RICARDO J. QUINONES Hell as the Mirror Image of Paradise, BY JOAN M. FE"RRANTE Dante in the Cinematic Mode: An Historical Survey of 381 Dante Movies, BY JOHN P. WELLE Inferno 397 Selected Biblio9raphy: Contributors 399 401 Index viii I CONTENTS PREFACE Accompanying my verse translation of Dante's are ten essays Inferno which offer diverse approaches to a number of different aspects of the first canticle of the Divine Comedy. In the opening essay Lawrence Baldassaro regards the "starting point that necessitates the pilgrim's difficult journey through Hell" to be the al legoricallandscape of Canto I of "a physical manifestation of the Inferno, pilgrim's contaminated soul." Because of his fallen condition, the way up and out of the "selva oscura" is closed. Climbing the hill is impossible be cause of the pilgrim's pride, which will be erased in Purgatory in a similarly allegorical setting. Baldassaro asks, if Inferno is a representation of universal sinfulness and Purgatory a point-by-point erasure of sin, how does Inferno exhibit these sins? The allegory of Canto I gives way to dra matic manifestations, he says, in which the pilgrim interacts and gradually arrives at a "subjective awareness of his own capacity for wrongdoing, " recognizing step by step the degree of his own contamination. Dante uses himself as an example; he depicts his sinners "not as awkward allegorical representations of specific sins, but as compelling human beings." The pil grim's "mimetic response to the sinners he encounters" brings him and them to life dramatically, not didactically. The allegorical first scene is "negative potentiality" and the rounds of Hell fulfillment of it. This is not a fact-finding journey the pilgrim is taking. His behavior that "calls attention to itself" reflects the "ironic stance that distinguishes the voice of the poet from that of the pilgrim." Each of the sinners the pilgrim meets is a "potential other self." The pil grim is a "reader" who tests "'texts'" in the Inferno, one who cannot see the whole and whose limitations are indicated by his imitative responses. In turn, the reader is a pilgrim to whom Dante speaks directly in his ad dresses to the reader. But Baldassaro disagrees with Auerbach that Dante misleads us by misleading his protagonist; rather he gives us credit for being able to sort out the "ironic duality of the distinct voices of the poet ix
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