Squaring the Circle: Paradiso 33 and the Poetics of Geometry
The last canto of Dante's Paradiso brings the Commedia to an appropriately climactic end: to a point of closure matched by few or—as most Dantists would probably be willing to put it—any other works of art. One explanation for this is that what the ending reveals all but forces on the reader a...
| Authors: | ; |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge University Press
1994
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| In: |
Traditio
Year: 1994, Volume: 49, Pages: 95-125 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | The last canto of Dante's Paradiso brings the Commedia to an appropriately climactic end: to a point of closure matched by few or—as most Dantists would probably be willing to put it—any other works of art. One explanation for this is that what the ending reveals all but forces on the reader a retrospective look at the vast terrain that has come before. The richness of the end emerges from and folds back into the richness of the entire work. Thus the vision at the end constitutes an intense paradox. It is the climax of the journey but also its ground, its final cause but its formal cause as well. Everything that has come before can only be fully understood in terms of that final vision. Indeed, it has now become something of a commonplace in Dante studies to say that to finish reading the Commedia is finally to be able to begin to read it. |
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| ISSN: | 2166-5508 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Traditio
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0362152900013015 |