Walking With Dante

Beatrice, The Vow Accountant: PARADISO, Canto V, Lines 34 - 63

At last, Beatrice explains how you can make up for broken or unfulfilled vows: Just give back 150% of the original worth of the thing vowed. But what happens when the th

The Greatest Gift of Free Will: PARADISO, Canto V, Lines 17 - 33

Beatrice begins the final part of her argument with the premise that the freedom of the will is the greatest gift given to angels and humans. She then offers one out to

Unfulfilled Vows . . . But To Whom? PARADISO, Canto V, Lines 1 - 16

Dante wants to know if someone (who?) can make an unfulfilled vow good with other good works? Beatrice begins her answer with a tightly woven passage that illustrate a h

Free Will Turns Personal: PARADISO, Canto IV, Lines 115 - 142

Beatrice has answered the pilgrim's two unasked questions . . . but she doesn't yet know the one he really wants to ask. Having heard her doctrines about free will and u

Guilty As Charged By Aristotle and Aquinas: PARADISO, Canto IV, Lines 91 - 114

Beatrice launches into a subpoint about free will, one derived from her larger discussion of culpability. In this passage, she refines exactly why Piccarda and Constance

Justice Permits No Excuses: PARADISO, Canto IV, Lines 64 - 90

Beatrice now takes on the pilgrim's second . . . doubt? It had been questions. Now it sounds as if it's more. Doubts. Here, she launches into a discussion of free will t

Plato and Beatrice, Together At Last: PARADISO, Canto IV, Lines 49 - 63

Beatrice continues her rectification of Dante's doubts by using a passage from Plato's TIMAEUS to turn her argument from accommodation to free will. This passage contain

Seeing Is (Almost) Believing: PARADISO, Canto IV, Lines 28 - 48

Beatrice begins to take apart the two questions (or doubts) that she has intuited the pilgrim Dante is holding in silence. She first takes on the one with more "poison"

Paralyzed by Free Will: PARADISO, Canto IV, Lines 1 - 27

Piccarda may have vanished but questions remain. The pilgrim Dante is caught between them, unable to voice them. Beatrice to the rescue! She voices what he cannot say .

The Expanding Community of Women in the Moon: PARADISO, Canto III, Lines 109 - 130

Piccarda Donati doesn’t stop her monologue with the cryptic line about her life after the convent. She turns to another figure in the lunar landscape: Constance I of Sici

The Violent yet Elliptical End to Piccarda Donati's Story: PARADISO, Canto III, Lines 88 - 108

Piccarda Donati finally answers the question about who she is. She's given her name but not much else about her. In twelve lines (or four tercets) she brings her personal

Piccarda Donati's Apotheosis of the Will: PARADISO, Canto III, Lines 58 - 87

Piccarda has confessed to her more humble place in the heavens. Our pilgrim Dante then wants to know if she wants more. Her answer leads her to an apotheosis of the will

The First Soul in Paradise, Piccarda Donati: PARADISO, Canto III, Lines 34 - 57

At long last, the first soul--or "shade"--steps forward in Paradise. She's Piccarda Donati, a figure we've already encountered once (maybe even twice) in COMEDY. Dante f

Catching Feelings in the Sensual Sphere of the Moon: PARADISO, Canto III, Lines 1 - 33

Dante is about to meet the first souls in Paradise, emerging from the liquid light of the moon. The poetry is lush and sensuous. The metaphors are complex and compounded

The Souls of the Universe: PARADISO, Canto II, Lines 127 - 148

Beatrice concludes her explanation for moon spots by veering away from them specifically to talk about the nature of the universe. Blessed movers turn the spheres. Or pe

The Diversity of Being in a Universe of Light: PARADISO, Canto II, Lines 106 - 126

Beatrice now launches into the true explanation for moon spots, found not in folklore, not in natural philosophy, but in metaphysics. Her explanation pushes her to discl

Testing Theology With Optics: PARADISO, Canto II, Lines 85 - 105

Beatrice continues in her scientific and Scholastic explanation for moon spots by taking apart a secondary argument . . . and proposing an optical experiment. She voices

Mixed Metaphors and the Limits of Human Senses: PARADISO, Canto II, Lines 64 - 84

Beatrice begins her destruction of Dante's explanation for moon spots by taking apart his notion of dense and rare spots on the lunar surface . . . with a dizzying displa

Of Moon Spots and Virgil: PARADISO, Canto II, Lines 46 - 63

Now that our pilgrim Dante is standing in the moon, he has a fundamental question: Why are there spots on the moon? And he thinks he knows the answer, right out of natur

Incarnated in the Moon: PARADISO, Canto II, Lines 19 - 45

After Dante's warning to his readers (or perhaps some of his readers), we return to the plot, ascending through the heavens to arrive at the moon . . . or really, in the