Notes to Chapter 3

1. See Battisti and Alessio 1954: trovare1 and trovare2; for "trovare" in the sense of "poetare," see ED 5:745; consult also Curtius (trans. Trask) 1953:154.

2. See De vulgari eloquentia 1.11.3 (ED 6:759), 2.13.5 (ED 6:771), and the commentary in ED 3:489, "inventio" s.v.

3. At 1.11.1 (ED 6:759); 1.15.1 (ED 6:761); 1.18.1 (ED 6:762).

4. The locus classicus for the topos of the "regio dissimilitudinis" is Conf 7, 10, 16 (PL 32:742), where Augustine confesses, "And I realized I was far away from you in a region of unlikeness /sc. where things are unlike God/." In twelfth- and thirteenth-century versions of the topos, it serves Trinitarian psychologies of the soul and thus becomes important to doctrines of the reformation of the soul from the darkness of this life to the light of similitude with God. The bibliography is considerable, as might be expected; a convenient beginning point is Mussetter 1977:50-51 and notes 4, 13; see, further, Javelet 1967:1.266-85.

5. Conventionally in the Middle Ages, "sinistra dicitur miseria praesentis vitae" ("the left denotes the abjectness of this life"); Alain de Lille, Distinctiones (PL 210:946).

6. Mazzotta 1979:90-106, 92, for rhetoric as "ignis in ore."

7. Battisti and Alessio 1954: s.v.

8. Boyde 1981:271-79; Nardi 1949:260-83.

9. In support of this argument is the common gloss on the Biblical "drachma" (Luke 15.4-10): "The drachma is human nature, as in the Gospel: 'I found the drachma which I had lost'--that is, I have reformed human {250/251} nature, which I had lost through its guilt," Allegoriae universam in Sacram Scripturam, ascribed to Adam Scotus (PL 112:906). As the "drachma" is human nature (which, unreformed, is mere dead matter), so Dante's "dramma" is the "weight" of that nature; and precisely that weight of dead matter must be reformed to likeness again with God-- "reformavi humanam naturam, quam per culpam amiseram." See, further, Peter of Capua Rosa alphabetica (ed. Pitra 1955:2.280-81).

10. That Beatrice is somehow to be associated with Revelation is evident from her conduct of Dante through Paradise. That she is somehow to be associated with Scripture is perhaps less immediately evident but no less certain from her position at the center of the Pageant of Scripture and the Church in Purg. 30:82-154. Then, too, like Scripture, she is a mirror; see especially Purg. 31:121-23; for Scripture as a mirror, see Saint Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 103.1.4 (CCSL 40:1476); and consult Bradley 1954:100-15.

11. In addition to the sense of "purpose," the word "arte" can mean "creative art": see, e.g., Purg. 31.49; Par. 27.91; ED 1:397-99.

12. In addition to Brownlee 1978:201-206, see Spraycar 1978:1-19.

13. De Genesi contra Manichaeos 2.4.5 (PL 34:198); see also Heb. 6.6-8; and Chrysostom's commentary, Homilies on the Epistle to the Hebrews 10.1-2 (PG 63:83-84; trans. Keble 1975:413-14); and Saint Ambrose Hexameron 6.7.42 (PL 14:258; trans. Savage 1961:255).

14. "But all symbolism harbors the curse of mediacy and is bound to obscure what it seeks to reveal," Cassirer (trans. Langer) 1946:7; Hartman 1970:4,108.

15. On this matter, Ferguson 1975:842-64, is extremely helpful.

16. De doctrina Christiana 3.9.13 (CCSL 32:85; trans. Robertson 1958:87).

17. Edler 1934:226; Malusséna 1968:255-81. I do not at all intend to exclude other connotations of "promession" by insisting on its economic sense; see, in particular, the citation from Boethius (De cons. 3.8.1-3, 31-35) in Singleton 1973:2.2, 753.

18. See Nardi 1949:153-65; Nardi 1966:110-65.

19. For an eloquent statement of this position and one doubtless known to Dante, see Saint Augustine Conf. 7.20 (PL 32:746-47).

20. In the words of John Duns Scotus, defining the activity of love, "Amo: volo ut sis" ("I love: I will that you be"), quoted in and explicated by Arendt 1977-78:2.125-46, 144 especially; consult further the helpful explication by O'Donovan (1980:112-36) of Saint Augustine's understanding of the "regula amoris" ("your neighbor as yourself').

21. The problematic of "version(s)" in Dante's strategy, to which I will {251/252} return at the end of Part One, emerges from perhaps the central question of the poem, or How is a man converted? What does it mean to be turned? What constitutes a wrong turning? The best preparation for addressing this problematic is the study of the "-vert" group of words in Augustine's Confessions by Burke 1970:43-171, 62-65 especially; see also Shoaf 1981a:267-69. My own analysis must await the study of Paradiso, since Dante's conversion is not complete until, transhumanized Narcissus, he gazes on "nostra effige" in the Trinity (Par. 33.131).