Abstract: Examines the authorial "intrusions" in Inferno. An analysis of the "author" in the Comedy, both pilgrim and artistic creation, in relation to his work brings out "an ambivalence between two conflicting notions of his role as poet": the scribe who "humbly and faithfully" reports his experience; the inventor "whose aim is to write the poem which will rank him high among the poets of all times." There are three types of authorial intrusions: 1) in which the "poet refers to himself in terms of his experience as a pilgrim"; 2) in which the "poet seems to acquire a historical consistency which relates to the political events of his times"; and 3) in which the "narrator shows his identity as the poet who is writing the work we are reading." Connecting Ulysses' "folle volo" with the narrator's own "folle venuta," the author argues that throughout the poem there is a struggle between poetic "humility and superiority." Reviewing verbs of telling and narrating in the episodes of Filippo Argenti, Geryon and Pier della Vigna and their role in the analogy between the levels of journey and writing, she concludes that "the borders between truth and lie, between reality and poetic fiction, are not always easily distinguishable."
Abstract from the American Dante Bibliography 1990
Reproduced by courtesy of the Dante Society of America