ZYGMUNT G. BARANSKI: "The 'Marvellous' and the 'Comic': Toward a Reading of Inferno XVI."
 
Abstract: Inferno XVI betrays a richly metaliterary character hitherto unacknowledged in the tradition of the lectura Dantis. It plays a key role in the structure of the Comedy, for it is the first canto which so insistently demands to be read, not as an autonomous unit, but as part of a broader ideological and formal framework. With Inf. XVI, Dante was intentionally forging a link between the Comedy and the multifaceted and "marvelous" nature of Geryon, and through this link, to the literary tradition as a whole. However, in order to stress the originality and range of his own poem, the Poet needed a "marvelous" being whose traditional lineaments were so vague that he could redraw them almost entirely. He did this by amplifying Geryon in such a way that, through his unique summative qualities, he would also suggest the unique nature of Dante's own text.

Abstract from the American Dante Bibliography 1990
Reproduced by courtesy of the Dante Society of America