Abstract: Stresses that Dante's representation of the "shade-bodies" of the dead, which "has no precedent in Christian theology," has its origin in classical poetry, especially Virgil, Ovid, and Lucan; these lie behind Dante's dual depiction of shades as both "soul-bodies" and "free souls," both "autonomous beings" and "psychologized figments." This duality is reflected in the tension between Dante's Neoplatonic and Aristotelian accounts of imagination and between his Aristotelian and Biblical accounts of the creation of human life. The essay discusses the varying materiality in Dante's representation of soul-bodies; their relation to phantasms; the tension between spiritual and corporeal being in the dreams of Purgatory; the "pneuma" as nexus between body and soul; Epicurean and Virgilian conceptions of soul; the "facies" of the soul; the difference between "ombra" and "anima" in the Comedy; the influence of the Timaeus on Dante's representation of "the state of souls after death"; Frate Alberigo and Branca d'Oria as "infernal simulacra"; the influence of Virgilian and Ovidian apparitions on Dante; Lucan's Erichtho, and her relation both to Virgil and to Beatrice as an intermediary. The author concludes that "speaking of a duality affecting the representation of the human soul ... means nothing less than giving its due to the poetic language of the Commedia."
Abstract from the American Dante Bibliography 1996
Reproduced by courtesy of the Dante Society of America