The Sacramental Poetics of Dante's Commedia

My interdisciplinary study uses the medieval sacramental theology of double signification to integrate two contemporary conversations in Dante scholarship: the question of how to understand Dante's poetics, and the problems surrounding the presence of medieval liturgy in the Comedy. Using a close-reading methodology, I examine how three key passages from the Comedy--the encounters with Adam in Paradiso XXVI, Ulysses and Guido da Montefeltro in Inferno XXVI and XXVII, and Bonagiunta da Lucca in Purgatorio XXIV--reveal the human person as both a sign of God and (potentially) God by participation in Christ's divine nature. This revelation allows Dante-Poet to present himself as not only imitating God's writing, but as participating in God's writing. The result is a new hermeneutical framework for an integrated reading of all three cantiche.