Comparative Literature and Culture 1020 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Infante, Satan, Purgatory
5 May 2016
School
Department
Professor
Document Summary
Dante in a world of ice; where satan is actually planted in ice. The traitors are up to their necks in ice and his foot bangs the head of one of the sinners in ice (bocca) The traitors are still betraying each other still guilty of their sins. Communion is a kind of a spiritual act; symbolic eating the esh of jesus out of love. Infandum, regina, iubes, renovare dolorem (infans = unspeaking) Queen, you command me to renew unspeakable grief . Tu vuo" ch"io rinovelli/disperato dolor (disperato = without hope, de-sperate) You want me to renew desperate grief . Ugolino"s crime is quite literally infans (unspeakable) In other words, hunger did what grief couldn"t do. Dante suggests that he engaged in cannibalism he ate their bodies; he gave into hunger/literal cannibalism. There is a distinction between physical and spiritual eating: hunger did, what grief couldn"t do if he ate the children he couldn"t talk about it.
