Dante's Poetics of Absence

This thesis carries out a systematic analysis of absence in Dante Alighieri’s Commedia. In particular, it examines those absences which Dante renders conspicuous, and proposes the importance of the interpretation of conspicuous absence in the poem: a subject which has only ever been examined in passing in Dante scholarship to date. Part 1 of the thesis focuses on Dante’s use of silence, both as a form of absence in itself, but also as a means of rendering exclusions of various kinds conspicuous. Chapter 1 examines the development of the phenomenon of silence between Vita nuova and the opening of Inferno. Chapter 2 focuses on how language and silence are variously inclusive and exclusive at different points in the Commedia’s narrative, and develops a notion of dantean ‘clusivity’ informed by the evolving metaphysics of the poem’s three cantiche. Chapter 3 draws the previous chapters’ analysis of silence together to consider how silence shapes and is shaped by the poem’s micro- and macrostructures, taking as its major case studies Dante’s use of aposiopesis in Inferno, and the conclusion of Paradiso. Part 2 turns its focus towards the conspicuous absence of characters from the Commedia’s narrative. Chapter 4 establishes a methodology and terminology for discussing the absence of characters: developing a notion of ‘personal absence’, and providing examples of how it inflects the poem’s narrative and thematic occupations. Chapter 5 then zeroes in on two cases in the Commedia in which personal absence is made highly visible, and examines the ways in which visible absences have been adapted in the poem’s reception in the visual arts. The final chapter applies the findings of Parts 1 and 2 to the poem’s treatment of Virgil, and in particular his transition in its narrative from tangible presence to personal absence.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Wiles, Jonathan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Webb, Heather

• Absence
• Dante
• Dante Alighieri
• Divina Commedia
• Divine Comedy
• Literary absence
• Silence

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/b3486013-a627-4c9e-a767-44f6245c53f6/download
• http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.116454

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/381132