What Is The Thesis In Dante's Inferno

Embedded in Dante’s works are numerous passages in which he takes the time to reflect or comment upon, endorse or break away from his previous work as a poet. In La Vita Nuova and the Inferno, this particular strain of self-exegesis orients itself towards establishing a right balance between praise of tradition and the establishment of his work as unprecedented. La Vita Nuova manifests a profound self-exegesis in which Dante reflects on his past work as a poet and proceeds in a new direction, distinctly breaking with tradition. The first poetic text in La Vita Nuova is addressed to “every heart which the sweet pain doth move” (Vita Nuova, III). In designating such an audience, Dante deliberately aligns himself in the tradition of fin’amor

XXV, 100) In a very explicit way, Dante exhibits a concern that his work not be considered a second-rate imitation of another man’s genius, but one that offers something new and innovative. It is prudent to consider however, the way in which Dante asserts his uniqueness. He uses what has been coined as the ‘outdoing’ topos, which was employed in Medieval as well as Ancient literature (Soranzo). This was used as a way to set apart one’s own work by disparaging its precedents. Ersnt Curtius writes, “On the basis of comparison with examples provided by tradition, the superiority, even the uniqueness, of the person or thing to be praised is established…In the panegyric style writers allow themselves the most daring ‘outdoings’” (Curtius 162). Dante uses a well-known device – employed by Lucan himself (Curtius 163) – to trumpet his own achievements as a poet. This example of self-exegesis, in which he reflects on the nature of his own work, is a more lighthearted one and does not carry the same weight that the episode in Limbo does. Dante playfully uses traditional poetic rhetoric, thus respecting tradition itself, in order to place himself on a higher level of poetic