Dante and Virgil encounter the awaited angel as they begin their ascent to the third terrace of Purgatory proper.

They hear two snippets of song. They find the climb easier. And Dante asks Virgil to gloss two lines Guido del Duca said back in Canto XIV. All these things indicate the shifting the nature of COMEDY itself as we enter its middle cantos.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore this passage about the climb to the third terrace and see the shifting nature of COMEDY's audience and purpose.

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Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:18] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XV, lines 34 - 57. If you'd like to read along or continue the converation with me, please find this specific episode on my website: markscarbrough.com.

[03:31] An increasing emphasis on transitional figures and a more overt allegory in COMEDY as a whole.

[08:15] Two bits of song: a fragment of a beatitude in Latin (from Matthew 5:7) and an exhortation in medieval Florentine.

[12:07] The question who sings these two phrases.

[15:13] The shifting dynamic in COMEDY to the correction, not of behavior, but of the mind.

[18:44] Virgil's gloss on scarcity and abundance, as well as the civic threat of envy.

[26:42] The problem of the audience for Guido's (and Virgil's!) speech.

[30:45] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XV, lines 34 - 57.

Dante the poet is playing a very crafty game. He's been pulling out all the stops with two metaphors to help us understand the weight, meaning, and timing of the light . . . and then he redefines that source of light right underneath all those metaphors.

And just as the poet pulls off that trick, Virgil also redefines the very terms on which PURGATORIO, Canto XIV, ended, as he undertakes a reassessment of "pleasure" or "delight."

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we look at this key passage in the on-going struggle to translate what seems into what is.

If you'd like to help underwrite this podcast, please consider a one-time or even monthly donation using this PayPal link right here. Every bit helps with streaming, licensing, hosting, editing, royalty, and domain fees.

Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:27] My English translation of this short passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XV, lines 25 - 33. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation, please find this episode on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[02:29] Virgil redefines "pleasure" or "delight," a word from the end of Canto XIV.

[04:28] The passage also redefines the source (or refraction?) of the light.

[07:22] Virgil remains the central redefinition in all of PURGATORIO.

[08:24] A three-step structural notion of spiritual progress in PURGATORIO: "outside us," "inside us," and "above us."

[14:00] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XV, lines 25 - 33.

Dante and Virgil pass on beyond the envious along the second terrace of Purgatory proper. As we enter the first of the middle three canti of all of COMEDY, Dante is blinded by the sun, about as we're blinded by his increasingly complex poetics.

These passages begin the brilliant fun of the second half of the poem. Dante begins to play with meaning, poetics, and metaphor as never before, challenging us and pushing us into a spot of disorientation, all the while bringing us to a spot of revelation.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we see the sun as never before in the opening lines of PURGATORIO, Canto XV. Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:19] My English translation of this passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XV, lines 1 - 24. If you'd like to read along or to continue the conversation with me, please find this episode on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[03:37] PURGATORIO Canto XV is a liminal canto, existing between disorientation and revelation.

[13:58] Two unique words in COMEDY in this opening passage (that is, two hapax legomena).

[17:19] Telling time by the sun and playing around with it, as it plays around in the sky.

[22:18] The sun and blindness at the opening and closing of our time on the terrace of the envious.

[24:56] Medieval science that can reformulate the plot into poetic language.

[28:30] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XV, lines 1 - 24.

Having been accosted by two voices decrying the fate of the envious on the second terrace of Purgatory proper, Dante and Virgil begin to walk toward a stairway to the third terrace. As they do, Virgil, silent for quite a while, refocuses and reinterprets most of what we've read in PURGATORIO, Cantos XIII and XIV. He offers circularity in place of the linear descent so described by Sapía and Guido del Duca.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we see Virgil come into his own in Purgatory.

If you'd like to help underwrite the hosting, streaming, editing, and licensing fees associated with this podcast, please consider donating whatever you can by using this PayPal link right here.

Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:33] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XIV, lines 142 - 151. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please go to my website, markscarbrough.com.

[03:28] The bit, the rein, and the lure: in the passage at hand and in medieval iconography.

[07:55] The question of what and how Virgil knows and can know the mechanics of Purgatory.

[14:00] Refocusing the cantos of the envious.

[16:52] Circularity inscribed into linearity.

[21:51] Pain, redemption, and interpretation.

[26:49] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XIV, lines 142 - 151.

With Guido del Duca enmeshed in his tears, Dante the pilgrim and Virgil begin to talk on along the terrace of envy, searching for a way up to the third terrace of Purgatory.

Lo and behold, they're struck by two voices, just as they were when they got up to this terrace. This time, it's Cain and Aglauros, speaking on the wind.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we begin to conclude our time with the envious and encounter a Biblical and a classical voice to warn us of the final dangers of envy.

If you'd like to help support this podcast by underwriting its streaming, licensing, hosting, and domain fees, please consider donating whatever you can using this PayPal link right here.

Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:23] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XIV, lines 127 - 141. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation, please find the entry for this podcast episode on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[02:46] Silence, then the first departing voice from the terrace of the envious: Cain, after his fratricide and banishment.

[09:35] The second departing voice from the terrace of envy: Aglauros, from Ovid's METAMORPHOSES.

[15:37] Dante sidesteps toward Virgil, an unusual move.

[17:49] Comparing and contrasting the four voices on the wind along the terrace of the envious.

[21:07] Is nostalgia an appropriate response to social inequality and its prompting of envy?

[24:58] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XIV, lines 127 - 141.

Guido del Duca reaches the climax of his diatribe: a nostalgic retrospective of the courts and families of Romagna. Where have the good guys gone?

Is this Dante the poet's lament? Or Guido del Duca's? Does this passage tell us more about Guido's problems or Dante's hopes?

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we work through a tough passage about historical figures from Romagna, many of whom have been lost to the historical record.

Here are the segments of this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:42] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XIV, lines 97 - 126. If you'd like to read along or drop a comment on this passage, please go to my website, markscarbrough.com.

[04:49] The genre: "ubi sunt?" But whose? Guido del Duca's or Dante the poet's?

[09:26] The structure of this passage: good people, to good families (without children), to bad town, to childless warlords.

[14:47] The nostalgic diatribe becomes infernal.

[16:59] More play with bestial and vegetal metaphors (as throughout Canto XIV).

[19:19] The trap of chivalry.

[22:28] Guido del Duca finally finds delight in his laments: the key problem.

[25:28] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XIV, lines 97 - 126.

At long last, the speaker in PURGATORIO Canto XIV comes clean and reveals who he is . . . and who his compatriot is. They're Guido del Duca and Rinier (or Rinieri) da Calboli. Now that we now who they are, we have to go back and reassess Canto XIV as a whole.

Dante is nothing but cagey in the rhetorical games he's playing. He's demanding more and more out of his reader. And rightly so, given the complexity of COMEDY up to this point.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we look through this passage in which these envious souls reveal who they are and we discover the underlying politics of the passage among the envious on the second terrace of Purgatory proper.

If you'd like to help support this podcast by donating to cover its many fees, including streaming, hosting, and licensing, please consider giving whatever you can (even a small amount per month) via this PayPal link right here.

Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[02:15] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XIV, Lines 73 - 96. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please do so under this episode on my website: markscarbrough.com.

[04:22] Who is Guido del Duca, a Ghibelline warlord from Romagna?

[06:40] Who is Rinier (or Rinieri) da Calboli, a Guelph warlord from Romagna?

[09:08] Who is Fulcieri da Calboli, the bloody hunter previously mentioned?

[11:13] Two questions for this passage: Is the political strife between these two healed . . . or being healed? And why are these warlords among the envious?

[13:04] What details in this passage help us to understand its nuances?

[21:21] When exactly does Dante's journey take place?

[25:38] Rereading the scope of PURGATORIO, Canto XIV, from line 10 to line 96.

Dante has been cagey about where he's from, using periphrastic phrasing to describe the Arno valley without naming it.

It was apparently the wrong thing to do . . . because one of the envious penitents is going to pick up the pilgrim's (and the poet's?) rhetorical games and push them much further into fully metaphoric space that is also somehow prophetic space, a diatribe against Tuscan corruption that borders on the incomprehensible at this moment before the speakers are named in Purgatorio XIV.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we play with truth and metaphor in the increasingly complex landscape of Purgatory.

If you'd like to help you, please consider donating to support this podcast's many fees. You can do so at this PayPal link right here.

Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:41] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XIV, lines 43 - 72. If you'd like to read along or even continue the conversation about this passage, please see the page on my website for this episode at markscarbrough.com.

[04:11] The standard interpretation of the allegory of the Arno valley.

[08:59] One more level of complexity: the personification of the Arno.

[11:02] A third level of complexity: so much periphrasis!

[12:32] A fourth level of complexity: a beast fable added to the rhetorical strategy (hello, Sapía!).

[13:34] A fifth level of complexity: fraud, the end stop of the Arno and INFERNO.

[15:06] A final level of complexity: The Old Man Of Crete in INFERNO XIV.

[16:33] The interpretive or rhetorical muddle after the allegory of the Arno.

[18:18] The bloody nephew's rampage: a metaphoric space.

[26:56] The pay-off of intimacy?

[29:52] Possible blasphemy in the high-level poetics.