«Sotto ’l velame de li versi strani». Allegoria e allegorismo nella Commedia e nell’esegesi medievale. Studio critico e impostazione del Database Allegorico Dantesco (DAD).

This dissertation consists of four sections. In the first (Premessa) some methodological perspectives followed during this work are outlined (§ 0.) and then theoretical contents are discussed that anticipate issues later further explored in the following chapters (§ 1.). In addition to linguistic disaminations, this first part provides a theoretical outline of the relations that allegory has with other components of figurative language (metaphors, similes, symbols, etc.) and clarifies the difference between poetic and theological allegorism. The second section of the dissertation (Parte I – Verso Dante) opens more properly to the historical-critical reconstruction of the dynamics from which the various types of allegory that will also find resonance in Dante arose. Avoiding a one-dimensional approach solely focused on the Florentine poet, an extended geographical and chronological horizon was configured in which to incorporate the prodomes of Dante’s thought on allegory. Indeed, a serious study that has in Dante its thematic center cannot leave out what orbits around him or the experiences of those thinkers who in their own way prepared, and in some cases anticipated, Dante’s unicum. In this macro-section, allegorical hermeneutics is first rehabilitated (§ 2.) as a re-semantization of cultural systems no longer centered on certain historically dominant paradigms (the inclusion of pagan culture in Christian knowledge) and then the defensive properties of allegory are emphasized with respect to instances of doctrinal irreconcilability (from the reworking of Homeric poems to the apparent contradictions of sacred texts to Dante's alleged heterodoxy). Deep attention is paid to the formation of the tetrapartite structure of allegory in factis (§ 3.). Having identified a figure of reference for each of the four internal levels of biblical allegory – Hugh and Richard of St. Victor for the letter, Paul for typology, Gregory the Great for tropology, and Augustine as a proponent of a figurative eschatologism – the study gradually extended from the innovations that the various theologians considered made to the canon of sacred allegory to a holistic horizon depicting the complexity of the mystical picture. However, the relationship between figura and figuratum into the scientia sacra pertains more to Thomas Aquinas, from whom Dante drew much of the coordinates of biblical allegorism and especially anagogy (§ 4.). What has been considered of Thomist theology is not only the shift from littera sacra to plures sensus, but also the conversion of divine polysemy through a human metaphorical repertoire. The latter is also useful in introducing a second type of allegory, that in verbis, which ideally closes the section approaching to Dante. Recognizing also the didactic role of poetry, space was given to the codification of a scientific poem with Alain de Lille and the emergence of a new allegorical syntax with the hypostatizing revolutions of Prudentius and the Roman de la Rose. It was thus possible to reflect on the textual structures (integumenta) that allowed fictional narratives to convey moral and philosophical teachings (§ 5.). The second macro-section of the thesis (Parte II – Dante) investigates Dante’s allegorism, without neglecting the cultural horizon within which it developed (§ 6.). It started with Benedetto Croce, with whom contemporary discussions on allegory opened, in Italy as well as abroad. Of Croce’s contributions, the theoretical framework and the counter-reactions of those dantisti who denounced an excessive departure from the original medieval and Dantean mentality were highlighted (§ 7.). From here opens a long reflection on the relevance of theological allegory in Dante (§ 8.). Is then examined the possibility of considering the Commedia as a work of poetic fictio responding, however, to an expressive intentionality of sacred origin consistent especially with Singleton’s proposals on the divine semantics of the poem and Hollander’s definitions of a theological profile of the Dante auctor, of his verbal figuralism and by the soteriological incidence of his tercets. In this way is verified the reliability of the hypothesis that Dante’s canticles as capable of exercising a didactic function on readers, educating them to God’s will, thanks also to the polysemous conformation of the poem, whose literal plan exceeds the allegorical-tropological instances proposing content of anagogical value. Relevant in this sense was also the verification of the use in the Commedia of certain techniques of sacred writing, which, in an author proclaimed to be a scriba dei, determine an elevation of the value of the message communicated. To best judge the extent of this renewal of meaning, a comparison between the different allegorical morphology of the Convivio and that of the Commedia was, among other things, useful. If the apologists of the poem’s biblical supersense is authoritative, no less significant is the opposing group of defenders of poetic allegorism (§ 8.2.). United by the idea that a fictional text is interdicted from ultimate truths, these scholars, strengthened also by the characteristics of the Commedia’s forma tractandi, propose alternative ways of reading Dante’s verses, some of which, such as the advice to «deteologizzare» the viator’s otherworldly experience, have been examined in this thesis. On the sidelines of the allegorical discourse, but not entirely disconnected from it, is the figural process, applied to the Commedia especially under Auerbach’s contribution, which is treated here, on a par with developments of typological order, as a mechanism integrated into textual dynamics of Christological and poetic prefiguration and completion (§ 9). Finally, the last chapter proposes a perspective of allegorical reading of the Commedia no longer according to a disjunctive inclination but, on the contrary, through an inclusive vision. Therefore, by considering Dante’s text in a pluriallegorical way, an exegesis has been attempted that, by explicating the inner workings logic of its narrative, succeeds in incorporating allegory in verbis with allegory in factis (§ 10.). The thesis closes with two appendices. The first reviews some of the most relevant conceptual experiences of the Greek tradition of allegorism – the School of Alexandria with Clement and Origen and the School of Antioch – which, if they did not have a direct ascendancy on Dante’s formation, certainly affected those Christian thinkers from whom Alighieri drew images and doctrinal modules. The second appendix chapter presents the structure and functions of the Database Allegorico Dantesco, a new digital repository of texts on the allegories and allegorism of the Commedia developed as a part of the Doctoral course in Umanesimo e Tecnologie at the University of Macerata.