Funzione e significato dell'exemplum nel "Purgatorio" di Dante

Description

The goal of my dissertation is to study the function and the meaning of the literary genre of the exemplum in Dante’s Purgatorio. In the first chapter, I analyze the theological and moral structure of the Purgatorio, according to the theoretical concepts elaborated by medieval theologians in their division and ordering of the seven capital sins. I stress here the complexity of the theological structure applied by the poet to his poetry. In the second chapter, I analyze at some length the rhetorical theory and practice connected to the use of the exemp/um in antiquity and in the Middle Ages. The exemplum is a minor literary genre employed especially by monks and friars in order to provide their listeners with short and simple stories illustrating the theological and moral concepts to which they had referred in their sermons. Therefore, the main goal of the exemplum was a pragmatic one and not, properly speaking, a literary one: it was used in order to persuade the listeners to change their behavior according to the moral principles revealed by God to the Church. In the Purgatorio, Dante uses the exemplum and borrows its precise rhetorical function with which it, as an instrument of Christian truth, had been endowed in the Middle Ages. Dante inserts many exempla as elements of the complex structure of the penance the penitents have to undergo in order to reform their soul and become able to ascend to Paradise. These exempla can be positive or negative: positive examples encourage good behavior; while negative ones deter the penitents from sinful attitudes. In the third and last chapter I investigate the literary sources employed by Dante in inventing his exempla for the Purgatorio. The main goal of my inquiry is not to find the precise sources of Dante. Such a task is probably partially impossible, because we still cannot know precisely how poets were accustomed to work in the medieval period. More modestly, in all the works examined I have looked for the appearance of the same character and episode used by Dante in composing his exempla.