PURGATORIO, Episode 58. The Kings Who Dodged What They Should Have Done, Part Two: PURGATORIO, Canto VII, Lines 82 - 136

We’ve already glossed this long, difficult passage about the darkening vale of the negligent rulers in the last episode of WALKING WITH DANTE. In this episode, I ask ten interpretive questions of the passage: some with answers, some with tentative answers, and some with mere speculation as an answer. Dante is showing us his increasingly intellectual side. Let’s figure out what he’s up to.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 57. The Kings Who Dodged What They Should Have Done, Part One: PURGATORIO, Canto VII, Lines 82 - 136

Sordello runs through the roster of kings and rulers in the beautiful vale on the lower slopes of Mount Purgatory. They’re lamenting their very actionable lives. And in running the list, Sordello is giving someone (Virgil? Dante? the reader?) a crash course in the politics of central and southern Europe from the mid to the late 1200s.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 56. Problems In The Poetry Of The Elysian Fields: PURGATORIO, Canto VII, Lines 64 - 81

Sordello, Virgil, and Dante the pilgrim walk on an easy path to the rim of a beautiful dale that will hold the valley of the kings. But along the way, Dante the poet, a master of terror, must figure out how to begin to write about beauty. And he must once again renegotiate his position toward Virgil’s masterpiece, THE AENEID.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 55. Virgil, Sordello, And The Limits Of The Will: PURGATORIO, Canto VII, Lines 37 - 63

Sordello tells Virgil they have to find a place to settle in for the night because sunset will mean they can’t move up anymore. The allegory is intense: the will, light, darkness, stasis, and descent. Maybe you should will yourself to stand still when you don’t have any light, rather than moving backwards and away from your goal.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 53. Virgil Returns To Center Stage: PURGATORIO, Canto VII, Lines 1 - 15

After Sordello and Virgil embrace, Dante the poet appears to want to return Virgil to the center of the narrative stage in his walk across the known universe. But can he? How does he renegotiate the damned Virgil’s presence in the sections of COMEDY devoted to the redeemed? And what of Cato, always lurking the theology’s narrative background?

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PURGATORIO, Episode 45. The Strange Brew Of Love And Disgust: Purgatorio, Cantos VI - VIII

Reading Purgatorio, Cantos VI - VIII in my English translation. These are three tough cantos before we arrives at the gate of Purgatory proper. Before we break them down into smaller chunks to study them, let’s read them straight through to discover the issues Virgil, Dante, and the reader face as the journey becomes increasingly difficult.

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