Dante and the Latin Poets: Metamorphosis and Literary Antagonism in…

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_article_11284
dc.title	Dante and the Latin Poets: Metamorphosis and Literary Antagonism in the Bedlam of Thieves
dc.contributor.author	Romeo Alessandra
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Venice University Press, Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari
dc.type	Research Article
dc.language.iso	it
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/lexis-journal/2023/1/dante-e-i-poeti-latini-metamorfosi-e-antagonismo-l/
dc.description.abstract	In Inferno’s Cantos 24 and 25 Dante points out the auctoritas of Latin epic poets (Ovid, Lucan), but uses a series of rhetorical figures intended to emphasise his own superiority and the novelty of his poetic enterprise. Dante competes with Ovid (Cadmus’s metamorphosis into a snake in Ov. met. 4. 569-603 = Dante Inf. 25. 103-138) by recycling Ovid’s grammar of description and lowering its high style according to the new poetic objective as he recounts the anti-sublime world of Malebolge. Virgil as a character of Dante’s Commedia also participates in this procedure, since he presents one of his epic creatures, Cacus (the monster slain by Hercules in Aeneid 8), in terms strongly divergent from the high diction adopted by the real Virgil as Aeneid’s author.
dc.relation.ispartof	Lexis
dc.relation.ispartof	Num. 41 (n.s.) - Giugno 2023 - Fasc. 1
dc.issued	2023-08-04
dc.dateAccepted	2023-04-06
dc.dateSubmitted	2022-10-10
dc.identifier.issn
dc.identifier.eissn	2724-1564
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/Lexis/2724-1564/2023/01/008
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Dante
dc.subject	Lucan
dc.subject	Metamorphosis
dc.subject	Ovid
dc.subject	Topoi of comparison and outdoing

Research Article
open access peer reviewed

Dante and the Latin Poets: Metamorphosis and Literary Antagonism in the Bedlam of Thieves

Alessandra Romeo Università della Calabria, Italia

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abstract

In Inferno’s Cantos 24 and 25 Dante points out the auctoritas of Latin epic poets (Ovid, Lucan), but uses a series of rhetorical figures intended to emphasise his own superiority and the novelty of his poetic enterprise. Dante competes with Ovid (Cadmus’s metamorphosis into a snake in Ov. met. 4. 569-603 = Dante Inf. 25. 103-138) by recycling Ovid’s grammar of description and lowering its high style according to the new poetic objective as he recounts the anti-sublime world of Malebolge. Virgil as a character of Dante’s Commedia also participates in this procedure, since he presents one of his epic creatures, Cacus (the monster slain by Hercules in Aeneid 8), in terms strongly divergent from the high diction adopted by the real Virgil as Aeneid’s author.

Published

Aug. 4, 2023

Accepted

April 6, 2023

Submitted

Oct. 10, 2022

Language

Keywords: Metamorphosis • Dante • Ovid • Lucan • Topoi of comparison and outdoing

permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/Lexis/2724-1564/2023/01/008

Copyright: © 2023 Alessandra Romeo. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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