Visionary Science in Purgatorio XVII and Paradiso XXX
1995; University of California; Volume: 26; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1557-0290
Autores Tópico(s)Renaissance Literature and Culture
ResumoV I S I O N A R Y S C I E N C E I N PURGATORIO XVII A N D PARADISO XXX B u r t Kimmelman F o r several h u n d r e d years p r i o r t o the inception o f Dante's Commedia, the mechanics o f sight had been the subject o f a rigorous investigation o n the p a n o f medieval intelligentsia. T h i s i n q u i r y w o u l d c o n t r i b u t e t o the f o r m a t i o n o f m o d e r n physics. Yet the very title o f a treatise b y Peter o f L i m o g e , Tractates morales de oculo (1275- 1289), illustrates the difference between pre-modern and empirical science—that is, the physical and the m o r a l were viewed as insepara ble, as t w o aspects o f the same t h i n g . Even more so, Dante's magnum opus q u i n t essentially typifies this epistemological struggle. His striving t o comprehend the meaning o f vision is central t o b o t h the theme and structure o f the Commedia, X V I I and Paradiso w h i c h is e p i t o m i z e d i n the Purgatorio poem b y a relationship between t w o particular cantos, t r u t h about Dante, about the Commedia, X X X . T a k e n together, they divulge an essential and about the intellectual currency o f the late t h i r t e e n t h and early fourteenth centuries, w h i c h was defined b y the rival claims o f pagan and C h r i s t i a n w i s d o m . These cantos reveal the C h r i s t i a n Dante w h o , l i k e Thomas Aquinas, his doctrinal father, attempted t o reconcile the ideas of A r i s t o t i e and Augustine, those t w o most p o w e r f u l intellectual forces. M u c h has been w r i t t e n about the medieval study o f optics. A n d an even greater a m o u n t o f scholarly w o r k has been devoted t o the crucial thematic role o f vision i n the Commedia. As a poetic element, By far the most important, comprehensive, and brilliant study is David C . Lindberg, Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1976). See also Linda Tarte Holley, Medieval Optics and the Framed Narrative in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde The Chaucer Review 21, no. 1 (1986): 26-44; and, Judith S. Neaman, Magnification as Metaphor, in England in the Thirteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1989 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. W . M . Ormrod (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1991), 105-22. 1 am indebted to Paul Spillenger and George Economou for their careful reading of my essay, and helpful comments, at various stages of its development. Comitatus 26 (1995)
Referência(s)