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August 27, 2010
Danteblogging - Purgatorio Canto IV
Purgatory Canto IV
I guess Canto IV is the kind of passage that makes people say "Purgatorio is dull."
Dante and Virgil have a couple of long conversations about the location of Purgatory (directly opposite Jerusalem) and astronomy (the sun rises to the moves from NORTHeast to northwest in the Southern Hemisphere) Dante is demonstrating his mastery of medieval science - and doing it all in poetry.
Dante doesn't notice the latter until the pilgrims sit down for a rest, having scaled the steep slope from the beach towards (but not to, yet) the Gate. While they're sitting down and speculating about the sun rising over the left shoulder they notice some souls resting in the shade - the laggards, those who put off their repentance until the end. Again, like the excommunicate, Dante has them wait as many years as they delayed; these two are good examples of what scholars see as the rising habit of numeration in the Middle Ages.
I can't say the canto gripped me, either!
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Posted by CrankyProfessor at August 27, 2010 10:02 AM