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September 2, 2010
Danteblogging Purgatorio Canto VII
Purgatory Canto VII
My lack of real interest in Canto VII is certainly my own fault - the holding room for late medieval princes who neglected their souls to rule their domains involves a cast of characters I find as uninteresting as, say, all those Florentines in Hell.
The obvious parallel to the kings who sit around doing not much of anything is the Limbo of Virtuous Pagans in Inferno IV, where a lot of listing goes on. I am more interested in the culture heroes of the Classical world than I am in late 13th Century politics, so there you have it.
Unlike the pagans in Limbo, who everyone in 14th Century Italy would have agreed were interesting and probably virtuous, the list of rulers was probably considerably more controversial in its own time, relying as it does on Dante's judgment.
But there you have it - too topical for my taste, which runs more to Charlemagne. He'll turn up in Paradiso XVIII -- I guess he'd been dead long enough to move on!
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Posted by CrankyProfessor at September 2, 2010 9:09 AM