Abstract
The greatest master of the “Gothic smile” was not one of the anonymous visual artists who made saints and angels beam in the mid-thirteenth century; rather, it was Dante. Smiling is the hallmark of the presumably “sage and serious” poet and a sign of his distinctive originality as a Christian theologian. While this is true as early as La vita nuova and the Convivio, the Commedia shows how Dante journeys toward the beatific vision of God through the smile (on the faces of Vergil, Beatrice, and others). Sorriso/sorridere and riso/ridere–as noun or verb, and apparently interchangeable in meaning–appear over seventy times in the poem, in a wide variety of contexts: twice in Inferno, on more than twenty occasions in Purgatory, and double that number in Paradiso. As he develops the poem, Dante uses the smile to express the unique individuality not only of the human being but also of the triune God. (PSH)
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