Abstract
Placing the words Comedy and Africa in the same sentence, is like laying claim to two expansive and complex entities which do not immediately bear relation to another and yet, there is ample opportunity for engagement. The article begins by showing how a young South African’s reading of the Divine Comedy through the lens of her own preoccupation with the body and its theo-performative demeanour can bring fresh perspectives to the fore. A primary instance of the intersection between the body, God and theological performance is the Ethiopian artist Aïda Muluneh’s interpretation of Inferno, canto xx. Muluneh’s performative expression transforms the scope and meaning of tears in the Comedy by bringing to bear her own particularity. Here, tears become central in unveiling the truth that the Comedy speaks. The article explores the significant role that gestures have in giving form to the Divine Comedy. As the logic of relationality, love forms the spine of this article while drawing together the themes of creation and incarnation. The article ends by suggesting that if one has a proper understanding of the relationship between humans and the created order, one might find a theology from below latent in the Comedy.
Highlights
Few studies on Dante focus on the body and the role that gestures, signs, and bodily depictions play in communicating the truths that the Divine Comedy (Comedy) speaks
One reason for this might suggest that the Comedy is first and foremost a poetic masterpiece where the body and its depictions are secondary to the literary mechanisms Dante-poet
The distinctively embodied hermeneutical framework is novel since the studies that proliferate theology as it relates to Dante studies have not yet considered how the presence or absence of right-relations signposts key theological moments in the Divine Comedy
Summary
Speaking truth in poetry occurs primarily through words. This means of description is central to Dante pilgrim’s sojourning, and Dante poet’s narration of such sojourning in view of his place of birth, Florence, and its. Love is central to Dante pilgrim’s sojourning through hell, purgatory, and paradise as each volume depicts persons according to the extent that love characterised their relations These relations, whether to self, creation or Creator, all visually express how love is manifest through the very corporeality of the persons of the Comedy.[25] In its ordering of existence, love has theological significance because it echoes the doctrinal affirmation that God created out of love, for love and through love.[26]. In the Comedy, bodies like words, make visible the invisible by visually depicting, through the persons of the Comedy and the nature of their relations, the truth that Dante speaks This truth is not an abstracted truth, but a truth expressed in word, symbol, and performance
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