Dante’s <i>Epistola a Can Grande</i>: Allegory, Discourse, and their Semiotic Implications

Abstract

The focus of this study is the semiotic aspect concerning the allegory of the Commedia. More specifically, it aims at considering the meta-linguistic functioning of the Commedia’s allegory and how such a system may be recognized as essentially semiotic in its making. It also attempts to demonstrate how the allegory in verbis (allegory of poets) in Dante’s Commedia partakes of the allegory in factis (allegory of theologians) and, thus, Dante’s allegory is an outcome of both types of allegory insofar as it recognizes (in Epistle XIII) all the terms of paragraph nine which belong to the rhetorical, philosophical, and theological tradition. All ten terms form the modus significandi of the Commedia and its allegory is neither entirely in verbis nor entirely in factis but both, and therefore, it can be legitimately called Dantean. Being an allegorical work, the Commedia is dominated by ratio difficilis whereby a semiotics of discourse offers directionality to meaning in its state of formation or what we may call signification in progress. In the Commedia, allegory brings about the most complex system of values and a semiotics of discourse endeavours to demonstrate how, from such a complex system of values, meaning is produced in the entire opus.