«Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda»: appunti sugli Argonauti di Dante

Abstract

This article seeks to address the question of why Dante likens Paradise to the quest of the Argonauts, even though Jason is the hero who deceives Hypsipyle and Medea with false, underhanded rhetoric. After analysing the role played by the figure of Jason in Fiore and in Inferno, the article goes on to consider the relationship between Dante’s Argonauts and the version that emerged in the Trojan cycle of the late Antiquities, in which Jason’s expedition was viewed as an antecedent to the Trojan War. The influence of this tradition on Dante seems to be supported by a passage from the fifth epistle, in which Dante considers the Argonauts’ quest as representing the historical premise for universal monarchy. Some textual clues seem to support the theory that Dante’s vision of the Argonauts was taken at least to some extent from Guido delle Colonne’s Historia destructionis Troiae. One possible solution to the question at hand is then proposed, based on the view that Dante’s Paradise represented a means through which the author could promote an ideal Christian monarchy, just as the quest of the Argonauts had favoured the advent of Augustus’ universal Empire.