«Questio quedam exorta est»: Dante’s ‘Questio de aqua et terra’ between Questio Disputata and Tractatus, between Rhetoric and Reportatio, between Fact and Fiction, between Verona and Ravenna

Abstract

Dante’s Questio de aqua et terra has long been the subject of controversy. Dante’s authorship has been disputed; its “contradictory” links with the Commedia have been highlighted; questions have been raised about Dante’s reasons for composing it; and aspects of its doctrinal material have been identified in philosophical sources that were composed only after the poet’s death in 1321. These are questions worthy of scholarly attention. At the same time, they are also questions largely extrinsic to the text itself, namely, to its formal character. Despite a renewed interest in the Questio, little attention has been dedicated, as happened also in the past, to its status as a questio, and specifically as a questio disputata, the literary genre with which, suggestively, it is now beginning to be associated, and therefore to its relationship with the most important scholastic teaching and research tool of the late Middle Ages. The present study, which is published in two parts, aims to examine and define the formal and institutional character of the Questio (part one embracing subsections 1-6)-characteristics on the basis of which it is hoped to be able to propose some interpretative hypotheses about its possible functions, as well as its ideological ambitions (part two comprising subsections 7-9). In particular, the article explores the extent to which the association of the Questio with the questio disputata is useful, appropriate, and illuminating when attempting to establish its genre, the manner and structure of its argumentation, and the conditions of its oral presentation in Mantua and in Verona.