Book Section
Nicolò Crisafi
Manuele Gragnolati

Weathering the Afterlife

The Meteorological Psychology of Dante’s Commedia
The essay investigates the meteorological phenomena represented in Dante Alighieri’s Commedia and their interrelation with the subjectivity of the dead in Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Examining how the dead weather the afterlife and how the elements affect them, in turn, the essay takes the complex enantiosemy of the word ‘weathering’ as a conceptual guiding thread for the exploration of dynamics of exposure ( Inferno), vulnerability ( Purgatorio), and receptivity ( Paradiso).
Keywords: Commedia; Dante Alighieri; Enantiosemy; Exposure; Meteorology; Receptivity; Vulnerability.
Title
Weathering the Afterlife
Subtitle
The Meteorological Psychology of Dante’s Commedia
Author(s)
Nicolò Crisafi
Manuele Gragnolati
Identifier
Description
The essay investigates the meteorological phenomena represented in Dante Alighieri’s Commedia and their interrelation with the subjectivity of the dead in Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Examining how the dead weather the afterlife and how the elements affect them, in turn, the essay takes the complex enantiosemy of the word ‘weathering’ as a conceptual guiding thread for the exploration of dynamics of exposure ( Inferno), vulnerability ( Purgatorio), and receptivity ( Paradiso).
Is Part Of
Place
Berlin
Publisher
ICI Berlin Press
Date
2020
Subject
Commedia
Dante Alighieri
Enantiosemy
Exposure
Meteorology
Receptivity
Vulnerability.
Rights
© by the authors
Except for images or otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Language
en-GB
page start
63
page end
91
Source
Weathering: Ecologies of Exposure, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey and Arnd Wedemeyer, Cultural Inquiry, 17 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2020), pp. 63–91

References

  • Dante Alighieri, Commedia, trans. by Robert and Jean Hollander, 3vols (New York: Doubleday/Anchor, 2000–07)
  • Aristotle, Physics, ed. by Francis Macdonald Cornford and trans. by Philip H. Wicksteed, rev. edn, 2 vols, Loeb Classical Library, 228 and 255 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934–57) <https://doi.org/10.4159/DLCL.aristotle-physics.1957>
  • Aristotle, Meteorologica, ed. and trans. by Henry D. P. Lee, rev. edn, Loeb Classical Library, 397 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952)
  • Auerbach, Erich, ‘Dante and the Romantics’, in Time, History, and Literature: Selected Essays of Erich Auerbach, ed. by James I. Porter, trans. by Jane O. Newman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014)
  • Cassin, Barbara, Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra, and Michael Wood, eds, Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014) <https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400849918>
  • Berti, Enrico, ‘De Meteoris (Meteorologica)’, in Enciclopedia Dantesca Italiana (1970) <http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/de-meteoris_(Enciclopedia-Dantesca)> [accessed 18 March 2020]
  • Boyde, Patrick, Dante Philomythes and Philosopher: Man in the Cosmos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981) <https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511553882>
  • Braidotti, Rosi, ‘Intensive Genre and the Demise of Gender’, Angelaki, 13.2 (2008), pp. 45–57 <https://doi.org/10.1080/09697250802432112>
  • Buck, Holly Jean, Andrea R. Gammon, and Christopher J. Preston, ‘Gender and Geoengineering’, Hypatia, 29.3 (2014), pp. 651–69 <https://doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12083>
  • Butler, Judith, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004)
  • Butler, Judith, Zeynep Gambetti, and Leticia Sabsay, eds, Vulnerability in Resistance (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016) <https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822373490>
  • Cavarero, Adriana, Inclinations: A Critique of Rectitude, trans. by Amanda Minervini and Adam Sitze (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016) <https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503600416>
  • Cestaro, Gary, Dante and the Grammar of the Nursing Body (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003)
  • Cogan, Marc, The Design in the Wax: The Structure of the ‘Divine Comedy’ and its Meaning (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1999) <https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvpj7dm5>
  • Cornish, Alison, ‘The Vulgarization of Science: Dante’s Meteorology in Context’, in Science and Literature in Italian Culture from Dante to Calvino: A Festschrift for Patrick Boyde, ed. by Pierpaolo Antonello and Simon A. Gilson (Oxford: Legenda, 2004), pp. 53–71
  • Dante Alighieri, Dante’s ‘Il Convivio’, trans. by Richard H. Lansing, Garland Library of Medieval Literature, 65 (New York: Garland, 1990)
  • Dante Alighieri, Monarchia, trans. by Prue Shaw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
  • Dante Alighieri, De vulgari eloquentia, trans. by Steven Botterill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) <https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511519444>
  • Dante Alighieri, Quaestio de Aqua et Terra, ed. by Francesco Mazzoni, in Opere, dir. by Marco Santagata, 2 vols (Milan: Mondadori, 2011–14)
  • Ferrante, Joan, The Political Vision of Dante’s ‘Comedy’ (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984)
  • Fortuna, Sara, and Manuele Gragnolati, ‘Dante after Wittgenstein: “Aspetto”, Language, and Subjectivity from Convivio to Paradiso’, in Dante’s Plurilingualism: Authority, Knowledge, Subjectivity, ed. by Sara Fortuna, Manuele Gragnolati, and Jürgen Trabant (Oxford: Legenda, 2010), pp. 223–48
  • Gragnolati, Manuele, Experiencing the Afterlife: Soul and Body in Dante and Medieval Culture (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2005)
  • Gragnolati, Manuele, ‘Gluttony and the Anthropology of Pain in Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio’, in History in the Comic Mode: Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person, ed. by Rachel Fulton and Bruce W. Holsinger (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 238–50 <https://doi.org/10.7312/fult13368-022>
  • Gragnolati, Manuele, Amor che move: Linguaggio del corpo e forma del desiderio in Dante, Pasolini e Morante (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 2013)
  • Gragnolati, Manuele, ‘Diffracting Dante’s Paradiso: Transformation, Identity, and the Form of Desire’, in Reception, Translation, and Transformation of Italian Literature, ed. by Brian Richardson, Guido Bonsaver, and Giuseppe Stellardi (Oxford: Legenda, 2017), pp. 352–66
  • Greene, Thomas M., ‘Dramas of Selfhood in the Comedy’, in From Time to Eternity: Essays on Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’, ed. by Thomas G. Bergin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967), pp. 103–36
  • Halpern, Orit, ‘Hopeful Resilience’, e-flux, 19 April 2017 <https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/accumulation/96421/hopeful-resilience/> [accessed 8 April 2020]
  • Hegel, G. W. F., Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, ed. and trans. by Thomas Malcolm Knox, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975) <https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780198244998.book.1>
  • Holzhey, Christoph F. E., ‘Weathering Ambivalences: Between Language and Physics’, in Weathering: Ecologies of Exposure, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey and Arnd Wedemeyer, Cultural Inquiry, 17 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2020), pp. 3–40 <<https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-17_02>>
  • Le Goff, Jacques, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. by Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984)
  • Lombardi, Elena, The Syntax of Desire: Love and Language in Augustine, the Modistae, Dante (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007)
  • Lombardi, Elena, The Wings of the Doves: Love and Desire in Dante and Medieval Culture (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012)
  • Porena, Manfredi, La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri commentata da Manfredi Porena (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1981), available online in the Dartmouth Dante Project <https://dante.dartmouth.edu/> [accessed 8 April 2020]
  • Pertile, Lino, ‘L’antica fiamma: La metamorfosi del fuoco nella Commedia di Dante’, The Italianist, 11.1 (1991), pp. 29–60
  • Petrocchi, Giorgio, ed., La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata, 2nd edn, 4 vols (Florence: Le Lettere, 1994)
  • Sacco, Damiano, ‘The Weathering of the Trace: Agamben’s Presupposition of Derrida’, in Weathering: Ecologies of Exposure, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey and Arnd Wedemeyer, Cultural Inquiry, 17 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2020), pp. 143–66 <<https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-17_07>>
  • Sperling, Alison, ‘Radiating Exposures’, in Weathering: Ecologies of Exposure, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey and Arnd Wedemeyer, Cultural Inquiry, 17 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2020), pp. 41–62 <<https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-17_03>>
  • Webb, Heather, Dante’s Persons: An Ethics of the Transhuman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) <https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198733485.001.0001>

Cite as: Nicolò Crisafi and Manuele Gragnolati, ‘Weathering the Afterlife: The Meteorological Psychology of Dante’s Commedia’, in Weathering: Ecologies of Exposure, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey and Arnd Wedemeyer, Cultural Inquiry, 17 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2020), pp. 63-91 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-17_04>