Book Section
Nicolò Crisafi
Interrupted and Unfinished
The Open-Ended Dante of the Commedia
This essay interprets Dante’s Commedia as an ‘open work’ (Eco). It grounds its open-endedness in its representations of interruption: from fictional obstacles in the protagonist’s path in the Inferno to the narrator’s anxiety over unfinishedness in the Paradiso. Taking its cue from Boccaccio’s creative rewriting of Dante’s life, the essay resists the pressure of ‘total coherence’ embedded in (and often projected onto) the Commedia, in order to reclaim the material vulnerability of the text and of its author.
Keywords: Umberto Eco; open work; open-ended; interruption; unfinished; vulnerability; textuality
| Title |
Interrupted and Unfinished
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| Subtitle |
The Open-Ended Dante of the Commedia
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| Author(s) |
Nicolò Crisafi
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| Identifier | |
| Description |
This essay interprets Dante’s Commedia as an ‘open work’ (Eco). It grounds its open-endedness in its representations of interruption: from fictional obstacles in the protagonist’s path in the Inferno to the narrator’s anxiety over unfinishedness in the Paradiso. Taking its cue from Boccaccio’s creative rewriting of Dante’s life, the essay resists the pressure of ‘total coherence’ embedded in (and often projected onto) the Commedia, in order to reclaim the material vulnerability of the text and of its author.
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| Is Part Of | |
| Place |
Berlin
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| Publisher |
ICI Berlin Press
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| Date |
19 April 2022
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| Subject |
Umberto Eco
open work
open-ended
interruption
unfinished
vulnerability
textuality
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| Rights |
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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| Language |
en-GB
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| page start |
85
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| page end |
102
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| Source |
Openness in Medieval Europe, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum, Cultural Inquiry, 23 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022), pp. 85–102
|
References
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Cite as:
Nicolò Crisafi, ‘Interrupted and Unfinished: The Open-Ended Dante of the Commedia’, in Openness in Medieval Europe, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum, Cultural Inquiry, 23 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022), pp. 85-102 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-23_05>