Human Generation, Memory and Poetic Creation: From the Purgatorio to the Paradiso

Abstract

Statius’ scientific digression on the generation of the fetus and the formation of the fictive body in the afterlife occupies a large part of canto XXV of Dante’s Purgatorio. This article will examine the metaphorical relevance of that technical exposition to Dante’s poetics. The analogy between procreation and poetic creation appears to be consistent once the scientific lesson on embryology of canto XXV is understood as mirroring the definition of the Dolce Stil Novo offered by Dante in the previous canto (Purg. XXIV). The second part of this article stresses the importance of cantos XXIV and XXV as an authorization to investigate the presence, in Dante’s Comedy, of a particular notion of purely rational memory derived from Augustine’s speculation. The allusion to an Augustinian conception of memory in Purgatorio XXV opens the possibility of considering its presence in the precisely intellectual dimension of Paradiso.