Tendencies inherent in language to amalgamation and to anatomization are placed in tension. The Name and the letter can become objects of vision and veneration in their own right in a quasi-cultic worship of writing. But Dante at the same time embraces a rational view of language in which meaning is produced mechanically by systematic differentiation. He lets these perspectives play suggestively with and against one another. He also stages the transition from oral to written culture and, correspondingly, the transfer of the mystique of the word from prophetic utterance or prolusion to artistic representation in visible form.