Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T16:25:07.777Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - “Where Your Soul Is Pointed”: Facts and Values in Ulysses’ Quest and the Examination on Love

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2022

Alison Cornish
Affiliation:
New York University
Get access

Summary

Ulysses’ mad pursuit of virtue and knowledge presumed that an exploration of physical facts can yield an understanding of value. In the examination on love in the heaven of the fixed stars, St. John first asks not what love is, but where Dante’s soul is pointed. To love is to have an aim, a point, a target. It is to value something more than other things and, in the hierarchy of all good things, there must be one that is the best of all. It is from the sphere of the constellations, of which Ulysses necessarily lost sight when he ventured beyond the known world into the southern hemisphere, that Adam reveals that the cause of his long exile was a trespassing beyond the sign. Since language, the logos, is what humans use to discern what is good and what is harmful, it enacts the role of the God of Bible who promised to reveal to Moses “every value.

Type
Chapter
Information
Believing in Dante
Truth in Fiction
, pp. 123 - 155
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×