Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T21:08:29.768Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 2 - The Presence of Speech in Writing: Speaking as Sparking

from Part I - The Literary Vision

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 August 2021

William Franke
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
Get access

Summary

Dante’s vision presents the letters of Scripture as the speech of God. In Dante’s text, speaking (favellare) is presented as sparking (sfavillare), which makes it a kind of writing, a communication through a contingent, combustible, material medium. Speech, as the immediate communication of intention, is unmasked by Dante, long before Derrida, as grounded in the mediations of writing, with all the latter’s materiality and contingency. Dante explores the implications of the medium of writing as itself supremely significant, thereby opening a vista reaching all the way to modern and contemporary art. Dante’s text, in effect, performs the miracle of making the invisible God to be seen by deconstructing the sign as signifying a definable intention and opening signification infinitely, instead, to the immediate and infinite presence of the medium. This highlights the immediacy of the divine presence in writing. Its written medium is key to achieving the immediacy that characterizes Dante’s vision and makes it God’s “speech.” Speaking, as a sort of sparking, makes divine revelation in the Word of Scripture, as seen by human understanding, the revelation of an unpredictable indeterminacy. The spectacle of written letters of Scripture as sparking in heaven concretely presents what nevertheless remains an incommunicable transcendence of all that can be intentionally articulated in finite, human language. Randomness and absolute contingency are the hallmarks of a speech that is not merely human and guided by definable intentions, but a communication of the transcendent.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Divine Vision of Dante's Paradiso
The Metaphysics of Representation
, pp. 55 - 86
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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
×