Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T14:54:31.707Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 5 - Sense Made Sensuous and Synaesthesia in the Sight and Sound of Writing

from Part I - The Literary Vision

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 August 2021

William Franke
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
Get access

Summary

The sense of the Scriptural sentence – its meaning – in Dante’s vision is put into play and on display through sensations both visual and audible. Dante’s description insists on this, with its persistent pairing in a sustained parallelism of impressions in each of these sensory modalities. Dante pursues this transformation of sense – or meaning – into a supersensory type of sensation and presence by the alchemy of poetic language further in the subsequent cantos, XIX and XX, comprised within the heaven of Jove that flesh out the intellectual meaning of the vision presented in XVIII. 70–117 by elaborating on its phenomenal form. Dante employs in particular techniques of synaesthesia or the blending of senses. The individual senses exceed their own proper limits and open perspectives bleeding into other realms of other senses. Considered as writing, this sensory phantasmagoria is significant, in the end, not for its perceptual qualities so much as for that which they index by virtue of the differences out of which signification is engendered. This phenomenon of synaesthesia raises the question of perceiving things whole, or at least multi-perspectivally. Geometry similarly furnishes metaphors for perspectives on what is humanly inconceivable. The universalism of Dante’s vision of world justice is based on self-critical perspectives placing into question his own inevitably limited and Eurocentric point of view. The divine vision is opened by limitless critique of all our own human perspectives.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Divine Vision of Dante's Paradiso
The Metaphysics of Representation
, pp. 138 - 179
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
×