Webb’s paper, “Dante’s Ecoaffects,” considers Dante’s attribution of affects to nonhuman entities in his Commedia, from the humility of reeds to the sociability of ants and the ecstasy of bees, focusing on the sense of transfer of affects as understood through nonhuman images. In recent ecocriticism, the study of environmental affects has emphasized the posthuman subject as complexly entangled with other lively and interactive bodies, human and nonhuman. In such constructions, affect appears as an intensity transmissible across various entities, including winds, vegetables, minerals, and animals. While Dante does not share the transversal posthuman mode that comes forth in ecocriticism today, his images of environmental entities, vegetal, atmospheric, and animal, offer a fresh way into his thinking about human affects and human virtues as embedded within communities.
Kiltinavičiūtė’s paper, “The (Un)Familiar Affects: Bridging the Affective Gaps in Dante’s Comedy,” proposes that Dante perceives affects as a connective force that, in writing, brings together seemingly disparate episodes from temporally and geographically distant places. Dante’s extended similes, which draw a parallel between himself and classical figures are powerful models of how we, as humans and readers, imagine the feelings of those in other cultural or temporal contexts. By comparing his own fear to that of Achilles transported to Skyros in his sleep (Purgatorio 9.34-39), or to that of Phaethon and Icarus about to fall (Inferno 17.106-111), Dante positions himself as a Christian poet of affect. Unlike classical models, Dante retells the fictional situation in the first person and inserts affective reactions absent from the original literary and mythological episodes, implicitly validating the affective mode of reading as appropriate for his own text, as well as for those of ancient writers. In addressing how Dante mediates the (un)familiarity of affects in his Comedy, the paper argues that the poem’s ‘affective devices’ are not just textual: illuminations, too, respond to the affective charge of the poem and invite viewers to experiment with extreme emotions.
Kriesel’s paper, “The Marvelous in Dante’s Comedy,” analyzes Dante’s treatment of marvelous phenomena or the emotion of wonder – terms for which appear over 150 times in the poem. As scholars have noted, Dante evokes the concept when asserting the truthfulness of his encounter with Geryon, who is presented as a “marvelous figure” of the poem. Dantists have also explored the relevance of wonder in passages concerning the search for knowledge and the experience of blessedness in Paradise. Yet, a systematic analysis of Dante’s treatment of the concept is lacking. This paper contextualizes the issue within medieval ideas and modern critical approaches, and focuses particularly on AntePurgatory – a space poised between mundane and celestial realities –, suggesting that the concept is foundational for one’s joy on earth and eternal redemption.
Romano’s paper, “Statius’ Cataclysmic Joy: Passions of the Soul and Affects of the Will in Dante,” analyzes the liberation of Statius’ soul (Purg. 21.61-3), which causes an earthquake in Purgatory. The soul is surprised because the only proof of its complete purgation and freedom is found within itself: the immanent and spontaneous joy that arises in its now free and purified will. The paper explores how Dante distinguishes between affects seated in the intellective soul, in the will, and passions seated in the sensitive soul and accompanied by bodily alteration. This distinction between the passions, and the passionless affects of the will hinges on Dante’s ontology of the soul and body. By drawing on the unedited work of Peter of Trabibus, whose lectures on the Sentences Dante could have attended at Santa Croce between 1294-6, this talk contributes to the renewed focus in Dante studies on archival research regarding Dante’s intellectual formation. Comparing Dante with Trabibus shows Dante’s philosophical precision and his innovation with respect to questions of passion and volition.
After an introduction by the Presider (5 minutes), each of the presenters will speak for 12 minutes (48 minutes). Leaving time for transitions between papers (between 2-7 minutes total), we will have at least 15 minutes, or up to 20, for unstructured discussion.