Ars Legendi, Ars Poetica

Chapter 5 builds on the discussion of Dante in dialogue with the poets who preceded and overlapped with him to investigate the Florentine poet’s own efforts to perform a teleological, unitary, and converted subjectivity in the Commedia. The chapter explains and complicates the mechanics of Dante’s performance, using the dream of the femmina balba/siren as a focal point. This analysis draws on the models established through the discussions of Guittone, Guinizzelli, and Cavalcanti to reopen the closure of Dante’s performance of converted textuality and subjectivity. The chapter aims to open the way for the resiliently disruptive textuality of past works to sound alongside the self-consciously authorial voice of the poet of the Commedia.