How Not to Think Like Dante Alighieri: Guilt, Punishment and the Components of Dantean Space

Abstract

This chapter examines the individual elements and devices of Dantean space that appear in Dante’s precursors in the Western canon from Aeschylus to the Psychomachia. Singling out six attributes, it then asks whether Dantean Space is committed to an alienating aesthetic of guilt and punishment. Distinguishing Judicial pleasure (the judging of actual people in life) from Juridical pleasure (the judging of characters who get their ‘just’ deserts at a story’s end), it interrogates the juridical pleasures of Dantean space. With that in mind, the essay explores such questions as: is it a coincidence that Dante’s landscape is so marked by alienated, atomized, misanthropic characters who are trapped within themselves by themselves? Does Dantean space carry a sense of self that necessarily imposes certain forms of alienation, teaching us to see ourselves and others in a specifically anti-social way? What are the effects of consuming narratives that deploy Dantean space? In short, is Dantean space bad for us?