Dante’s Allegories and Ovidian Myths in the Canto XXV of Divine Comedy’s Inferno

Abstract

The present work aims to present a study of the intertextual dialogue between the XXV canto of the Divine Comedy’s Inferno and the mythological characters found in the works by the Latin poet Ovid, author of The Metamorphoses. In this canto, in which the Italian author bears explicit signs of the intertextual continuation, the mythological characters of Cacus, Cadmus, and Arethusa are present, each one in their own fashion, as paradigms of a model that Dante, as announced by himself, intends to surpass. In so doing, by constructing the narrative of the thieves’ bolgia, in the fraudulent circle, the canto in question focuses on two penitents that undergo some horrid metamorphosis, and the Florentine author, while relies on several Ovidian procedures and themes, seeks to intensify its effects, thus contrasting the Latin author. Therefore, based on studies by Curtius (2013), Ledda (2015), and Carney (2012), we aim to illustrate how the intentional contrast between Ovid and the poetic experimentation of body horror, present both in Dante and in Ovid, may function by the means of allegory as a comment by Dante about the conception of poetry in the Middle Ages, as well as about his creative process.