1987 Articles

Re-presenting What God Presented: The Arachnean Art of Dante's Terrace of Pride

Barolini, Teodolinda

Dante deals with representation most overtly on Purgatory's terrace of pride, where the pilgrim encounters a series of marble engravings that are rendered ecphrastically by the poet, one form of representation thus representing another. This paper will explore the implications of that encounter, viewed as an authorial meditation on the principles of mimesis as they apply to Dante and his art.