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A contribution to: On Forgetting

Edited by Alma Prelec and Emily Di Dodo

MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities 17

Modern Humanities Research Association

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Abstract.  Despite the Commedia’s nominal aspiration towards encyclo­paedism, Dante consistently draws attention to the apparent incompleteness of his vision. One of the primary ways in which this is accomplished is, paradoxically, through Dante’s use of enumeration. Scholars have frequently interpreted the poem’s rosters of souls as symptomatic of its epic impulse towards totality, and though they have often examined Dante’s use of preterition in these cases, less attention has been given to those instances where they draw attention to characters ‘present’ in the afterlife, but conspicuously absent from the poem’s narrative. In this paper, I focus on two particularly suggestive cases. The first occurs in Inferno 6, where Ciacco informs Dante that he will meet a figure named ‘Arrigo’: an encounter that does not take place. The second is in Paradiso 15, in which Cacciaguida alludes to Dante’s ancestor Alighiero I, telling him that he is among the penitent prideful in Purgatorio. Though Dante spends a great deal of time on this terrace, he does not meet his namesake. I propose here that, far from being any kind of mistake, these ‘forgetful’ moments cast significant light on the poem’s shifting treatments of absence, as well as its overarching narrative strategies.

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