Article Title
Abstract
In his epic journey, Dante experiences entrapments, digressions, and ultimately new apertures, leading him forward on his journey to Paradise. The hag-siren of Purgatorio 19 is one of the primary figures, whose song sways the poet in a moment of reverie, embodying a de-mobilizing entrapment most unique and perilous within the poem. While the patristic and medieval traditions have traditionally portrayed the siren as a figure for the deleterious effects of music on the soul, Dante scholarship has glossed the dolce serena as a coordinate for the Medusa of Inferno 9. The siren's association with the Medusa implicitly harkens the reader back to the highly sensual, fugue-like subtext of the rime petrose of an earlier Dantean repertoire. This essay explores the highly sexualized voice of the hag-siren, a voice and music which Dante must reckon with and purge from his poem in his journey toward the sublime musicality of the Paradiso.
Recommended Citation
Russo, Fiorentina
(2018)
"STASIS AND CARNAL SONG: DANTE’S MEDUSA AND THE SIREN,"
Bibliotheca Dantesca: Annual Journal of Research Studies: Vol. 1
, Article 5.
Available at:
https://repository.upenn.edu/bibdant/vol1/iss1/5
Included in
Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Art and Architecture Commons, Italian Language and Literature Commons, Medieval History Commons, Music Commons