Paradiso XXI. D(e)fense del sentido litera

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to show what doing when textual criticism is unnable to resolve the basic meaning of the text, now Paradiso XXI. In order to surmount the problem, the reader need to assemble the philological meaning through an alliance among the study of relations between image and text, medieval hermeneutics patterns, literary and cultural history or phenomenology to find the footpath in the laberynth of tradition and to reveal the dinamics of poetic composition guiding the meaning. The essay reflect some partial aspects with the intention to produce a global sense: the strange word pole, the simbolic ladder or the connection between Saturn and the emblematic figure of Petrus Damianus.