ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a translation of an abbreviated and revised version of the article L'arte del dire l'esilio', which appeared in Bollettino di Italianistica. It focuses Dante's elaboration and ultimately his refutation of previous literary models as well as the so-called prophetism of the Commedia in order to show how the diplomatic impasse suffered by Dante led him to re-negotiate and redefine a new horizon of the sayable in the vernacular literary tradition. An initial problem concerns the interaction between history and discourse, in literary discourse. The ordinary historical fact of political exile corresponds to a textual output which is without parallel in medieval Europe, and which is at the origin of the definition of an authorial persona destined for a significant literary after life. Dante's research into forms of autobiography, triggered by his exile, evolves without any solution of continuity from a Boethian to a prophetic-apostolic model.
