ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Dante Alighieri as a modern, and picks up on the word ‘moderno’ as it appears in his writings. No voyage au bout de la nuit in Dante: confrontation with various sinners keeps at bay the heterogeneous, the other that which may well be the self’s own abject. There are moments when a chiasmic reversal seems near – in the interviews with Francesca, with Farinata and Brunetto Latini, Dante’s very existence depends upon their distinctive qualities being declared transgressive and punishable. The declaration that Dante’s poetic, and perhaps that of Guido Guinizzelli and Arnaut Daniel, belongs to the modern touches the heart of the canto and the question of Dante as the centered subject of his own text. Thomas R. Nevin suggests that ‘ermafrodito’ may contain Dante’s word-play and be rendered as ‘love-messenger, on the basis of Hermes’ and Aphrodite’s mythic functions.’
