ABSTRACT
This essay derives from a multifaceted exploration of what Dante posited as the place or role of the sexual body in perfected human nature, and what function and nature his love for Beatrice might have in beatitude. 1 I have explored the topic in two short essays on the paradisal relationships that the poet sets up between the pilgrim and Beatrice, and between the pilgrim, Beatrice, all the blessed, and God. In one article I surveyed some recent critical literature on the co-optation of the language of erotic love in Dante’s Paradiso. 2 In a second, I suggested that the ideal relationship posited between Beatrice and Dante derives in part from how the poet construes the ideal condition of man in the earthly paradise, before the Fall. 3 Dante’s ideal of man in the celestial paradise, as I understand it, may depart substantially from exegesis (both orthodox and heterodox) of the earthly paradise, but it does have discernible roots in it. In this essay I will argue that in his Paradiso Dante tries, through very specific lexical and poetic choices, to adumbrate an eroticized relationship that is simply not congruent with earthly dichotomies of soul and body, caritas and eros, pure and impure. Dante’s heaven contains unquestionable erotic freight, and reconciles the contradictory yet coexistent verities of both Christian doctrine and his own historically specific love for and with Beatrice.
