ABSTRACT
Women’s desire exists within the sphere of transgression. Whereas men can transgress a known position, in a sense the woman is already the figure of transgression, and her judgement works in reverse: it means nothing exceptional, and it casts doubt on the likelihood of any judgement making sense. The trace of transgression nonetheless remains in the very insistence of the oxymoronic language in which Dante foregrounds the logical and linguistic ‘impossibility’ of the Incarnation. In the prayer to the Virgin Mary, Dante reveals and revels in the potential intersection of transgression and transcendence; his consummate version of orthodox theology displays, compresses and masters the paradoxes at the heart of language and theology. The virgin mother, like the squared circle, forces us to the limits of language in order to communicate that which is beyond the human: ‘Trasumanar significar per verba / non si poria’.
