ABSTRACT
Lyric language invents an outstanding emblem for itself in the skylark. Poets from early on in modern tradition had identified with this bird as figuring a celestial ascent of song-followed by descent into silence. Dante is using self-reflection as the key to exposition of the great doctrines of Christianity ranging from the nature of God to the justification of wrong in the world by theodicy. The infinite disproportion of the Creator to the creation makes it impossible for finite intelligence to understand divine Justice. Feeding one's own brood in the nest-or reproducing oneself through nutritive action-is an extended enactment of self-reflection. Dante's alodetta is described as "the image of an imprint", suggesting how this image produces itself out of its own reflected being. Things are perceived, in turn, as all that they can be as refracted by the poet’s creative love and desire—and by their reflective repetition in the meditative and perceptive act of reading.
