ABSTRACT
Rhetorical and linguistic philosophy thought through to its limits becomes thought about the limits of language and its beyond, and this current, as just inventoried in this chapter, offers some of the most pertinent paradigms for understanding Dante's Paradiso. It turns out to be indistinguishable from silence-as when the lark becomes silent in the contentment of the ultimate sweetness that satiates it. Ineffability has come more and more into focus as the source and core of Dante's poetic discourse in the Paradiso. Transcendence-the soul's elevation to God-through self-reflexivity is the basic project and the driving force behind the lyric as Dante discloses it. Language not only reveals the essences of beings: it also gives the reader only means of understanding Being, including Trinitarian, divine being in its inherent self-reflexivity. Language’s sensuous rendering of meaning or spirit simultaneously illuminates the divine Word’s incarnateness.
