I've been wrestling with Mario's question of two weeks ago: Why, he asked, does Dante put this long, historically detailed image ...

The dense texture of Florentine family names in Paradiso 16 is truly a thick wood, yet there are traces in it of an argument developed by...

As we get more deeply into the loving portrait of old Florence drawn by Cacciaguida in Paradiso 15-17, a couple of additional links to the...

Paradiso 15  puts in place an elaborate setting for the meeting of Dante and Cacciaguida, the root ( radice)  of his Florentine stock. The ...

A new biography of Dante explores what it would be like for a man in exile, under sentence of death, to have the concentration to write one...

Many son-and-father stand behind Dante's encounter with Cacciaguida. He's certainly thinking of Phaethon's quest for knowledge ...

The figure and voice of Cacciaguida holds forth for three cantos at the center of the Paradiso. He is an ancestor/father who call himself ...