Now You Know Who We Are: PURGATORIO, Canto XIV, Lines 73 - 96

Walking With Dante

At long last, the speaker in PURGATORIO Canto XIV comes clean and reveals who he is . . . and who his compatriot is. They're Guido del Duca and Rinier (or Rinieri) da Calboli. Now that we now who they are, we have to go back and reassess Canto XIV as a whole.

Dante is nothing but cagey in the rhetorical games he's playing. He's demanding more and more out of his reader. And rightly so, given the complexity of COMEDY up to this point.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we look through this passage in which these envious souls reveal who they are and we discover the underlying politics of the passage among the envious on the second terrace of Purgatory proper.

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Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[02:15] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XIV, Lines 73 - 96. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please do so under this episode on my website: markscarbrough.com.

[04:22] Who is Guido del Duca, a Ghibelline warlord from Romagna?

[06:40] Who is Rinier (or Rinieri) da Calboli, a Guelph warlord from Romagna?

[09:08] Who is Fulcieri da Calboli, the bloody hunter previously mentioned?

[11:13] Two questions for this passage: Is the political strife between these two healed . . . or being healed? And why are these warlords among the envious?

[13:04] What details in this passage help us to understand its nuances?

[21:21] When exactly does Dante's journey take place?

[25:38] Rereading the scope of PURGATORIO, Canto XIV, from line 10 to line 96.