Binding the Book: Hermeneutics and Manuscript Production inParadiso33
John Ahern
Twice in the Comedy's last canto Dante refers to binding of texts. The Sibyl's “light leaves” (lines 64-66) point danger not texts: when order pages is lost, text s meaning ( sentenza ) also vanishes. Medieval thinkers distinguished between sequential perception sensus and simultaneous sententia a poem elements. Because released fascicles over period ten or more years, he needed remind reader fascicle bind into single volume. final book image (85-90) indirectly performs this task. Appearing at moment able pass from its , these lines employ as metaphor for entirety. Their unusually polysemous language implies triple analogy. God, poet, are all artificers heavenly
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