THE STRANGENESS OF DANTE: ULYSSES AND BEATRICE

Abstract

The article analyzes Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” as one of the centraltexts in the Western literary canon. The author defends the idea of a specific singularity and innovation of the work that go unnoticed by most scholars.Criticizing the theological reading of “The Divine Comedy”, the author insists on the dominant function of Beatrice as a figure that should not be viewed as a Christian allegory. The author concludes with the need to analyze the work purely on literary and poetical grounds, outside the religious context, in order to reveal the true meaning of the poem in the history of the Western literature.