THE GREEN OF PHILOSOPHERS. COlOR SIGNATURES IN DANTE’S “THE dIVINE COMEDY”

Abstract

The article questions the chromatic vision of Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” based on the example of the episode from the 4th song of Inferno in which the poet meets philosophers on a green meadow of Limbo. In comparison with a fragment from Joyce’s “Ulysses”, that played up the corresponding episode, Dante’s chromatics considered in connection with the color theories of  antiquity — the vertical one (articulated by Plato) and the horizontal one (articulated by Aristotle), and the medieval color models. Green is represented not only as a “natural color”, but is opposed to red through the differences in the expression of intermediation and modesty.