Dante and the Knot of Body and Soul Author:Marianne Shapiro Dante and the Knot of Body and Soul seeks to evaluate in just measure the material, bodily, erotic, and aesthetic aspects of the intellectual foundations of the Commedia and explore the idea of embodied spirit and its poetic consequences in Dante’s worldmaking poem. Bodies, be they ghostly, demonic, fleshly, or angelic, are t... more »ied up in both literal and figurative knots because of their unstable ontology, an ontology that they share with human language. In each chapter, Marianne Shapiro addresses the interconnections between poetic speech and embodied spirit as they develop over the course of the Commedia’s three canticles. Instead of regarding Dante as an Olympian poet, her approach emphasizes process, for even a masterpiece may conceal adjustments and shifts in strategy as part of its structure. While much current scholarship has set out to recover the specifically literary dimensions of Dante’s enterprise by prising them away from the overriding theological concerns, this work is intended to bring the two together in an integrated vision.« less