'Punto | per compassion': The Violent Rhetoric of Compassion in Dante's Commedia

Abstract:It is particularly difficult to understand the workings of compassion in premodern literature owing to the proliferation of terms used to describe it. In Dante's minor works, scholars identify a distinctive discourse of compassion that differentiates between 'misericordia' (compassionate emotion) and 'pietade' (the soul's receptiveness to compassion) ('Convivio', ii. 10. 5–6). Turning to Dante's 'Commedia' as a new case study, this paper will examine how compassion defined as fellow feeling is represented through metaphor in the poem, elucidating a lexicon of violence that derives from Gospel accounts of the Crucifixion, and that introduces a Christological framing of compassion into the Italian tradition.