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The Divinatory Comedy: Geomancy in Danteâs Purgatorio
Series: - Prognostication in History, Volume: 14
Author:
What hidden design shapes Danteâs Purgatorio? In this bold and original study, Erwan Dianteill argues that medieval geomancy is not a passing allusion but the poemâs concealed organizing principle. Drawing on philology, anthropology, and the history of divination, Erwan Dianteill shows that the second canticle of the Divine Comedy can be read through the geomantic system transmitted by Bartolomeo da Parma, Danteâs contemporary. Figures, triplicities, and judges illuminate Antepurgatory, the seven cornices, and the Earthly Paradise. The result is a rigorous and compelling new account of Danteâs poetic architecture, symbolic logic, and intellectual world. The Divinatory Comedy opens a revelatory path into one of the supreme monuments of world literature.
Erwan Dianteill is Professor of Anthropology at the Université Paris Cité and Non Resident Fellow of the Hutchins Research Center (Harvard University). His book LâOracle et le Temple â De la géomancie médiévale à lâEglise dâIfa (Nigeria, Bénin) won the 2025 History of Religions Grand Prize of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.
Specialists and institutions specialized in Dante studies, medieval Italian literature, medieval intellectual history, history of divination, manuscript culture, anthropology of religion, comparative poetics, and hermeneutics.