Yes, but in a quest amidst archives for materials in connection with
Brunetto Latino, published in _Twice-Told Tales: Brunetto Latino and Dante
Alighieri_, I found that Ugolino historically did eat the flesh of his
progeny from hunger, while Dante's text, in Hell's realm of lies, has him
ambiguously seem not to say that and many a critic has fallen into that
trap, those jaws! How can a wife accuse a husband of murdering her, or of
attempting to murder her, in a court of law, when they are one flesh and she
cannot in law be a witness? I trust nothing that Dante writes in _Inferno_,
everything he says in _Paradiso_, because in _Inferno_ he jokingly says his
lies are truths, but in _Paradiso_ he truthfully and solemnly says he lies!
Thus I would tend to expect what is said in _Purgatorio_ to be similarly
mixed as gossip/truth. I found in my archival searches that sometimes what
is said in early commentaries was written with a knowledge of the context,
and thus can unveil Dante's irony ('saying one thing, meaning another'),
while later critics can be swayed by Dante's presentation and thus can opt
against what was historical fact. Virgil was also a pastmaster of this, as
in Sinon's speech where his words actually say one thing about the Greeks'
ships, but appear to say the opposite, in other words, he says the truth in
such a way that his audience swallows the opposite meaning, which is a lie -
'ambages pulcerrime' stuff. A pious wife cannot indict her husband of
murder. And is it out-annd-out murder. Maremma was a fatal district in
malaria season before its marshes were drained. If a husband packed his wife
off there it was a death sentence.
At 03.28 26/11/97 +0100, you wrote:
>... Ultimo auctor dicit quomodo etiam ibi vidit umbram domine Pie de
>Tholomeis de Senis, uxoris olim domini Nelli de la Petra de Maritima, et
>dicentis quomodo occisa fuit a dicto suo viro.
>(Pietro Alighieri, Purg. V, par. 17, inedita redazione terza del suo
>commento, edizione da me curata in corso di stampa)
>Se il figlio di Dante in tutte e tre le redazioni del proprio commento dice
>sempre la stessa cosa, e cioe' che la povera Pia fu uccisa dal marito, di
>cui per di piu' da' nome, cognome e luogo di residenza, un motivo ci sara'!
>Ne sappiamo piu' noi nel 1997 o lui nel 1340? Non credo proprio che Nello
>sia innocente, almeno non il Nello sottinteso da Dante in questi versi, ed
>e' questo l'importante: l'intentio auctoris, ossia questo farci intravedere
>la feritas dell'uxoricida in contrapposizione all'exemplum della sposa
>devota. La Commedia stessa e' un documento sufficiente (anche se scritto
>con le tecniche della poesia, quali l'allusione, l'epigrammaticita',
>l'enigmaticita' e la reticenza). I commenti antichi SONO documenti.
>Bisognerebbe cominciare a usare i materiali danteschi per capire la storia
>e non solo il contrario. E il resto e' accademia, piu' o meno utile.
>Massimiliano Chiamenti
>
>
>
>
____
Julia Bolton Holloway, [log in to unmask]
Hermit of the Holy Family
via del Partigiano 16, Montebeni, 50014 FIESOLE, ITALY
http://members.aol.com/juliansite/Juliansite.htm
He said not, 'Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou
shalt not be diseased.' But he said, 'Thou shalt not be overcome'.
Julian of Norwich
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