Kent-Drury

English 206

Definitions for Dante’s Commedia

Allegory

A form of extended metaphor in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative are equated with meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. Thus, it represents one thing in the guise of another--an abstraction in that of a concrete image. By a process of double signification, the order of words represents actions and characters, and they in turn represent ideas. Allegory often clarifies this process by giving patently meaningful names to persons and places. The characters are usually personifications of abstract qualities, the action and setting representative of the relationships among these abstractions. The characters, events, and setting may be historical, fictitious, or fabulous; the test is that these materials be so employed that they represent meanings independent of the action in the surface story. Such meanings may be religious, moral, political, personal, or satiric.

Allusion

A figure of speech that makes brief reference to a historical or literary figure, event, or object.

Symbol

Something that is itself and also stands for something else. It evokes an object that suggests a meaning in and of itself and not with reference to the complex if figurative language within a certain literary work, such as a poem or an allegory (in this way it is different from metaphor).

Seven Cardinal Virtues

From medieval theology, faith, hope, love (drawn from biblical teaching) and prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance (from the Greeks and referred to as the “natural” virtues)

Seven Deadly Sins

From medieval theology, sins that lead to spiritual death and that can be atoned for only through perfect penitence. For Dante, all arise from imperfect love: pride, envy, wrath (from perverted love), sloth (from defective love), avarice, gluttony, lust (from excessive love). Pride is the worst sin (leads to treachery and disloyalty as in Satan, Judas, Cassius, Brutus).