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Here's my attempt at thinking through the passport essay!

~Jane

Comprehensive Exam

Passport Essay

Rhetoric and Audience in Cantos V of Dante’s Inferno and Paradiso

Outline:

Thesis: To consider Dante’s Inferno and Paradiso in the light of the concept that effective rhetoric is the supreme awareness and understanding of audience at the time of composition is to explore the type of oration that emerges when all actions have already been completed and to reveal the Comedy as a journey toward a new type of rhetoric.

Clarification and guiding notions: This thesis will be examined through a comparison of the two “bookends” of the Commedia in conversation with Aristotle’s assertions in On Rhetoric and Augustine’s claims in On Christian Teaching. The study will examine the role of Dante the poet as well as Dante the character within the story, and contrast these roles in relation to those of, firstly, the reader, and secondly, the other characters in the work, in an effort to understand various notions of audience in correspondence to perceptions of rhetoric as well as to pedagogy.

Annotated Bibliography:

Alighieri, Dante. Inferno, ed. Robert Durling (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). This translation of Inferno is considered to be among the best existing today. Its annotations are incisive and include quotations from the leading scholars associated with the work.

Alighieri, Dante. Paradiso, ed. Robert and Jean Hollander (New York: Anchor Books, 2007). This translation, like the one above, comes highly recommended by John Freccero himself.

Aristotle. On Rhetoric, trans. George A. Kennedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). This is a detailed study on the many aspects and uses of effective rhetoric, vital to our study in this paper.

Freccero, John. "Infernal Irony: The Gates of Hell," MLN 99.4 (1984): 769-786. This article is a highly informative approach to irony (and thus certain notions of rhetorical devices) in Inferno by one of the leading Dantistas of our time.

Saint Augustine. On Christian Teaching, trans. R.P.H. Green (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). An important work on the ethics and hermeneutics of the Bible, especially germane to the questions raised in this paper as they refer to the point as well as the approach of and to religious teaching.

The Holy Bible New International Version (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989). As the source from which come many of the religious statues Dante extols and/or criticizes, the Bible plays a vital role in any consideration of Dante’s text. While the New American Standard version is starting to become known as the most literally translated version of the Bible, the New International Version continues to be widely employed in Biblical scholarly pursuits today and is considered one of the most easily-read and -understood versions.