1 - Theology and Poetry

Summary

Dante’s Comedy is a work of theology, done by way of a fictional journey through Hell and Purgatory to Paradise. Did Dante really make that journey? Of course he did. The journey is made by way of the fictional narrative describing it, and this way of enacting a truth by way of its description shares something with the sacramental act that makes to be so that which it signifies, or perhaps better, in the sort of way that the interpretation of Scripture is part of the efficacy of the scriptural word. Dante needed poetry to record that journey, and the poetry was how he traveled. In this way his poetry is a lived interpretation of a Christian journey, and the journey recorded is the journey made.