We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
from Part II - Philosophical Reflections
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 August 2021
Dante’s unitary vision, for all its immediacy, is a vision of mediation through language and its constitutive binaries. This is demonstrated in terms of Saussurian linguistics, but the principle had been anticipated with sophistication by the semiological and language-theoretical consciousness of the Middle Ages in ways that Dante particularly develops and foregrounds. Moreover, the post-structuralist turn in which meaning is generated no longer just internally to the system of language by diacritical difference but depends on relation to an Other outside the system is also eminently embodied in Dante’s theological understanding of language. Only relation to the absolute Other of divinity can lend language its meaningfulness. Every system must relate to other systems in order to have any meaning at all, and this is structurally equivalent to referring all meaning to God.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
