Syracuse University SURFACE at Syracuse University Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics College of Arts and Sciences 2015 «Tante voci [. .] tra quei bronchi1»: Authorial Agency and Textual Borrowing in Inferno XIII Anne C. Leone Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/lll Part of the Italian Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Leone, Anne C. “« TANTE VOCI [. .] TRA QUEI BRONCHI »: AUTHORIAL AGENCY AND TEXTUAL BORROWING IN INFERNO XIII.” Le Tre Corone, vol. 2, 2015, pp. 111–130. https://www.jstor.org/stable/ 26493434 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts and Sciences at SURFACE at Syracuse University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics by an authorized administrator of SURFACE at Syracuse University. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. «Tante voci [. .] tra quei bronchi1»: Authorial Agency and Textual Borrowing in Inferno XIII Anne Leone In Inferno XIII, Virgil and Dante-the pilgrim speak with two souls guilty of suicide: an anonymous Florentine and Pier delle Vigne, the chancellor of Frederick II and a gifted rhetorician, who, accused of betraying his master, killed himself.2 The suicides in Hell endure a strange combination of punishments. Instead of radiating aerial bodies that resemble human forms, as do most of the other souls in Dante’s Hell,3 the suicides’ souls are trapped in the form of trees, or, to use Leo Spitzer’s useful expression, they radiate ‘arboreal bodies’.4 The Harpies wound the suicides by feeding on their leaves, thereby enabling them to speak, albeit through bloody words.