The University of California Press gratefully welcomes the contribution provided by ENTE CASSA DI RISPARMIO DI FIRENZE toward the publication of this book. The first volume of the California Lectura Dantis draws on a wide range of international scholar-critics. Each contributor presents his or her reading, in essay form, of a canto of the Inferno. The Purgatorio and Paradiso volumes will follow the same format, providing the long-awaited companion to the three volumes of Allen Mandelbaum's verse tranlsations, with facing Italian text, of The Divine Comedy. ADVISORY BOARD Ignazio Baldelli University of Rome Teodolinda Barolini Columbia University Charles T. Davisf Tulane University Giuseppe Di Scipio Hunter College and Graduate Center, CUNY Cecil Grayson Oxford University Emilio Pasquini University of Bologna Lea Ritter Santini University of Miinster John A. Scott University of Western Australia Lectura Dantis ^ _ - FP RF C E G- E <-R T-T O "KITHTHT TUB VIOLENT HI' 1 NA*INSRMM*NBOTIA*S-. TYKAHVS AI*> MMPEMXS "«o1 2'. AOFUMST TH*MSKLVES (SULCTOEF) AHP T XM«SR RUTIN PNSESSIEAM o > A&A/wiT GOP [^BLASPHEMERS ß SODOMITES |J "USURERS 'It!'(iÌT8 FRAUD PAMPMRS TT S r T> UCE* P LA TTCXRITS J/A^l OVISTS 'TUVTUENS, ASRRQIOECRS 6-MAÖICIAKS^ BARRATOAS HYPOCRITES TMIEVES FRAVDWLBNT COVHSELOKS SORTERS OF SCANDAL & SCHISM FALSIFIERS CO PJ SHmu!flt\PerStns/^bins m,muW 9 TREACHERy !Wl|'"M TRATTORIe.AtK TO KTN.A The moral topology of Inferno, by Barry Moser Lectura Dantis Edited by ALLEN MANDELBAUM ANTHONY OLDCORN CHARLES ROSS UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley Los Angeles London The editors have benefited muchfrom the help of the Wait Tower staffof Wake Forest University, especially the unstinting care ofLily SaacU, as well as from the editorial collaboration of Martha Craig at Purdue University. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 1998 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lectura Dantis : Inferno / edited by Allen Mandelbaum, Anthony Oldcorn, Charles Ross. p. cm.—{California lectura Dantis ; 1) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-5 20-21249-$ (alk. paper).—ISBN 0-520-21270*3 (alk. paper) 1. Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321. Inferno. I. Mandelbaum. Allen, 1926- . II. Oldcorn, Anthony. III. Ross, Charles, 1949- . IV Series. PQ4443L38 1998 851'.!—dc2i 98-34223 CIP Printed in the United States of America 987654321 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standards for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI 239.48-1984. This volume of the California Lectura Dantis is dedicated to our indispensable colleague and peerless editor of the text of Dante's Divine Comedy, the late GIORGIO PETROCCHI It is unthinkable to read the cantos of Dante without aiming them in the direction of the present day. They were made for that... They demand the commentary of tfiefuturum. OSIP MANDELSTAM .