La "Commedia" come dialogo

In the context of today’s critical debate on Dante’s use of dialogue, this essay focuses on three specific points. Firstly, it recognises the quantitative presence of direct discourse in its strategic role, not only as an instrument of characterisation, but also as a stylistic device aimed at conveying the truthfulness and prophetic function of the reported words. Secondly, it considers the speech marks used to join mimesis and diegesis, suggesting the possibility that their role may go beyond a mere demarcative function, ultimately affecting emphasis and intonation in the performative reading of the text. Finally, along with the secondary dialogicality (the reported speeches of the characters), the high degree of primary dialogicity is looked at, concluding that the poem as a whole may be conceived as direct speech, a “dialogue” between the narrator and his reader.