Vol 9 Nr 3 (2025)

Theory and Criticism of Literature and Arts

Issue 9, Nr. 3 – 2025

Bibliothèque de l’OProM
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Cover Image: Graphic reworking of a detail from Botticelli’s depiction of Dante’s cosmos, intersected with a hypersphere © TCLA Journal 2025.

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Full Issue DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17558816.

The full PDF of this issue is archived and accessible here, on our official website.

Individual articles are also deposited in Zenodo and linked to the respective authors’ ORCID IDs to ensure persistent metadata, secure archiving, and academic attribution.

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Table of Contents

PART I – DANTE STUDIES

Title: Il male come sconfitta dell’uomo e dei desideri (Evil as the defeat of man and of human desires)

pages: 5-11

Author: Valeria Giannantonio, Università degli Studi Gabriele D’Annunzio, Chieti, ORCID: 0000-0003-3523-8564

Abstract: The article interprets the figure of Piccarda Donati in the Paradiso as a symbol of the defeat of evil and human desire through divine love and grace. In her, Dante embodies purity that resists earthly violence, transforming suffering into beatitude and light. The author connects Dante’s poetics of light and love to the Platonic-Augustinian tradition and to stilnovismo, reading Piccarda’s canto as a meditation on the soul’s ascent, on mercy, and on the triumph of good. The woman’s story ultimately becomes a reflection of Florentine corruption and of humanity’s capacity to rediscover God through beauty and faith.

Read PDF on Zenodo | 10.5281/zenodo.17559170

Title: Il Virgilio dantesco tra cultura classica e medievale (The Dantesque Virgil between Classical and Medieval Culture)

pp. 12-30

Author: Maria Maślanka-Soro, Jagellonica University, ORCID: 0000-0002-0230-3836

Abstract: The article examines the figure of Virgil in the Commedia as a symbol of the tension between pagan humanism and Christian spirituality. Dante inherits the idealised image of the Latin poet from the medieval Latin tradition, but transforms it into that of a tragic and liminal character, suspended between two worlds. Virgil embodies the ancient wisdom and moral virtue of Aeneas, yet remains excluded from salvation because of his pre-Christian nature. The Virgil of Dante is thus a complex and dramatic figure, representing both the encounter and the conflict between classical and Christian culture: a wise guide and master of style, but also a soul “rebellious” to divine law, aware of the limits of human reason before grace.

Read PDF on Zenodo | DOI:10.5281/zenodo.17559115

Title: Gli studi di Jorge Luis Borges su Dante (Jorge Luis Borges’s Studies on Dante)

pp. 31–44

Author: Valentina Valenti (ISFiDa-SISD), ORCID: 0009-0009-5952-5489

Abstract: The essay offers a reappraisal of Jorge Luis Borges’s studies on Dante’s Commedia, with particular reference to the Nine Dantesque Essays. Its aim is to restore the coherence and depth of a corpus that provides an essential key to reading the poem in the light of modernity. Through his empathetic analysis, Borges approaches Dante’s verses with the freedom and sensitivity of a poet, transforming the critical act into a living dialogue with the text. His interpretation, grounded in a combination of theoretical knowledge, linguistic analysis, and poetic intuition, goes beyond mere erudition to become a genuine work of Dantean literature. The critical oeuvre of the Argentine poet thus emerges as the reflection of a poet’s mind, aimed at reawakening questions of meaning destined to arise repeatedly from a sui generis hypotext.

Read PDF on Zenodo | DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17559139.

Title: Il sacro in Dante e Gaudí (The Sense of Sacred in Dante and Gaudí)
pp. 45–53

Author : Raffaele Pinto, University of Barcelona (ORCID 0009-0000-6295-3446)

Abstract: Starting from general anthropological notions of the ‘sacred’, the essay examines aspects of Dante’s poetry and Gaudí’s architecture that allow for a comparative reading of their respective masterpieces—the Commedia and the Sagrada Família—despite the temporal distance and the difference in their expressive languages.

Read PDF on Zenodo | 10.5281/zenodo.17559181.

Title: Sacro e Natura nell’Arte antica (Sacred and Nature in Ancient Art)

pp. 54–66

Author : Katia Brugnolo, Accademia di Belle Arti di Verona, ORCID: 0009-0008-4847-8288

Abstract: The paper, presented at the conference The Sense of the Sacred in Dante and Gaudí, explores the connection between the natural dimension and sacredness in the civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean world, showing how the representation of the divine was inseparable from the symbols and forms of nature. Through the analysis of emblematic works, the study highlights the continuity of a symbolic language linking ancient religions to the spiritual conception of Western art. Originating from reflections developed within the course on the History of Ancient Art at the Academy of Fine Arts of Verona, the paper establishes a dialogue between the roots of classical sacredness, Dante’s imagery, and Gaudí’s organic vision of nature, in whose architecture natural matter once again becomes an epiphany of the divine.

Read PDF on Zenodo | 10.5281/zenodo.17559156

Title: Il geomètra e l’imago al cerchio. Il sacro in Dante e Gaudí e le formule matematiche dell’Amore (Il geomètra e l’imago al cerchio.The Sacred in Dante and Gaudí and the Mathematical Formulas of Love)

pp. 67–86
Author : Carla Rossi, Chair ISFiDa (ORCID: 0000-0001-6557-3684)

Abstract: The paper, presented at the conference The Sense of the Sacred in Dante and Gaudí, analyses the intersection between Dante’s cosmology and Gaudí’s spatial vision, following as a guiding thread the theme of the cognitive limit implicit in the quadratura del cerchio—the mathematical problem central to the Middle Ages—and the tension between Euclidean geometry and Dante’s poetic intuition of a curved, non-Euclidean space. It offers a comparative reading of Dante and Gaudí as thinkers of the sacred, for whom geometry is transformed from a rational tool into a theophanic space, and the failure of Euclidean measure becomes the very condition of vision. Dante’s poetic universe thus foreshadows, by analogy, the architectural forms of Antoni Gaudí. The analysis engages with the interpretations of Pavel Florensky, Mark Peterson, and Marco Bersanelli, who identified in the Commedia a cosmological conception akin to the model of the three-sphere later formalised by Riemann and Einstein. Within this framework lies the reflection on Gaudí, who, in the non-Euclidean forms of the Sagrada Família, translates into architectural space the same Dantesque tension between the human and the divine.

Read PDF on Zenodo | DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17559246.

Title: Dante e il simbolismo (Dante and Symbolism)

pp. 87–102
Author : Rossend Arques, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, ORCID: 0000-0002-5423-086X

Abstract: Virgil and the Dimension of Time in the Comedy

The paper revisits the origins and meaning of Symbolism as a spiritual and aesthetic movement rooted in the idealist “theory of correspondences,” which conceives the visible world as a reflection of the invisible. Emerging with Jean Moréas’s Le Symbolisme: Manifeste (1886), it was never a unified school but a constellation of visionary, mystical, and esoteric tendencies opposing positivist materialism. The study highlights the influence of Dante as a central figure in the European fin de siècle imagination: from the Pre-Raphaelites to Liberty and Art Nouveau, his vision of beauty, exile, and transcendence inspired artists seeking to make art a path to the sacred and a form of spiritual redemption.

Title: Il senso del segreto e alcune conseguenze del nonsenso (The Sense of the Secret and Some Consequences of Nonsense)

pp. 103-116
Author: Luigi Tassoni, University of Pécs, ORCID: 0000-0002-1720-542X

Abstract: Moving beyond many traditional misconceptions, the current broad typology of secrecy initially refers to a simple act of omission—of bracketing, prohibition, or suspension. Yet when reasoning focuses more closely on speech itself, on the discourse triggered by secrecy and on the process that explains its operation, matters become more complex. The interpretation of these “complications,” which are in fact functional elements of complexity, seeks to evoke the dynamic movement between sense and nonsense within language. This paper discusses some of these key aspects, engaging with the perspectives of those who have explored the deep motivations of secrecy between philosophy and literature—from Derrida to Petrarch.

Read PDF on Zenodo | DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17559266

Title: San Domenico Soriano: dai fasti all’oblio (Saint Dominic of Soriano: From Splendour to Oblivion)

pp. 117-132
Author: Biagio Gamba, Organisation pour la protection des manuscrits médievaux, Parigi, ORCID: 0009-0003-5217-6673

Abstract: If one were to ask an ordinary Catholic—especially a Calabrian—about Soriano Calabro, the answer would, in most cases, be a puzzled or indifferent look. Few today know that between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries this tiny village, nestled in the Serre mountains of Calabria, was among the most visited pilgrimage sites in Europe and beyond. Artists, famous and obscure alike, immortalised the image of the Saint renowned for his miracles. In the early 1700s, the engraver I. H. Störcklin produced a now-forgotten print depicting the monumental complex as it appeared to pilgrims of the time. A tragic event—a devastating earthquake, reaching the eleventh degree on the Mercalli scale (roughly above 7.0 on the Richter scale)—eventually reduced it to ruins, erasing Saint Dominic of Soriano from both historical and religious memory.

Read PDF on Zenodo | DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17559278.