| This dissertation explores the conception of human identity in Bonvesin da la Riva's Book of the Three Scriptures and Dante's Commedia, two poems that were written in Italy in the vernacular within a few decades of one another. Both the Book of the Three Scriptures and the Commedia, are threefold and, at the same time, unitary eschatological poems that describe the condition of the separated soul in the afterlife. Both begin with the description of hell and end with heaven but the central part of the Commedia, deals with the description of purgatory, whereas the central part of the Book of the Three Scriptures describes Christ's passion. While in the past Bonvesin's work has been dismissed as "popular" and therefore never granted a rigorous investigation, this dissertation studies the Book of the Three Scriptures as a document of contemporary culture and spirituality, and uses it to gain a new understanding of the Commedia. It focuses in particular on the importance of the body, its relation to the soul, and the significance of pain. The first three chapters consider the importance of the body in the representation of hell and heaven, and highlight a tension between an "eschatology of immortality," which focuses on the (physical) experience of the separated soul before resurrection, and an "eschatology of resurrection," which stresses the importance of bodily return and the material reconstitution of the person. The fourth chapter shows the connection between the suffering body of Christ on the cross and the productive pain of purgatory. The epilogue argues that, through the representation of the pilgrim's body (which progressively acquires the qualities of a resurrection body), Dante manages to combine the two eschatological emphases that I have analyzed throughout the poem. |
