Ethics, ontology and representation : the virtu-dynamic of Dante's Commedia

This thesis explores the conception and representation of virtu in Dante's Commedia. In
order to break the existing limited boundaries of the way virtue is read in the Commedia,
and to establish a richer sense of the ideas a fourteenth-century poet might have had in
relation to the topic, this thesis begins with two chapters which consider notions of virtue
in the intellectual and cultural traditions prior to Dante. Chapter One focuses on the
philosophical and theological traditions and considers works by Aristotle, Plato,
Augustine, Gregory the Great and Thomas Aquinas. Chapter Two turns to look at virtue as
a prominent theme in a wide variety of popular cultural forms of the medieval period.
These include sermons, devotional literature, visual art and poetry. In the light of these
two chapters, the thesis proposes a reading of virtu in the Commedia which acknowledges
it as a notion which is at a nexus of being and doing, of metaphysical and physical, of idea
and representation. What I have termed the virtu-dynamic in the Commedia, is that
through which Dante fundamentally connects ethics and ontology, so that human
behaviour becomes an expression of an individual's ontological state. The virtu-dynamic is
the interaction which the Commedia traces between the creative action of God and the
responsive action of man. The final three chapters of the thesis consider this in relation to
different aspects of the poem. Chapter Three considers the role Dante gives to virtu in the
process of creation and incarnation in his poem. Chapter Four looks at how Dante stages
the interactions between God and man which are underpinned by virtu. The final chapter
considers how Dante conceives the role of virtu in relation to the experiences and
salvation of his own pilgrim-poet self. This analysis is based on a close focus, not only on
the abstract ideas of virtu which the Commedia proposes, but on how those ideas are
manifested and vivified by the text.