Infamia nominis in Dante’s "Commedia"

Abstract

Names are perhaps the main tool used by Dante in the defamatory project identifiable in the Commedia and in particular in the first cantica, related to the juridical concept of infamia iuris. In addition to parodic-caricatural names and explicit interpretationes, the poet’s objective is achieved by means of a hiatus between the realistic names of the damned and their present alienated, grotesque condition. Various passages with a metalinguistic value confirm the intentionality, and in particular episodes such as that of Bocca degli Abati, in which a dialectic
emerges between the obsession with nomination (by the viator) and the refusal to name oneself (most of the damned are aware of the consequences this will have on their fama).