Open AccessDifference as Punishment or Difference as Pleasure
Author(s) -
Teodolinda Barolini
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
textual cultures
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1933-7418
pISSN - 1559-2936
DOI - 10.14434/textual.v12i1.27148
Subject(s) - tower of babel , pleasure , punishment (psychology) , confusion , significant difference , poetry , literature , philosophy , linguistics , psychology , art , theology , psychoanalysis , social psychology , mathematics , statistics , neuroscience
Dante’s linguistic treatise, De vulgari eloquentia, is not without joy in linguistic difference and invention. However, the treatise’s signature attitude toward linguistic difference is signaled early in Book 1 by the powerfully punitive account of the Tower of Babel. Linguistic diversity, aka “confusion of tongues”, is the punishment meted out to Nimrod and his followers for their presumptuous building of the Tower of Babel: thus, difference is punishment. This essay traces Dante’s evolution as he moves from De vulgari eloquentia to the encounter with Nembrot (as Dante calls Nimrod) in Inferno 31 to Adam’s great discourse on linguistic creation in Paradiso 26: from difference as punishment to difference as pleasure. Dante’s evolution in the linguistic sphere correlates moreover with another transition: from the treatise’s castigation of Eve as a speaker, presumptuosissima Eva, to the Beatrix loquax of Paradiso.