L’arte della ripetizione nella “Divina Commedia”

This research examines a number of occurrences of repetition in its diverse rhetorical specifications with the aim of demonstrating that the fundamental instrument with which debates are organised, if used skilfully, can attribute diverse expressive functions to words and phrases (from anger to sarcasm, for example) and sometimes further meanings. All this very frequently constitutes the intrinsic virtue of linguistic codes in literariness. The Commedia is thus analysed citing the repetitions which are most present in readers’ memories (from the incipit of Canto III to the anaphora of Canto V) and in which that extra meaning emerges every time with the force of great poetry. A special case of repetition is that in which it is ordered with acrostic (Purg. XII 25-63; Par. XIX 115-140) because the amplification of the meaning is to be found precisely in its vertically ordered word.