Pellicani danteschi. Paradiso XXV, Inferno XXXIII, Purgatorio XXIII

After recalling the figurative context in which animals are placed within the cantos of the so-called Dante’s “examination” about the theological virtues, the essay initially traces the widespread tradition of the sacred Pelican, a Christic emblem, in medieval culture. It studies and reconstructs the centrality of the Pelican-Christ in the symbolic structure of the Comedy, where this figure evoked only once, in Paradiso XXV 113. The study then highlights the parodic allusions found in other passages of the poem: Inferno XXXIII (Ugolino) and Purgatorio XXIII (the gluttons of the sixth frame and the example of Maria di Eleàzaro, this last one analyzed in reference both to the other example of the punished glutton that precedes it, that of Erisittone, taken from the Ovidian Metamorphoses, and to the Latin reduction of the Flaviu Josephus’ Bellum Iudaicum, known under the name of the Pseudo-Hegesippus)