Abstract
The final third of Paradiso, cantos 23–33, comprises the final three heavens—Fixed Stars, Primum Mobile, Empyrean—and completes Dante's pedagogical program in Paradiso to advance the intellectual, sacred, and mystical wisdom achieved by the auctor-viator by virtue of his divine vision. The “pedagogy of the eternal” (Pazzaglia) of Paradiso depends on Beatrice and St. Bernard, the viator 's two guides in this final interval where the mode of learning changes to a learning by revelation that depends on the practice of contemplation. In contrast to the single-canto focused lectura, this article focuses on Dante's macrotextual development of themes and forms in support of his emancipatory prophetic voice in the final years of his life when he is living in Ravenna. These include the theme of maternity and infancy, as a means to approach innocence and grace, and the formal implementation of phonetic and iterative tropes, to reinforce the poet's semantic message.
