The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy

The recovery of Dante''s metaphysics - which are very different from our own - is essential argues Christian Moevs if we are to resolve what has been called the central problem in the interpretation of the Comedy. That problem is what to make of the Comedy''s claim to the status of revelation vision or experiential record - as something more than imaginative literature. In this book Moevs offers the first sustained treatment of the metaphysical picture that grounds and motivates the Comedy and the relation between those metaphysics and Dante''s poetics. Moevs arrives at the radical conclusion that Dante believed that all of what we perceive as reality the spatio-temporal world is in fact a creation or projection of conscious being. Armed with this new understanding Moevs is able to shed light on a series of perennial issues in the interpretation of the Comedy.