SOURCE: “Flesh, Spirit, and Rebirth at the Center of Dante's Comedy,” Symposium, Vol. XIX, No. 4, Winter, 1965, pp. 335-51.

In the following essay, Bernardo explores the theme of rebirth in Dante's work, positing that it entails purification of both body and soul.

I

In defining the basic originality of Dante's Comedy, Auerbach states: “What radically distinguishes the Comedy from all other visions of the other world is that in it the unity of man's earthly personality is preserved and fixed. … The earthly world is encompassed in the other world of the Comedy; true, its historical order and form are destroyed, but in favor of a more complete and final form in which the destroyed form is included. … It was necessary to destroy the form of the earthly world, for its potentiality, its striving for self-realization, and consequently its variability attain full term and cease in the after-life; the new...