Dante's Staircase and the History of the Will

In a text as heavily glossed as the Commedia, proposing a wholly new understanding of even a short passage is something of a risky venture. But there are cases where new interpretations are invited, not by an individual reader's whimsy, but by the whole critical community - cases where its lasting exasperation with a textual crux makes itself evident in the behavior of critics as a group, whose profound dissatisfaction with available readings shows itself by a seemingly interminable search for better ones. When the crux falls in a passage both structurally and philosophically central to the work as a whole, the invitation might even be held to have a certain urgency about it. Copyright © The Medieval Academy of America 2015.