Let's Compare The First Two Dreams In PURGATORIO
Walking With Dante · Mark Scarbrough
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Show Notes
We've had two dreams in PURGATORIO, one at Canto IX and one at Canto XIX (although it actually started in the last line of Canto XVIII).
Let's take a moment to compare and contrast these two dreams. What can they tell us about the changing nature of PURGATORIO, especially given my thesis that this is a poem in process, one in which the poet is learning how to write the poem as he moves forward?
Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:
[01:21] A reading of the first two dreams in PURGATORIO: Canto IX, lines 13 - 42; and Canto XIX, lines 1 - 13.
[05:11] Both dreams occur near dawn, startle the pilgrim awake, and rob the pilgrim of his free will.
[08:40] Both dreams are about (different versions) of the future.
[12:14] Both dreams have problems about who saves the pilgrim: the terrifying eagle or Virgil?
[14:20] Both dreams are full of classical imagery (with important differences in the placement of that imagery).
[16:15] Both dreams have songs: the first, outside the dream; the second, inside it.
[17:35] There are two characters in the first dream, four character in the second--allowing for a larger interpretive space in the second dream.