City, Garden, Wilderness: Insiders and Outsiders in Dante's Commedia

Ple a s e no t e: Ch a n g e s m a d e a s a r e s ul t of p u blishing p roc e s s e s s uc h a s copy-e di ting, for m a t ting a n d p a g e n u m b e r s m ay no t b e r eflec t e d in t his ve r sion. For t h e d efini tive ve r sion of t his p u blica tion, ple a s e r ef e r to t h e p u blish e d sou rc e. You a r e a dvise d to cons ul t t h e p u blish e r’s ve r sion if you wish to ci t e t his p a p er.


Introduction
The notion of the city is so central to Dante's writing that it has become almost a commonplace to describe him as an 'essentially civic' poet and thinker. 1 Above all, Dante is regarded as the poet of Florence, the city-state 'into which he was born and which provided not only what would be called nowadays his "background", but also the stage on which he actively took part [...] in the turmoil and evershifting fortunes of medieval politics' (D'Entrèves, pp.8-9).However, although Dante's political thought has been widely studied, the importance of questions of 'the city'and of 'citizenship' in a general sense has often been eclipsed by the broader and perhaps more controversial issues of Church and Empire, or by a narrow consideration of particular cities -most notably Florence and Rome. 2 In my own work on the concept of the city in Dante's writing -and in what follows -I do not concem myself primarily with the poet's attitude towards individual cities, nor with his specifically political views on the function a n d organisation o f the city (whilst acknowledging the undoubted importance of both these elements), but concentrate above all on issues such as notions of citizenship and the way in which the city functions as an image in Dante's writing.

City and Exile
In Book IV of the Convivio, Dante states, following Aristotle, that human beings are by nature political animals, since individuals alone can never hope to achieve the 'happy life' towards which they naturally incline, except with the help of their fellow human beings within the community. 3T o this end, therefore, they tend to join together in certain set groupings -family, neighbourhood, city, kingdom, and finally Empire. 4Of these, the smallest grouping able to function as a self-sufficient political entity in its own right is the city, whose raison d'être, as Dante reiterates in the Monarchia is to enable its citizens to live well and to fulfil t h e i r needs -'bene sufficienterque vivere', {Mon. 1, v, 7).
Moreover, in the Commedia too the importance, or rather the necessity, of the city to human life on earth is emphasised.I n the Heaven of Venus, the soul of Charles Martel asks the Pilgrim, 'sarebbe il peggio / per I'omo in terra, se non fosse cive?' ['would it be worse / for man on earth were there no social order?' -literally, 'were he not a citizen?'] to which the Pilgrim replies, without the slightest hesitation, 'Si [...] e qui ragion non cheggio' ['Of course [...] and here 1 seek no p r o o f ] {Par.VIII, 115-117).Human beings would be worse off, that is, if they did not belong to a city.As in the Convivio, here too the need for citizens to work together for the common good is seen as being at the basis of the city's role in human society.Like Aristotle (referred to explicitly in line 120), in his famous comparison of the citizens of the polis to the sailors of a ship, 5 Charles Martel goes on to express the need for diversity in human relations: «E puot'elli esser, se giu non si vive diversamente per diversi offici?Non, se 'I maestro vostro ben vi scrive Si venne deducendo infino a quinei; The city thus seems to be defined as a political structure within which human beings cooperate, carrying out the different functions to which they are best suited, in order to guarantee the happiness of the whole community.
In addition to these theoretical statements, the importance for Dante himself of belonging to a city is clearly reflected in the poet's own life -both in his active involvement in Florentine politics before his exile from the city in 1302, and in his continued (if disillusioned) description of himself as a citizen of Florence after that traumatic event, referring to himself in his letters as 'Florentinus et exul inmeritus' ['a Florentine and an undeserving exile'].Even in those ofhis works written after his exile, he continued to reiterate his love for his 'patria'.H e claimed -for example -in the De vulgari eloquentia that 'amenior locus quam Florentia non existât' ['a more delightful place than Florence does not exist'] {D.V.E.I, vi, 3), and, in the famous opening of Paradiso XXV, he clearly stated his desire to return to the city: Se mai continga che 'I poema sacro al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra, sí che m'ha fatto per molli anni macro, vinca la cnideltà che fuor mi serra del bello ovile ov'io dormi' agneilo, nimíco ai iupi che li danno guerra; con altra voce omai, con altro vello ritomerò poeta, e in sul fonte del mío battesmo prendero '1 capcllo; [If ever it happen that this sacred poem to which both Heaven and Earth have set their hand, and made me lean from laboring so long, wins over those cruel heans that exile me from my sweet fold where I grew up a lamb, foe to the wolves that war upon it now, with a changed voice and with another fleece, I shall return, a poet, and at my own baptismal font assume laurel wreath,] {Par.XXV, 1-9) Indeed, it is in the Commedia's repeated references to Dante's exile from Florence that the poet's conception of the fundamental conflict between 'inside' and 'outside' is most prominent.InParadiso XVII the meaning of the various -more or less veiled -prophecies that have been made concerning Dante's future during the course of his journey are finally explained in an unequivocal way by his ancestor, Cacciaguida, who tells him bluntly that 'di Fiorenza partir ti convene' ['you [...] shall have to leave your Florence'] {Par.XVII, 48).Here exile is presented as a traumatic leaving behind of all that is most dear to the poet: and the sense of the poet's isolation is intensified by the fact that Cacciaguida goes on to tell him that he will soon break away from the 'compagnia malvagia e scempia' ['despicable, s e n s e l e s s company'] {Par.XVII, 62) ofhis fellow-exiles, forming a 'parte per [se] stesso' -a party or a faction o f one.T h i s is obviously a commentary upon the factional conflicts which Dante saw as tearing Florence apart; 6 yet it also paints a picture of the poet's situation very much in keeping with the description of himself in exile given in the Convivio, where he claims that, 'per le parti quasi tutte a le quali questa lingua si stende, peregrino, quasi mendicando, sono andato [...]' ['I have wandered like a pilgrim, almost like a beggar, through virtually all the regions to which this tongue of o u r s extends'], and that 'Veramente io sono stato legno sanza vela e sanza governo, pórtalo a diversi porti e foci e liti dal vento secco che vapora la dolorosa povertade' ['Truly I have been a ship without sail or rudder, brought to different ports, inlets and shores by the dry wind that painful poverty blows'] (Conv.I, iii, 4-5).This portrait, exaggerated as it may be, nonetheless conveys the psychological anguish which Dante suffered as a result ofhis exclusion from his city.It also points to the opposing sets of values attached to the notions of 'inside' and 'outside' which -as will be seen -emerge from the Commedia as a whole.
The opposition portrayed, in Dante's discussions of his exile, between the city -seen as the ideal human environment -and that which is outside it -an inhospitable environment i n which the individual's fundamental human need for community is denied -holds true even in the context of those passages where Dante (either in his own voice or through one or other ofhis characters) berates Florence for its cormption and its citizens for their sinfulness, since the city always has potentially a positive value for Dante -as the exchange with Charles Martel bears witness -even when, in reality, this positive potential is not fulfilled.T h e comparison of the ideal Florence of Cacciaguida's time with the corrupt city known by Dante in Paradiso XV and XVI illustrates this point.C a c c i a g u i d a ' s Florence -the perfect earthly city, epitomising peace and virtue -was still contained, we are told, within its first c i r c l e of walls (traditionally supposed to have been constmcted at the time of Charlemagne), to which a second circle was added in 1173, and a third begun in 1284:

Inside and Outside
It is clear, therefore, that for Dante the notion of 'inside' (with its associations of belonging, of acceptance and of community) has fundamentally p o s i t i v e connotations, whilst t h a t of ' o u t s i d e ' (banishment, vulnerability, rejection) carries negative ones.Gaston Bachelard has commented that this opposition between inside and outside 'has the sharpness of the dialectics of y e s and no', or even of 'being and non-being', 7 and this may be seen to be the case not only for Dante, but also for the Middle Ages in general. 8I n addition to the extensive use of exile as a political weapon in factional disputes, 9 exclusion was also a 'punishment' imposed upon many other elements which medieval society felt existed 'outside' its accepted set of v a l u e s .Many different minority groups in medieval societies -heretics, Jews, lepers, homosexuals and prostitutes -habitually suffered exclusion from the community and the denial of civil rights, as well as the confiscation of property which this entailed.F o r such groups, excluded because of their beliefs, their race, their sexual orientation or even the disease from which they suffered, 'existence itself becomes a breaking of boundaries' and the status of 'outsider' becomes an inevitable one. 10Significantly, one of the most common features ascribed to these groups of outsiders was that they were 'wandering and rootless, confined by no boundaries, subject to no restraint of custom or kin, without a settled place in society'."Their natural environment is therefore identified with a space which Paul Zumthor has defined as the non-lieu -the ^non-place' or 'anti-place' -a place totally cut off from human society. 12E x c l u s i o n from the city implied that the individual had in some way -consciously or unconsciously -rejected that part of human nature which made him or her a political animal, it implied literally 'non-being', since in living outside the city this fundamental human attribute was being negated.T h i s notion is seen also in Aristotle, who considered barbarians as natural slaves precisely because they did not organise themselves into cities; and for whom only those who are 'political animals' can be said to be fully realised as human beings. 13T h e outsider, therefore, necessarily evokes negative sentiments since he or she is not fully human.
Linked with the use of exile or exclusion -the imposition o f the status of outsider -as a form of punishment in the Middle Ages, was the deep-seated fear of the city-dwellers themselves.B e y o n d the city itself and the relatively small cultivated area of the contado, the countryside and -worse still -the wilder areas of marsh and forest were conceived as a threat to the urban pockets of 'civilisation', since they were seen as representing 'the natural negation of social life'. 14hat is more, the contrast between city and countryside in this period was a very sharp one, since only a very small proportion of land had been cultivated, the rest being semi-wild and unsuitable for agricultural development. 15In Italy, during the course of t h e thirteenth century, attempts were made to 'sanitise' the inside of the cities and the area immediately outside the walls, as if t o enhance the distinction between civilisation and wildemess.Roads radiating out of the towns into the countryside were ordered to be gravelled and maintained, the agricultural land which in previous centuries had been located both inside and outside the city walls was now reduced to make way for buildings, streets and squares, and the keeping of animals within the walls was banned, whilst some statutes even ordered trees in the towns to be chopped down.Above all, there was a concern that the outward appearance of the city should reflect the ideal of 'civilisation' which it represented. 16I n keeping with this ideal, cemeteries were located outside the walls, the space also used for executions, and where prostitution -illegal within the city itself -was seen as acceptable.M o r e o v e r , with the growing self-consciousness of the town as a distinct entity markedly different from the country, wild areas -and particularly forests -came to be regarded as strange and frightening places, linked with the supernatural and the monstrous.The city, on the other hand, was seen as a 'protected' space; and civic patriotism was largely centred around those aspects of the city which defined it as such and which served to protect it -physically or psychologically -from that which lay outside.In this respect the city's walls were obviously emblematic, since they provided a solid and reassuring demarcation line between inside and outside. 17However, other features of medieval Italian city-states also served to underline this opposition.Churches dedicated to the city's patron saints were often situated close to the walls, whilst their relics were sometimes preserved within the walls themselves, creating a second, spiritual, line of defence; the carroccio, 'a focus of civic patriotism on all ceremonial occasions', 18 was used to carry the city's standard in battles against neighbouring cities; civic religious festivals frequently included 'profane' elements, 'used to denigrate and ridicule those outside the city or its social body, such as enemy factions or rival cities', 19 and these same festivals were also used to reassert the city's authority over its contado, through the participation of representatives of subject territories with offerings (usually of wax candles or cloth palii) for the cathedral. 20I n her discussion of the image of the city in medieval art.Chiara Fmgoni sums up this contrast between the civilisation within and the wilderness without: The interior of the city is also the place for the churches, and for humankind, which belongs to God, with the walls denoting the separation from the surrounding space -a space that is natural, unmarked by human action, hence inhabited by demons and evil. 21us in a depiction of the dance of Salome, 22 the beheading of John the Baptist and the handing over of the head to Herodias, John is the only figure t o be portrayed within the city.In contrast, two trees are situated next to Salome and Herodias to show that the 'guilty' figures are situated within a natural, rather than an urban, space.Similarly, in a Trecento polyptych portraying Christ at prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, a portion of walls and a gate mark off the space inhabited by Christ and his sleeping disciples. 23

Eternal Exile
The fear and suspicion of the city-dweller when faced with a hostile natural environment is evoked nowhere more clearly than i n the opening canto of the Commedia, where Dante's pilgrim finds himself alone and lost in a dark and pathless forest, threatened by wild beasts, and with no idea how to return to the civilisation which he has lost.It is well-known that this forest is a symbolic and literary construct which represents sin and the pilgrim's realisation of the danger of sin, and from which escape is possible only through the intervention of the 'tre donne benedette' {Inf.II, 124) -the Virgin Mary, St Lucy and Beatrice -and via the journey through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven.Y e t the situation described in the poem's opening lines is one which, on the literal level, evokes fundamental human fears. 24

Bachelard d e s c r i b e s very clearly t h e danger i m p l i c i t i n the 'immensity' of the forest:
Wc do not have to be long in the woods to experience the always rather anxious impression of 'going deeper and deeper' into a limitless world.Soon, if we do not know where we are going, we no longer know where we are. 25e presence of wild animals -traditionally seen, in the Middle Ages, as symbolic of evil forces -in Dante's 'selva oscura' merely serves to confirm this negative impression.
The dark wood ¿s, however, significant to my theme in another, more symbolic, way.T h e 'selva oscura', interpreted as a place of sin, is also a place of exile; and the pilgrim who comes to his senses in this wood is an outsider in the sense that he is in a place which cuts him off here from the possibility of salvation. 26The 'exile' of the pilgrim in the dark wood is the exile of all those who sin, an exile which has its root in the banishment of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.Adam himself, in his encounter with the pilgrim in Paradiso XXVI, describes his punishment in these terms: Or, figliuol mio, non il gustar del legno fu per sé la cagion tí tanto essilio, ma solamente il irapassar del segno.
[Know now, my son, the tasting of the tree was not itself the cause of such long exile, but only the transgression of God's bounds.](Par.XXVI, 115-117) and in the biblical account of the Fall, God's words to Adam reveal that banishment from the idyllic Garden implies also a new life within an inhospitable and harsh environment: 27 [...] maledicta terra in opere tuo: in laboribus comedes ex ea cunctis diebus vitae tuae.Spinas el tríbulos germínabit tibí, et comedes herbam terrae.I n sudore vultus lui vesceris pane, donee revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.

[Accursed be the soil because of you. W i t h suffering shall you get your food from it every day of your life. It shall yield you brambles and thistles, and you shall eat wild plants. W i t h sweat on your brow shall you eat your bread, until you return to the soil as you were taken from it. F o r dust you are and to dust you shall return.] (Genesis III, 17-18)
That Dante conceives of his journey to God as a symbolic retum from exile is clear in many passages of the Commedia.I n the encounter with Brunetto Latini -significantly an episode in which the theme of exile, both political and spiritual, is to the fore -the pilgrim describes Virgil as leading him 'home' -'a ca' {Inf.XV, 54) -through Hell.The 'home' referred to here is obviously the pilgrim's spiritual home, the home which he had lost on wandering into the dark wood and to which, in that same opening canto, Virgil had promised to restore him.B r u n e t t o , who here prophesies Dante's exile from Florence, is himself an exile from this heavenly home, and the pilgrim's description ofhim as 'de l'umana natura posto in bando' ['banished from our life on earth' -literally, 'from human nature'], although it ostensibly refers merely to death as a banishment from life on earth, may also be applied both to Brunetto's particular sin -a sin, precisely, against Nature -and to the sinner's spiritual exile in Hell from the eternal life of Heaven.M o r e o v e r , for those souls destined ultimately to be saved, life on earth too comes to be seen as a painful exile from the 'City of God' in Heaven.This view is first expressed in the Commedia by the character of Sapia in Purgatorio XIII, who takes up the terminology of St Augustine's De civitatis Dei, according to which human beings' true home is in Heaven, in the civitas Dei -symbolised by Jerusalem.F r o m this point of view, earthly life, life in the civitas terrena -symbolised by Babylon or Egypt -implies, at best, a temporary pilgrimage at the end of which the soul may be admitted to God's city, and, at worst, a permanent exile from God first on earth and then in Hell. 28In answer to the pilgrim's question as to whether any of the souls being punished in the girone of envy are Italians, Sapia answers: O frate m i o , ciascuna è cittadina d'una vera città; ma tu vuo' dire che vivesse in Italia peregrina.
[My brother, all of us are citizens of one true city.You mean is there a soul who was a pilgrim once in Italy?] {Purg.XIII, 94-96)   Similarly in Paradiso XXV, as if in response t o the canto's opening lines expressing Dante's desire to return to Florence, Beatrice describes the pilgrim's joumey through Hell and Purgatory to Heaven in Augustinian terms as a parallel of the Exodus story, when she explains that it is because of Dante's virtue of hope that: Here, as in the encounter with Brunetto Latini, an ironic contrast is drawn between two different types of exile.On the one hand, Dante expresses the desire that, through the mediation ofhis 'poema sacro', he may be able to retum to his native city.On the other, however, it is clear that the j o u m e y which the poem describes represents a return from exile in a more significant, universal sense, and that the function of Dante's poem -as Cacciaguida has made clear in Paradiso XVII ('vital nodrimento / lascerà poi, quando sara digesta' ['once welldigested / they will become a vital nutriment'] -Par.XVII, 131-132) -relates to this latter theme, in the sense that it offers to its readers an example of how to avoid the etemal exile of Hell and, instead, be accepted into the city of God in Heaven. 29InParadiso XXIII, Heaven is presented once again as the civitas Dei from which earthly life, where sin is a constant presence, is a 'Babylonian exile': As Mazzotta comments, 'the thmst of the passage is the typological opposition, made familiar by St Augustine's City of God, between the idolatry of gold at Babylon and the spiritual treasure of the heavenly Jerusalem'.H o w e v e r , 'the opposition between Babylon and the heavenly Jerusalem cannot be taken as absolute, for as the joy of paradise comes forth as a recompense for the anguish suffered at Babylon, Dante casts exile as an ascetic and r e d e m p t i v e experience'. 30D a n t e ' s experience of exile in the Dark Wood is an essential precondition for his experience of Heaven, just as proper participation in life on earth, inevitably seen in negative terms for pilgrims aiming towards the CIVIîûS Dei, is a necessary condition for entry into that heavenly city. 3' F i n a l l y , in the Empyrean, Florence itself comes to be seen as a kind of 'Babylon', acivilas terrena which stands in opposition to the divine, eternal city of Heaven.D a n t e refers to himself.and here the pilgrim's own sense ofbeing an outsider -a living man allowed to witness the glories of heaven -is illustrated by the poet in an image which compares him to another of the traditional medieval figures of the outsider -the barbarian:

The Citv of Dis
The opposition evoked here between Rome, the supreme city for Dante -the only city worthy of standing as an image of Heaven -and the barbarian -the archetypal outsider -retums us neatly to the notion of uncivilised space.S u c h space is epitomised in Dante's 'selva oscura' but also traditionally in the wilderness and the desert -the dwelling-place of the barbarian, the wild man or woman and the monster, and the place which symbolically represents the state of being cut off from the possibility of salvation.Given the associations which I have enumerated so far of inside with c i v i l i s e d space, happiness in this life and salvation in the next; and of outside with uncivilised space, suffering, sin and damnation, it might seem surprising that no sooner does Dante's pilgrim agree to undertake the journey which, as Virgil explains, offers the only possibility of escape from the dark wood, than he should be presented as being taken into a city.'  It is clear that, on one level at least, Dante intends his Hell to be understood as a civic entity.I n d e e d , the poet seems concerned to make the urban aspects of his Hell as realistic as possible.Thus, the gate of Hell, with its chilling words, is modelled on the gates of many medieval cities, which also often bore inscriptions, although these normally praised the city to which they offered a c c e s s , in contrast to Dante's gate with its dire warning ('LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA VOI CH'INTRATE' ['ABANDON EVERY HOPE, ALL YOU WHO ENTER'] -Inf.Ill, 9). 32Moreover, the approach to the city of Dis in cantos VIII and IX of Inferno is also presented in realistic terms.T h i s is evident from the first mention of the approaching city, when the pilgrim catches sight of a high tower -an 'alta torre' {Inf.VIII, 2).That a tower should be the first feature of the city to catch the eye of the pilgrim is wholly naturalistic.The cities of Dante's day abounded in such buildings, designed to provide both a safe haven and a military vantage point for noble families in times of civic discord.T h u s it is appropriate that the tower, first mentioned at the end of canto Vil ('venimmo al pié d'una torre al da sezzo' ['We came, in time, to the foot of a high tower'] -Inf.VII, 130), should point from afar to the city, which itself is first explicitly introduced in canto VIII, when Virgil warns that 'Omai [...] / s'appressa la città c'ha nome Dite' [And now [...] / coming closer is the city we call Dis'] {Inf.VIII, 67-68).M o r e o v e r , we learn that, like any city, the city of Dis is inhabited by 'gravi cittadini' ['fierce citizens'] {Inf.VIII, 69), and has an army, a'grande stuolo' {Inf.
VIII, 69).The travellers soon encounter members of this, forming the guard over the gate of the city.Indeed the whole defensive exterior of the city of Dis, with its moat -'1'alte fosse/che vallan quella terra sconsolata' ['those deep moats / that circled all of this unhappy city'] {Inf.VIII, 76-77), its walls, which 'parean che ferro fosse' ['it seemed to me, were made of iron'] {Inf.VIII, 78), and its well-protected gates, mirrors almost exactly the defences of the cities which Dante would have known.Furthermore, the incident which follows, where Virgil and the pilgrim are refused access to the city has something of the atmosphere of a siege -another relatively common occurrence in the warring cities of medieval Italy.
In addition to these two explicit references to Hell as a city, Dante frequently d e s c r i b e s the infernal landscape as mimicking civic structures, or draws upon urban imagery in order to describe this part of the afterlife.Probably the most notable instance of this occurs when the pilgrim and Virgil are about to pass into the ninth circle of Hell.Here, as when the city of Dis is first s i g h t e d , the pilgrim is led to believe that they are approaching a city by the sight of what he takes to be towers in the distance: 'me parve veder molte alte torri; / ond'io «Maestro di', che terra è questa?»' ['I soon / made out what seemed to be high, clustered towers./ "Master", I said, "what city lies ahead?"'] {Inf.XXXI, 20-21).I n this case, however, Virgil explains to the Pilgrim that what he can see are not towers but giants; and yet the city image is not lost, but rather is taken up almost immediately by the poet, who compares the bodies of the giants protruding from the ice to the Tuscan town of Montereggioni -'come su la cerchia tonda / Montereggion di torri si corona' ['just as Montereggion is crowned with towers / soaring high above its curving ramparts'] {Inf.XXXI, 40-41).Similarly, the stone 'margin' or path which leads through the buming desert of the Sodomites is compared to the dykes built by the Flemings of the cities of Wissant and Bruges, and by the citizens of Padua in order to protect their cities from flooding, 33 and in the various punishments of the malebolge the poet also finds reminiscences of city life.T h e Pimps and Seducers are compared to pilgrims crossing the Ponte Sant'Angelo in Rome in the year of the Jubilee, 34 whilst in the bolgia of the Simoniacs the holes from which the legs of the sinners protrude remind the Pilgrim of those in which the priest would stand in the font of the Baptistery in Florence. 35Likewise the bolgia of barratry is likened to Tarzanà de' Viniziani' ['the vast and busy shipyard of the Venetians'] {Inf.XXI, 7) where pitch is kept boiling all winter in order to mend unsound boats, just as in this part of Hell the pitch is constantly boiling, but here for the purposes of punishment.The reference t o the Venetian arsenal here evokes the working life of a real city, and a similar image drawn from a typically urban occupation is also used to describe the bolgia of the Schismatics, where Mohammed is described in the language of the barrel-maker's trade: 'Già veggia, per mezzul perderé o lulla / com'io vidi un, cosí non si pertugia' ['No wine cask with its stave or cant-bar sprung / was ever split the way I saw someone'] {Inf.XXVIII, 22-23).
However, despite these repeated civic allusions, it is obvious that the landscape of Dante's Hell is anything but civic.Within the Gate of Hell the pilgrim finds, not a 'città dolente' at all, but the river Acheron and the storms, mud and marshes of the circles of the incontinent, and this contrast is even more striking in the case of the city of Dis.After the long episode describing the difficulty of entering this city, Virgil and the pilgrim are confronted, within Dis's walls, by a scene which is very different f r o m that which might have been expected.Initially they find themselves not in apolis but a necropolis where the souls of the heretics are punished in burning tombs.Immediately, Dis breaks the normal mies of inside and outside, since, as has been seen, the statutes of medieval Italian cities dictated that cemeteries should be situated outside the walls.M o r e o v e r , this paradox becomes even more marked as the tombs of the heretics are left behind and the travellers come instead to a landslide: and in canto XII this landscape is described once again as a wild and natural one -'Era lo loco [...] / [...] alpestre' ['Not only was that place, where we had come / to descend, craggy'] {Inf.XII, 1-2).From this point on Hell is presented as a natural environment with rivers, woods, cliffs, a desert and a frozen lake.Moreover, the way in which this environment is presented emphasises that it is the very antithesis of a civic environment; inhospitable, harsh and uncivilised.This is seen particularly clearly in the circles of violence, where the Pilgrim and Virgil cross first the Phlegethon, a river of boiling blood, then the wood of the suicides, which emblematically, is described totally in negative terms as: and finally a desert, onto which flames rain continually and through which runs a stream of boiling blood.Similarly the descent into the eighth circle on the back of Geryon, with its roaring waterfall and jagged cliff -'la stagliata rocca' {Inf.XVII, 134) -continues the stress on the violence of nature, as do the descriptions, in Malebolge, of the bridge between bolge as a cliff or a crag, 'uno scoglio' {Inf.XVIII, 69), of climbing 'su per la scheggia' ['along the jagged ridge'] {Inf.XVIII, 71), or -again -of the 'scoglio sconcio ed erto / che sarebbe a le capre duro vareo' ['the ridge, so steep and mgged, / would have been hard even for goats to cross'] {Inf.XIX, 131-132).
Hell, therefore, both is and is not a city, and its citizens -whilst being 'insiders' in the sense that they are citizens, punished within the gates and walls which mark Hell's boundaries -are also, as has been seen, exiles from the civitas Dei, etemal outsiders, with all the negative connotations which such a status implies.T h e souls punished within the city of Dis -Hell's insiders -are more often violently individualistic; intent on attacking their fellow citizens rather than co-existing with them in peace and harmony.As an illustration of this point, it is enough to think of Farinata's unconcern for his fellow Florentine and fellow heretic, Cavalcante, and his desire to perpetuate in Hell, in his discussion with the pilgrim, Florence's Guelph-Ghibelline conflict; or of Ugolino and Ruggieri -two Pisans, frozen together in the same hole in the ice of Cocytus, where the former gnaws relentlessly on the brains of the latter.H e l l is a city which resembles a wildemess, and its citizens resemble the archetypal wilderness-dweller, the monster -seen as being more animal than human, and innately evil.Everything which, for Dante, goes to make up the ideal city -both in its physical structure (walls, gates, churches, centres of govemment and so on) and in the civilised conduct which it implies -are here inverted to make up his infernal city, and the monstrous citizens of Hell are punished i n a typically s a v a g e environment in order to show how they rejected the civilised values of city life.

Citizens and Outsiders
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Dante's city of Dis contains within its walls representatives of many of the groups traditionally excluded from medieval urban societies.A s has been seen, the first group of souls punished inside Dis are the hereticsone of the groups most commonly excluded from medieval cities.Their position directly inside the city-walls seems to define Dis straight away as a city of outsiders -a definition which is confirmed by the souls encountered on the remainder of the joumey.F u r t h e r heretical figures appear amongst the schismatics in Inferno XXVIII; and Dis also contains homosexuals, 36 prostitutes and their pimps, 37 as well as common criminals.I n this last group the two highwayrobbers -Rinier da Corneto and Rinier Pazzi -'che fecero a le strade tanta guerra' ['whose battlefields were highways where they robbed'] {Inf.XII, 138) -are particularly significant, pointing to the dangers lurking outside the safe havens of the cities. 38 I n addition, leprosy and insanity -two of the diseases with which the falsifiers are afflicted (in cantos XXIX and XXX) -were diseases which inspired particular fear i n the Middle Ages and often l e d to expulsion f r o m t h e community. 39F i n a l l y , even the apparently civilised Ulysses can be seen as a wanderer, one who consciously rejects his community in order to go in search of a 'mondo sanza gente' ['world they call unpeopled'] {Inf.XXVI, 117).
Given the savagery of the setting in which the community of outsiders exists, it is no coincidence that Ugolino is described in Inferno XXXIII in bestial terms -'riprese M teschio misero co' denti, / che furo a l'osso, come d'un can, forti' [attacked again the live skull with his teeth / sharp as a dog's, and as fit for grinding bones'] {Inf.XXXIII, 77-78).B o t h on earth -since the sin for which he is punished in Hell is precisely that of treachery against his city -and in Hell in his violent reaction to Ruggieri, Ugolino denies that part of himself which is most uniquely human -his civic, communal instinct.Bestial imagery is, as is well known, very common in Hell.The gluttonous are also compared to dogs -'Urlar li fa la pioggia come cani' ['Under the rain they howl like dogs'] {Inf.VI, 19)whilst the wrathful in the Marsh of Styx arc described as being like 'porci in brago' ['pigs in mud'] {Inf.VIII, 50), and the barrators are compared to frogs, {Inf.XXII, 25-33), dolphins {Inf.XXII, 19-21), otters {Inf.XXII, 36) and ducks (7w/XXlI, 130).I n fact, the bolgia of barratry is particularly characterised by animal imagery, with the devils -whose names also carry bestial overtones -being compared three times to dogs {Inf.XXI, 44-45; Inf.XXI, 67-69;Inf.XXIII, 17-18), twice to birds of prey {Inf.XXII, 131; Inf.XXII, 139), and once to cats playing with a mouse {Inf.XXII, 58).This sin -involving the misuse of civic institutions -is presented as being particularly bestial in its implications.L i k e Ugolino, Dante implies, the souls in this bolgia are no longer political animals, but animals pure and simple.This bringing together of the bestial and the civic also emerges in the case of Vanni Fucci, who actually describes himself as a beast and Pistola as his lair -'son Vanni Fucci / bestia, e Pistola mi fu degna tana' {Inf.XXIV, 125-126).
In addition to this animal imagery, however, it is perhaps even more significant that the souls in Hell are also seen as sharing the characteristics of the various monstrous races whose descriptions the Middle Ages had inherited from the classical tradition -races with only one huge foot on which they ran at superhuman speed, others with their heads sunken into their chests or with huge ears, races with the heads of dogs and other human-animal hybrids. 40Like the citizens of Dis, such races are fundamentally l i n k e d with the uncivilised space where they were believed to exist, a space outside or beyond the known and the comprehensible. 41L u c i f e r , with his shaggy body, inhuman size and three faces, is very clearly a monstrous figure and a fitting ruler ('Lo 'mperador del doloroso regno' [The king of the vast kingdom of all grief] -Inf.XXXIV, 28) of the 'savage' city of Hell.H i s position at the centre of the earth -the lowest point of Dante's Hell -recalls the fact that, on medieval maps, monstrous figures were frequently portrayed in positions which highlight their marginality with regard to 'human' and specifically Christian civilisation. 42But it is not only the obviously 'monstrous' characters of Dante's Hell who are to be seen in this way.Dante's sodomites provide one of the most striking examples of the way in which Hell's citizens are presented as monstrous outsiders.T h e sodomites, who are naked {Inf.XIV, 19; Inf.XVI, 35) and whose skin is burnt and charred by the flames which continually rain down on them {Inf.XV, 26-27; Inf.XVI, 30), recall the Ethiopian -one of the most famous of the monstrous races. 43T h e swiftness of the sodomites is also emphasised.B r u n e t t o Latini in Inferno XV and the three Florentines in the following canto also move at great speed -'a fuggirsi / ali semblar le gambe loro isnelle' ['their nimble legs were more like wings in flight'] {Inf.XVI, 86-87).B o t h this and the way in which the heads and feet of this last group point in opposite directions ("n contraro il eolio / faceva ai pié continuo viaggio' ['their necks and feet / moved constantly i n opposite directions'] -Inf.XVI, 26-27) are characteristics of monstrous races.Perhaps even more significantly, d e v i a n t sexual p r a c t i c e s are frequently attributed to monstrous peoples.According to White, they are 'incapable of assuming the responsibilities of a father' (p.20) -a fact which obviously links them with the sodomites.On the political level too, their homosexuality equates the sodomites with monsters and outsiders.Dante's sodomites, like these groups, are guilty of a rejection of the fundamental tmth that human beings are political animals, since their sin implies a rejection of the family, which -as is clear from Convivio IV, iv -is, for the poet, at the basis of political life, being the first and most basic form of human community.O n one level this parallel between the sodomites and the monstrous races may seem surprising, since the pilgrim's sense of admiration for the Florentines of the previous generation whom he meets here emerges very clearly from these cantos. 44H o w e v e r , these souls are citizens of Hell and thus by definition b a d citizens.I n fact D a n t e ' s presentation of them in monstrous terms only serves to emphasise the ironic contrast between their infernal condition and what they had once been.' I n life, Dante's homosexuals had been white sophisticated city-dwellers; in death, however, they have been transformed into black naked savages inhabiting a harsh primitive environment'. 45e Garden There is, however, one area of Hell which does not appear to fit into the pattern of opposition between city and wilderness, inside and outside which 1 have outlined.L i m b o is neither a civic space nor a savage natural one, 46 but rather contains a 'nobile castello' ['splendid castle'] {Inf.IV, 106) surrounded by seven circles of walls and 'difeso intorno d'un bel fiumicello' [ ' d e f e n d e d b y a sweetly flowing stream'] {Inf.IV, 108).W i t h i n these walls is a beautiful meadow -a 'prato di fresca verdura' {Inf.IV, 111) -where the 'spiriti magni' of the virtuous Pagans are grouped 'sopra '1 verde smalto' '[on the lustrous green'] {Inf.IV, 118-119). W  i l s t not a locus amoenus in any traditional sense of the word, since Limbo is -as the attitude of Virgil towards this place never allows the reader to forget -a place of punishment, the contrast between this circle, where light has still not been overcome by darkness and where no physical suffering occurs, and the rest of Hell is striking.T h i s castle i s obviously an 'inside' space in a positive sense; the seven walls which enclose it have been seen as representing the seven moral and intellectual virtues, the virtues of a pre-Christian age -prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, intellect, science and knowledge -or the seven liberal arts -music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, grammar, logic and rhetoric; and yet the area enclosed within these walls is clearly not a civic space.R a t h e r , the castle of Limbo resembles a garden -a place of nature and yet not a totally natural place, precisely because it ¿s enclosed, controlled and in some way civilised.I t recalls the true locus amoenus of the Garden of Eden; and, indeed, it may be seen as an example of what W.A.McClung describes as a 'compromised Eden'.47 M c C l u n g points to two opposing views of Paradise, one -which predates sin -is a garden without a building, the idyllic situation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the other -which acknowledges the existence of sin -is a building enclosing a garden, and in this case the building is necessary as a fortification against the menace of sin which, in keeping with what we have already seen -exists outside.The fortifications of the castle of Limbo set it apart from the rest of Hell, but they also constitute an admission of its limitations.The castle marks out the virtuous Pagans as 'insiders' and yet it also imprisons them in a permanent exile from God, in the same way that the 'città dolente' of Hell as a whole constitutes a prison for those within it -an exile which is summed up in Virgil's statement that 'sanza speme vivemo in disio' ['cut off from hope, we live on in desire'] {Inf.IV, 42).
The garden would thus seem to constitute a mediatory space between the city and the wilderness, a space which may be both inside and outside simultaneously.I n a similar way to Limbo, the Valley of the Princes described in Purgatorio VII and VIII, also represents a 'compromised Eden'.E v e n more than Limbo -whose positive image largely derives from a contrast with the rest of Hellthe Valley of the Princes is depicted as an idyllic space: [Think of fine silver, gold, cochineal, white lead, Indian wood, glowing and deeply clear, fresh emerald the instant it is splitthe brilliant colors of the grass and flowers within that dale would outshine all of these, as nature naturally surpasses an.But nature had not only painted there: the sweetness of a thousand odors fused in one unknown, unrecognizable.){Purg.VII, 73-81) Moreover, the souls within the Valley are presented clearly as constituting a 'community' -i n contrast to the way in which they had lived on earth, when they had been more interested in increasing their own power, often t h r o u g h violent means.T h e sense of community which prevails here emerges not only from the feeling of peace which reigns within the Valley, but also from the fact that twice in these two cantos the negligent rulers pray together -in canto VII singing the hymn Salve Regina and in canto VII the Te lucis ante -in a very significant fuming of the whole community to God.However, the Valley of the Princes -like Limbo -is a compromised or imperfect locus amoenus.The negligent rulers within the Valley, although they are ultimately destined for salvation, are outsiders in a very obvious sense.Their idyllic valley is situated in Ante-Purgatory -that is, outside the gate of Purgatory proper, to which, indeed, the pilgrim will be carried up directly from the valley.These souls have not yet begun to be cleansed of their sins by the sufferings o f Purgatory, and for them the Valley is a place of punishment in the same way that the castle of Limbo is for the virtuous Pagans.The fact that these souls are prevented in Ante-Purgatory from beginning the process of purgation because of their late-repentance constitutes a form of retribution rather than a form of cleansing (in the same way that the punishments in Hell are purely retributive) -it does not serve the purpose of removing the stain of sin from the soul but merely punishes, and as such -in terms of its eternal function -is as close to Hell as it is to Purgatory.I n addition, in the same way that Limbo's fortifications s e r v e d both as a protection against sin and as an acknowledgement of the threat of sin, the Valley of the Princes is also a 'fortified' space -protected not by walls, but by the presence of two angels with flaming swords who stand guard on either side of the valley, 'sí che la gente in mezzo si contenue' ['thus, all the souls were held between the two'] {Purg.VIII, 33), from the nightly threat of evil in the form of a serpent, described by Sordello as "I nostro avversaro' ['our adversary'] {Purg.Will, 95).T h e s e angels recall those placed at the entrance to Eden after the Fall to prevent the retum of sinful humanity to the place of innocence, and, indeed, the serpent which appears in the Valley is described as 'forse qual diede ad Eva il cibo amaro' ['the very one, perhaps, / that offered Eve the bitter fmit to eat'] {Purg.VIII, 99).L i k e Limbo, the Valley of the Princes recalls Eden; but the Eden recalled by the Valley is explicitly the Eden in which sin is already present -a lost garden or one from which exile is already inevitable.
It is only at the end of his journey through Purgatory, the seven P's having been removed from his forehead, that Dante's pilgrim is allowed to enter the true Christian locus amoenus, the perfect garden, an Eden without the taint of sin: This garden looks back not only to Limbo and the Valley of the Princes, gardens whose imperfections are now clearly shown up, but also to the Dark Wood of Inferno I, which is explicitly recalled when the poet states that he had soon wandered, 'dentro a la selva antica tanto, ch'io / non potea rivedere ond'io mi 'ntrassi' ['so deep within the ancient wood / 1 could not see the place where I came in'] {Purg.XXVIII, 23-24).4S This garden is the complete antithesis of the Dark Wood -the place of salvation which opposes the place of sin -and yet it is, I feel, significant that the Earthly Paradise is not -or not in itself -the 'inside' space from which the Dark Wood represents an exile.This is made clear by Beatrice in canto XXXII, when she tells the pilgrim that: citizen of that Rome where Christ is a Roman.){Purg.XXXII, 100-102) The Earthly Paradise, like the Valley of the Princes, is a transitional place, a place which leads to Heaven (just as the Dark Wood leads to Hell), but not Heaven itself.In contrast to the intermediary space of the garden, Beatrice refers to the tme Heaven as a city -'quella Roma onde Cristo è romano' -the city where perfect civilisation is attained and the good of the individual wholly identified with the good of the community, the city which therefore diametrically opposes the savage, wilderness-city of Hell.I t is no coincidence that, when Beatrice finally reveals the Rose of the Blessed in the Empyrean to the pilgrim, she does so once again in civic terms: 'Vedi nostra città quant'ella gira' ['Look at our city, see its vast expanse'] {Par.XXX, 130).Only in Paradise, as has been seen, is the condition of exile negated and only in Paradise is the soul truly an 'insider'.   'The city sought to civilize the way of life of its citizens and to moderate the coarser aspects, seeking to end the conspicuous public displays of emotion which were normal.[ . . .] T h e city was to be seemly: laws decreed that derelict buildings were not to mar its appearance and that houses and other buildings inside and outside the walls might not be demolished in order to sell the wood and stone for building material (a contrast with earlier centuries when much of the area inside town walls had been occupied by the ruins of Roman and later buildings)' (Fumagalli, p.92).

NOTES
described in minute detail, with their gates and other associated features, a technique which 'gives an impression of the world as it must have appeared to many of the citizens of the communes, with their own city in the centre and the outside world viewed as it were through the appropriate gate of the city'.( J .K .H y d e , 'Medieval Descriptions of Cities', in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 48 (1966), 308-341,(^331)). 18  2 Chittolini highlights the elements of such rituals which stress the city's authority over itscontado, such as 'a concern that peasants take part; the coercive nature that this participation eventually took; the coercive nature too of the offerings ( w h i c h made them more like homage); the reassertion of the city's sovereignty over the contado and, consequently, of the subjection of rural communities to the city' (p.74).See also Waley, p.102. 23Giovanni da Milano, Prayer in the Garden (Prato, Pinacoteca comunale).'This place, linked to one of t h e principle events in mankind's history, cannotbe the open countryside, which is exorcized by that architectonic insert, the sign of the work of man' (Fmgoni, p.ll).

24
-Despite the conventional nature of much of the allegory in this first canto, the stress on historical reality w h i c h enters the poem with Virgil's appearance in the wood, and which reveals that not only Virgil but also the lost pilgrim have an independent existence within this 'real world', points out to the reader that the wood, the beasts and the hill bathed in sunlight are, themselves, 'real' -that is, they are not merely poetic and allegorical inventions.The emotions which the wood evokes as a literal physical space are thus as significant as those aroused by its allegorical meaning as a place of sin.See Z.G.Bara ski, 'La lezione esegetica di Inferno I: allegoria, storia e letteratura nella Commedia', in Dante e le forme dell'allegoresi, edited by M.Picone, (Ravenna: Longo, 1987), pp.79-97. 25Bachelard, p.185. 26 This exile, or realisation of being an outsider is defined by John Took as a state of 'self-loss'.'Straight away, and in lines often regarded as belonging to a preliminary and crude stage of Dantean allegorism in the poem, we are confronted by the prospect of loss, by the symptoms of man in his estrangement'.The movement of the poem is therefore seen as a movement towards the recovery of that which is lost, or the rectifying of this estrangement (J.Took, 'Dante, Augustine and the Drama of Salvation', in Word and Drama in Dante, edited by J.C.Barnes and J.Petrie, (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993), pp.73-92,(p.81)).^ I n the Bible too, therefore, an uncivilised place is linked with uncivilised, or immoral, behaviour.F o r example, the Hebrew word for 'wildemess' {sh'mâmâh) is used to refer both to a moral condition of desolation and to a desolate, barren place, so that 'it appears quite difficult to distinguish between a mord condition [...], a place and a thing in all those instances in the Bible where words that might be translated as wild or wilderness appear' (H.White, 'The Forms of Wildness: Archaeology of an Idea', inThe WildMan Within: An Image in Western Thought from Renaissance to Romanticism, edited by E.Dudley and M.Novak, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972), pp.3-38, (p.13)).
^ '[...] generis humani [...] in duo genera distribuimus, unum eorum, qui secundum hominem, alterum eorum, qui secundum Deum uiuunt; quas etiam systice appelamus ciuitates duas, hoc est duas societates hominum, quaram est una quae praedestinata est in aetemum regnare cum Deo, altera aetemum supplicium subiré cum diabolo.' ['I classify the human race into two branches: the one consists of those who live by human standards, the other of those who live according to God's will.I also call these two classes the two cities speaking allegorically.By two cities I mean two societies of human beings, one of which is predestined to reign with God for all eternity, the other doomed to undergo etemal punishment with the Devil'] {De civitateDei, XV, 1).(S.Aurelii Augustini Episcopi Hipponensis, De civitate Dei contra paganos, edited with an introduction and appendices by J.E.CWelldon, 37 -The first two bolge of the eighth circle of Hell, both described in canto XVIII, seem to go together in this respect -the first containing the pimps and seducers, and the second the flatterers, amongst them the prostitute Thaïs ('Taide [...] la puttana' -¡nf.XVIII, 133).Prostitutes constitute one of the most common groups which the medieval city attempted to distance from itself, although -unlike many other groups -their relationship to the city was an equivocal one, since they were often seen as a necessary -if undesirable -presence, and tolerated although not condoned.This means that sometimes, rather than be completely excluded from the city, they might instead be confined to a particular street or quarter.(See B.Anderson & J.P.Zinsser, A History of Their Own: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present, 2 vols, (London: Penguin, 1988), I, pp.362-366.) 38Fumagalli comments that forests and wildernesses were 'lonely places entered only by the occasional undaunted hermit, brigand or bandit, or intrepid hunter.M o s t people kept well away, partly from the fear of falling victim to these outlaws' (p.15). 39'In a world where sickness and infirmity were considered to be exterior signs of sin, those who were afflicted with them were cursed by God and thus by man too' (J.Le Goñ, Medieval Civilisation, 400-1500, translated by J.Barrow, (Oxford & New York: Blackwell, 1989), p.321).The leper, however, is a special case.Lepers were assimilated in the medieval imagination with the other minority groups and largely seen as sharing their characteristics.'The church and public instutions acted together to effect a total separation of lepers from the rest of society.[ . . .] .T h e y had to remain o u t s i d e inhabited areas [...] they could not touch anything touched by healthy people, and they had to announce their presence by sounding a rattle [...].P u b l i c opinion observed them fearfully, perhaps also with hatred.They were thought to practice unrestrained sexuality [...], and were suspected of hatching villainous schemes against the society of t h e healthy (Geremek, p.367).Above all, like his or her fellow outsiders, the leper constitutes a threat to society and, as such, the presence of the disease in the city of Dis is comprehensible.
poseía conchiuse: «Dunque esser diverse convien di vostri effetti le radiei: [...]» ["And can this be, unless men had on earth different natures, serving different ends?Not so, if what your master writes is true."By reasoning step by step he reached this point and then concluded: "So, the very roots of man's activities must be diverse: [...]"] {Par.VIII, 118-123) [...] ii è concedulo che d'Egiltovegna in lerusalemme per vedere, anzi che '1 militar li sia prescritto.[[...) he is allowed to come from Egypt to behold Jerusalem before his fighting days on earth are done.){Par.XXV, 55-57) Quivi si vive e gode del tesoro che s'acquisto piangendo ne lo essilio di Babilon [...] [Here they truly live and they enjoy the wealth their tears had won for them while they in Babylonian exile scorned all gold.){Par.XXIII, 133-135) [...) c h e al divino da l'umano, a l'ettemo dal tempo era venuto, c di Fiorenza in popol giusto e sano [[...) coming to Heaven from mortal earth, from man's time to Divine eternity, from Florence to a people just and sane] {Par.XXXI, 37-39) In su l'cstremità d'un alta ripa che facevan gran piètre rotte in cerchia venimmo sopra piú crudele stipa; [We reached the curving brink of a steep bank constructed of enormous broken rocks; below us was a cruder den of pain.){Inf.XI, 1-3) like one of those who run Verona's race across its fields to win the green cloth prize, and he was like the winner of the group, not the last one in.){Inf.XV, 121-124) Oro e argento fine, coceo e biacca, indico legno, lucido sereno, fresco smeraldo in Tora che si fiacca; da l'erba e da li fior dentr'a quel seno posti, ciascun sana di color vinto, come dal suo maggiore è vinto il meno.Non avea pur natura ivi dipinto, ma di soavità di mille odori vi facea uno incognito e indistinto.
Un'aura dolce, sanza mutamento avere in sé, mi feria per la fronte non di piú colpo che soave vento; per cui le fronde, t r e m o l a n d o , pronte tune quantc píegavano a la parte u' I prim'ombra gitta il santo monte; non però dal loro esser dritto sparte tanto, che I i augelletti per le cime lasciasser d'operare ogne lor arte; ma con piena letizía l'ore prime, cantando, ricevíeno intra le foglie, che tencvan bordone a le sue rime, [My forehead felt the stirring of sweet air, whose flowing rhythm always stayed the same, and struck no harder than the gentlest breeze; and, in the constant, moving air, each branchwith trembling leaves was bending to one side toward where the holy mount first casts its shade; they did not curve so sharply toward the ground that little birds among the topmost leaves could not continue practising their art: they welcomed in full-throated joyful sound the day's beginning to their leafy boughs whose sighing sound accompanied their song) {Purg.XXVIII, 7-18)
1 A.P.d'Entrèves, Dante as a Political Thinker, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), p.ll. i The following works provide a general introduction in English to the position of the city within Dante's political thought: -A.P.d'Entrèves,Donie as a Political Thmker, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952).-S.Famell, The Political Ideas of the Divine Comedv: an

15-
The Italian countryside of the Middle Ages is described by Vito Fumagalli as follows: 'Northern Italy was covered by forest and marsh which drastically impeded the development of agriculture.[ . . .] T o the south of the Po plain, in the northern Appenines, great forests of oak, beech and firs had sprung up and stretched virtually unbroken, although the foothills, like similar areas of low hills all over Europe were partially cultivated.T h e 'Bassa', the low-lying area between the Via Emilia and the Po, was characterized by dense forest and interminable marsh, particularly as one approached the river.The banks of the rivers were ill-defined, further encouraging the already frequent floods.H u g e areas which had been cultivated in Roman times had reverted almost to their original state.T o the north, in Lombardy and the Véneto, the Po valley was even more marshy' (V.FumagalIi,£fln<£scfl/7es of Fear: Perceptions of Nature and the City in the Middle Ages, translated by S.Mitchell, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), p.99).
^ C .F r u g o n i , A Distant City: Images of Urban Experience in the Medieval World, translated by W.McCuaig (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 10. ^ Illumination from the Gospels of Liuthard, c.990 (Aachen cathedral, unnumbered MS, fol.46 v .

^
See R.Bemheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages: A Study in Art, Sentiment and Demonology, (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952); J.Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought, (Cambridge Mass.& London: Harvard University Press, 1981); White, 'The Forms of Wildness'. 41'Most accounts of the races [...] place [...] stress on the uncivilized

] sí come Aristotile dice, l'uomo è animale civile [...]' ['For as Aristotle says, man is a social animal'] (Conv. IV, xxvii, 3). '[...] la umana civilitade [...] a uno fine è ordinata, cioè a vita felice; a la quale nullo per se è sufficiente a venire sanza I'aiutorio d'alcuno [...]. E però dice Io Filosofo che l'uomo naturalmente è compagnevole animale' ['Man's need for human society [...] is established for a single end: namely a life of happiness, which no one is able to attain by himself without the aid of someone else [...]. Therefore the Philosopher says that man is by nature a social animal'] {Conv. IV, ¡v, 1). 4 'E si come un uomo a sua sufficienza richiede compagnia dimestica di famiglia, cosi una casa a sua sufficienza richiede una vicinanza [...]. E però che una vicinanza a se non può in tutto satisfaré, conviene a satisfacimento di quella essere la cittade' ['And just as for his well- being an individual requires the domestic companionship provided by a family, so for its well-being a household requires a community [...]. And since a community could not provide for its own well-being completely by itself, it is necessary for this well-being that there be a city'] (Conv. IV, iv, 2). involvement
in politics, and the beginning of his acceptance of the greater mission here assigned to him by his ancestor -that of doing God's work through the writing of h i s poem {Par.XVII, 124-142).This mission requires him to stand above the narrow issues of party politics; in a sense, it demands that he be an outsider.G i u s e p p e Mazzotta, for example, comments that 'Dante's exile from the city is linked with the poetic act [...].I t is an act central to the idea of community, because through poetic discourse Dante acts on the world by being outside of it' (G.Mazzotta,Dantó, Poet of the Desert: History and Allegory in the Divine Comedy.(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), p.138).N o n e t h e l e s s , his becoming a 'party of one' is also 'of a piece with the salty taste of other men's bread, the steepness of other men's stairs, and the bestiality of the exiled White Guclfs.[...] I n that perverted world, Dante's own future could be at best dismal, and the badge of "parte per te stesso" was not a badge otherwise worn in honor' (Peters, p.116).As will be seen, one of the lessons of the Commedia is that the Christian must, on occasion, suffer the pain of being an outsider in life in order to become an insider in the hereafter.rooted in the distinction between the 'self a n d the 'other'.