1), in Justinian’s multilingual acclamation, ‘ Osanna, sanctus Deus sabaòth / superillustrans claritate tua / felices ignes horum malacòth!’ ( Par., vii. The recollection of Plutus’s rude interruption, ‘ Papé Satan, papé Satàn aleppe!’ ( Inf., vii. The sharpest spurs to read vertically come, perhaps, in those cantos where textual echoes across the cantiche are so insistent that one suspects that many readers would seek out resonances and draw comparative readings even without any numerical structure or correspondence for encouragement: we might think, for instance, of the opening lines of cantos vii of Inferno and of Paradiso, both of which open with startling utterances of very different types. 1 The video of this lecture is available at the Cambridge Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy websit (.)ġIn carrying out what now feels like the very firmly established critical habit of reading Dante ‘vertically’, but which was, at the time this reading was first presented in lecture form, a particularly fresh, innovative and intellectually risky enterprise, it is striking how the rationale for vertical reading modulates from canto to canto in the Commedia, rather like a lengthy progression of chords played on the guitar – so that as readings delve vertically into the poem, so too the practice gains forward momentum across the Commedia as a whole.
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