Medieval hybrids beings:

the arpies figural revelation in the Commedia by Dante Alighieri

Abstract

The medieval imaginary is full of ancient mythological elements that were aggregated by thought due to resistance and the inheritance movement linked to their presence. Dante’s Commedia has such past presentification tied to the mental image and thus present in the medieval imaginary. The allegorical presence of the hybrid beings or guardians of Dante’s Inferno, the first part of the work, is made according to the intertextuality of the latin poets who were Dante’s autoritas. However, the poet was also inserted in the context in which animals and hybrids referred to vestiges of divine presences associated with human behavior, as signs of its postmortem figuration or the way divine justice was organized. The aim of this paper is to investigate the figural revelation of harpies presented in the second level of the seventh circle of hell described in Commedia: Inferno, as punichers of the souls of suicides. The analysis will focus on the presence of ancient poets as pre-figuration, on Dante’s poetic figuration and on the medieval imaginary, as in the case with their presence in sculpures and bestiaries.