Dante’s Comedy and the vision as a literary genre

Abstract

A popular genre of medieval literature, visions (visio), are extremely important sources of Dante’s Comedy since they serve as the very model of the work itself. From the perspective of this tradition, Dante’s Comedy is certainly a masterpiece of visionary literature, an opinion shared by leading scholars of medieval history such as Jacques Le Goff or Teodolinda Barolini. This study delves into some characteristic features of the visionary genre as well as the accounts of otherworldly journeys, interpreting these texts as literary forerunners of Dante’s Comedy.