Divinatory Comedy: Geomancy in Dante’s Purgatorio

What hidden design shapes Dante’s Purgatorio? In this bold and original study, Erwan Dianteill argues that medieval geomancy is not a passing allusion but the poem’s concealed organizing principle. Drawing on philology, anthropology, and the history of divination, Erwan Dianteill shows that the second canticle of the Divine Comedy can be read through the geomantic system transmitted by Bartolomeo da Parma, Dante’s contemporary. Figures, triplicities, and judges illuminate Antepurgatory, the seven cornices, and the Earthly Paradise. The result is a rigorous and compelling new account of Dante’s poetic architecture, symbolic logic, and intellectual world. The Divinatory Comedy opens a revelatory path into one of the supreme monuments of world literature.