22 - Paradise XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX
This lecture focuses on Paradiso 27-29. St Peter's invective against the papacy from the heaven of the fixed stars is juxtaposed with Dante's portrayal of its contemporary incumbent, Boniface VIII, in the corresponding canto of Inferno. Recalls of infernal characters proliferate as the pilgrim ascends with Beatrice into the Primum Mobile. Bid to look back on the world below, Dante perceives the mad track of his uneasy archetype, Ulysses. Dante's remembrance of this tragic shipwreck at the very boundary of time and space gains interest in light of his allusion to Francesca at the outset of Paradiso 29. These resonances of intellectual and erotic transgression reinforce the convergence of cosmology and creation Dante assigns to the heaven of metaphysics.