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Guest lecturer Prof. David Lummus discusses Purgatorio 24-26. On the terraces of gluttony and lust, the pilgrim’s encounters with masters of the Italian love lyric give rise to the Comedy’s most sustained treatment of poetics. Through Dante’s older contemporary Bonagiunta (Purgatorio 24), the pilgrim distinguishes the poetic style of his youth from that of the courtly love tradition pursued by his interlocutor. In Purgatorio 26, Dante reinforces his own poetic genealogy through his encounter with Guido Guinizzelli, founder of the “sweet new style” of poetry he crafted in his youth. The interpretative key to the language of paternity and filiation that pervades these cantos is found in Purgatorio 25, where Statius’s embryological exposition of the divine creation of the soul conveys the divinity of poetic inspiration.