Singularities in harmony: the rhyming hapax legomena in Dante's Commedia

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This research will articulate the relationship between hapax legomena and rhyme in Dante's Commedia. Many of thepoem's singular usages appear in their line's rhyme-position, but the significance of this trend has yet to be fullyunderstood. Dante's hapax legomena transmit unknowable and alien elements of the Commedia, and their embedmentin rhyme weaves these epistemological challenges into the poem's very spine. In my definition, a hapax is not a uniqueoccurrence in all literature, but a singular usage within a text which, with no other examples for comparison, requires aspecifically tailored, artisanal interpretative approach. My research will present a significant development as itdemonstrates how the hermeneutic demands placed upon a reader of the Commedia by its hapax legomena are inproductive tension with the linkages provoked by the poem's rhymes. The Commedia's rhymes make links throughsound not sense; they are a material phonic force which, with the text's hapax legomena, create a space of othernesswithin which readers must work to find alternative solutions to interpretative problems. My research will show howrhyming hapax legomena have significant repercussions for how readers construct intratextual analyses and how theymight utilise the spatial metaphors of verticality and horizontality when approaching the text. It will also demonstrate howthese words engage in theoretical debates over the place of the individual in a community in the poem.