La corda di Dante

Dante Alighieri’s Commedia contains various debated issues. One of them is the meaning of a rope girding Dante in Inferno XVI, that Virgil commands him to throw away to evoke Geryon: as most of the critics focused either on the rope as a symbol, or on Virgil’s ritual, none of them has yet produced any decisive argument to explain the episode. Our claim is that a different strategy may be pursued. By insisting on Dante linking the rope to a constriction of lust and comparing such dogmatic limitation to a new kind of moral girding with some rush in Purgatorio I, and to the use of Dante’s love for Beatrix to make him surpass his fear of the flames that prevent him to reach Eden in Purgatorio XXVII, it will be demonstrated that the rope represents a mistaken approach to human eros, hence Virgil-Reason gets rid of it.