SOURCE: Verdicchio, Massimo. “Re-Reading Brunetto Latini and Inferno XV.” Quaderni d'italianistica 21, no. 1 (2000): 61-81.

In the following essay, Verdicchio concentrates on the irony with which Dante depicts Brunetto in Inferno XV, contrasting Dante's strongly negative assessment of Brunetto and his writings with Brunetto's own words on the subjects of sin and repentance in The Little Treasure.

One of the enigmas of the Commedia, beside the Veltro and the DXV, has been the status of Brunetto Latini and his supposed role as Dante's teacher, and his punishment as a sodomite.¹ In a way, we have always known an answer to these questions, despite good arguments to the contrary. Latini was never Dante's teacher, there is no evidence that he was a sodomite. Furthermore, as many critics have noted, many parallels can be drawn between Latini and Dante: their career as poet-philosophers, their political life, their exile.² Quotations from Latini's works...