SOURCE: “Dante's Purgatorio XXXII and XXXIII: A Survey of Christian History,” University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol. XLIII, No. 3, Spring, 1974, pp. 193-214.

In the following essay, Kaske interprets the images found in Cantos XXXII and XXXIII as the “figurative celebration of the beginning of Christianity.”

I suppose it is no great news that during the past few decades, scholarship and criticism in the immense field of medieval literature have been moving with unusual speed. Within this general awakening, it is worth asking what has been the effect, if any, on interpretation of Dante's Commedia. Surely no one can accuse past Dante scholars of a failure to explore unfrequented corners of medieval knowledge; and even allowing for the preoccupation of earlier generations with Dante's political message, it is obvious that the recent revival of interest in the theological allegory of the Middle Ages cannot have come to Dantists as the...