SOURCE: “Purgatorio, Canto V: The Modulations of Solicitude,” Books Abroad 39, May, 1965, pp. 69-73.

In the following essay, Cambon discusses the function of the humorous elements in Canto V, a canto he describes as “a ceremony enacting the progression of solicitude.”

It is not true of many another Canto, as it certainly is of Purg. V, that its thematic structure recapitulates the movement of the whole Divine Comedy. It does this by looking back to the earth of the living and eventually re-echoing the infernal world, while at its climax foreshadowing Paradise; indeed a Paradisal anticipation can be overheard in the Canto even before the transfigured voice of Pia de’ Tolomei comes to suggest heavenly peace as an antiphon to the remembered turmoil of murder, battle, and storm. Few Cantos exhibit such variety of tones, and no other so thoroughly rehearses the fundamental gesture of the Comedy from the...