SOURCE: "Bertran de Born and Sordello: The Poetry of Politics in Dante's Comedy," in PMLA, Vol. 94, No. 3, May, 1979, pp. 395-405.

In the following essay, Barolini attempts to illuminate Sordello's stature in Dante's Purgatorio by comparing his position with that of another figure in the work, Provençal troubadour Bertran de Born.

The stature Dante grants Sordello in the Comedy has long puzzled critics, since it seems greater than warranted by the achievements of this Provençal poet. Not only does the meeting with Sordello, in the sixth canto of the Purgatorio, serve as the catalyst for the stirring invective against Italy that concludes the canto, but Sordello is assigned the important task of guiding Vergil and Dante to the valley of the princes and identifying for the two travelers its various royal inhabitants. This seems a large role for a poet who was—and is—best known as...