HISTORICIZING THE PALINODE

The preceding chapter placed Monarchia within an internal history of Dante's evolving relationship to the “culture of authority,” arguing that in its completeness, in the absence of any reference to its author's lack of conventional auctoritas, and in its deployment of normative language, formal structures, and analytical procedures, it enters more fully into Scholastic philosophical culture than the works that precede it chronologically. Rather than claiming that the treatise has “solved” the problems facing Dante in his pursuit of authority, however, I identified the strategic negotiations by which the “arguing I” at once elides and confronts the tenuousness of his position within the treatise, including the subtle shift – never fully acknowledged as such – from authorization by natural reason to authorization by divine commission.

This chapter will pursue further the question of the “internal” and “external” historicization of Monarchia by testing it against the critical paradigm of the recantatory “palinode” by which – so it is frequently argued – Dante establishes a hierarchical sequence within his own oeuvre and creates the impression of having overcome the constraints of personality and world historical circumstances.