The verb favoleggiare appears twice in Dante’s Divina commedia, both times in the Paradiso. An examination of the use of this word, alongside a secondary consideration of the word favola as it is used elsewhere in the Paradiso, suggests the poet’s concern with the relationship between knowledge, particularly the shared beliefs of a community, and faith. As the pilgrim progresses on his journey through heaven, he comes to learn that the epistemology perpetuated through fables, while it may have its uses, is not enough to allow him to regain the diritta via Firmly rooted in the past, fables cannot adequately explain the sense behind human tragedy, nor do they provide all the tools necessary to acquire salvation. As the pilgrim will come to learn, we must look away from our human community to the divine, which remains unchanged and unaffected by the course of human affairs. It is this that the pilgrim must bear in mind through the suffering that awaits him on earth as he keeps his eyes on his heavenly reward. In order to do this, he must abandon his reliance on fables and accept that the cross is the only framework upon which a holy life can be based.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• DeCoste, M., (2025), "Fables and Faith: Favoleggiare in the Commedia", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Quaderni d'italianistica

Original publication: DeCoste, Mary-Michelle. "Fables and Faith: Favoleggiare in the Commedia." Quaderni d'italianistica 38 (1): 2018. 217-222. DOI: 10.33137/q.i..v38i1.31164. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Quaderni d'italianistica. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Quaderni d'italianistica under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.