Foundation Sacrifice in Dante's Commedia

A city founded on a brother's blood, a death that becomes a story about how all life is built: Ricardo Quinones takes the old idea of foundation sacrifice, the death of another made into a parable for existence, and follows it through the whole of Dante's Commedia. His publisher describes it as the first anthropological reading of the poem, and the motif becomes a thread binding Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso into a single argument.

The rewards are particular. The Purgatorio emerges as a dramatic answer to the Inferno, not merely its sequel, and the Paradiso, so often admired at a distance, is brought back into the life of the poem as a poetic event in its own right. A concise, searching study for students and lovers of Dante who suspect there is more holding the three canticles together than the road from dark wood to stars.