The otherworld in Virgil and Dante : some remarks on intertextual dialogue in "Purgatory"

The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of certain episodes and motifs of Dante’s Purgatory which were partly inspired by the idea of the Otherworld and the category of space in the Book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid. In particular we examine the episode which takes place in the Valley of the Rulers (Pg. VII) and the concept of Dante’s Earthly Paradise to confront them with the idea of Virgilian Elysium. The intertextual dialogue of the Italian poet with the author of the Aeneid is sometimes polemical and based on aemulatio rather than on imitatio.