Painting with words "sì che dal fatto il dir non sia diverso" (Inf. XXXII, 12) : Iconicity in Dantes "Comedy" against the background of his metaliterary discourse on art

The aim of this paper is to examine some passages of the Divine Comedy using a semiotic key, and for this purpose I take into consideration these aspects of the passages which are close to the concept of iconicity in the meaning given to this term by Ch.S. Pierce and Ch. Morris. The application of this modern terminology, along with its methodological background, to Dante’s masterpiece, seems fully justified by the fact that medieval culture presents, as we know, a semiotic or, to say more exactly, intersemiotic approach to the sensorial reality. The latter is only an imperfect reflection or sign of the metaphysical world. In the Divine Comedy we find both iconic image and iconic diagram. A meaningful example of the first is the "etymological" comment of Dante the narrator, impressed by the appearance of the souls of gluttons (Purg. XXIII, 31-33). Iconic images based on a similarity between phonic and semantic aspects of certain words (the first imitates somewhat the second) are rather frequent and I mean not only the onomatopoeic relationship, but some very interesting cases of phonic mimetism (e.g. Inf. V, 1-6; 28-30). The analysis of the topic presented above unfolds in the light of some metatextual considerations, sparse in the poem, from which we are able to infer how Dante the author understands artistic creation, its origins, nature and purposes.