Infernal Affects Public

Abstract

In examining three English translations of Dante’s Inferno (excerpts from Canto V and Canto XIII), this thesis will find that poetry is a hypersaturation of sound patterns that are heightened by emphatic silences. This thesis thus argues that silence heightens bodily awareness, thematic significance of self-autonomy, and poetic effects of certain sonic tropes. This essay will demonstrate the claim that silence is key to understanding poetry by examining (1) translators’ creation of hypersaturated soundscapes in Cantos V and XIII of Inferno, (2) the use of marked silences in Canto V, and (3) the use of unmarked silences in Canto XIII. What will be abundantly clear after this analysis is that sound alone is inadequate to understanding the effects of poetry, and that silence plays a key part in producing the bodily effect that characteristically separates poetry from other uses of language. By the end of this project, we hope to find that when poet-translators discover new arrangements of sounds and silence that produce heightened bodily effects, poetry is not what gets lost. Rather, poetry can be found in translation. 

Table of Contents

Introduction.................................................................................................................................................................................................. 1

Chapter 1: Hypersaturation of Sound................................................................................................................................................................ 7

Chapter 2: Marked Silences, or the Presence of Absence................................................................................................................................... 14

Chapter 3: Elasticity of Unmarked Silences..................................................................................................................................................... 23

Conclusion................................................................................................................................................................................................... 37

Works Cited.................................................................................................................................................................................................. 41

Bibliography................................................................................................................................................................................................. 43

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	English
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Literature, Classical Literature, English
Mot-clé	Sounds Dante Alighieri Silences Translations Italian Poetry English Poetry
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Daniel Bosch, Emory University
Committee Members	Achille Castaldo, Emory University Ross Knecht, Emory University

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