In Canto XVIII of Paradiso

Dante sees thirty-five letters of Scripture - LOVE JUSTICE, YOU WHO RULE THE EARTH - "painted" one after the other in the sky. It is an epiphany that encapsulates the Paradiso, staging its ultimate goal - the divine vision.

This book offers a fresh, intensive reading

of this extraordinary passage at the heart of the third canticle of the Divine Comedy. While adapting in novel ways the methods of the traditional lectura Dantis, William Franke meditates independently on the philosophical, theological, political, ethical, and aesthetic ideas that Dante's text so provocatively projects into a multiplicity of disciplinary contexts.

It challenges us to question

not only what Dante may have meant by his representations, but also what they mean for us today in the broad horizon of our intellectual traditions and cultural heritage.