Sound and Structure in the Divine Comedy

This book uses a variety of computer-based processes to construct a systematic analytical description of the sounds of Dante's Divine Comedy in the sense of their overall distribution within the text. The description is developed through a comparative treatment of the same features in a range of related texts, with a view to defining the distinctive characteristics of Dante's practice; and by a discussion of the function and effect of sounds in the work, with special attention to unusually high incidences of particular features. The book is thus both a contribution to the scholarly debate about Dante's poem, and an illustration and discussion of the ways in which new electronic technology can be used for this kind of purpose.

David Robey is Professor of Italian, University of Reading