Sie befinden Sich nicht im Netzwerk der Universität Paderborn. Der Zugriff auf elektronische Ressourcen ist gegebenenfalls nur via VPN oder Shibboleth (DFN-AAI) möglich. mehr Informationen...
Therefore, while music abounds in the Divine Comedy, especially in Paradiso where song is a primary expression of beatitude, there is a particular conceptual aptness to the musical references in the cantos devoted to justice set in the heaven of Jupiter. In addition to Platonic notions of harmony and concord, these references also recall the exhortations to music-making in the psalms, a context marked by themes of kingship, mercy, and justice. The corporate image Dante uses to represent the just rulers in this heaven is an eagle through which they all speak with one voice. The focus on the production of sound in the hollow of the eagle’s throat and beak likens it to the playing of musical instruments, specified as both stringed and wind, just as in Cicero’s simile. In his discussion of voice in his treatise on the soul, Aristotle similarly used a stringed instrument and a wind instrument (the lyre and the flute, or the harp and the pipe) as examples of inanimate objects that can be said to have voice only metaphorically. As we shall see, Dante’s detailed attention to the mechanics of sound production in this political image in the heaven of Jupiter moreover transforms violence into music.