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The Lyric Mode

Dante is before all other things a lyric poet and this chapter explores his commitment to lyric from his earliest compositions to the Commedia. For Dante, lyric is the natural mode for expressing desire and is particularly marked by pleasure. Indeed ‘modo’ is the word he uses in both Vita Nova and Commedia to represent the indissoluble bond between love and speech that animates the desiring subject and leads to the production of poetry. This chapter traces the significance of this word in the Occitan and early Italian love lyric, especially in its associations with measure (misura) and desire’s tendency to transgress it. It considers how the lyric mode is employed to convey the intensity of the love experience and the porous nature of the desiring body, especially in Dante’s relationship to Beatrice and as expressed in flexible and expansive forms of textuality that resist closure.