As we pass Arnaut Daniel, the last penitent soul of Mount Purgatory, let's look back over the discussions of poetry and lust in the seventh (and even sixth) terrace of the mountain.

Dante has laid out a fairly straightforward theory of poetry through his encounters with three poets. Are these in a logical progression? Are they causally linked, not just sequentially?

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, for some final thoughts (at least for now) about poetry, lust, and how we humans make meaning.

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Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:50] A progression of poets: Forese Donati, Bonagiunta Orbicciani, and Guido Guinizzelli.

[07:20] Francesca was indeed an ambivalent figure in INFERNO--but not now, when we read through the gravitational lensing of COMEDY.

[12:56] Simone Weil claims that the hope of religion (or for her, Christianity) is to turn violence into suffering, which can then be interpreted.