1 - Corpus, body, text (and self)

Summary

The letters inscribed on Dante's forehead at the entrance to Purgatory draw on a tradition that reaches back at least as far as Augustine, a tradition which asserts an alliance between body and text as well as between sin and the wounded, naked body:

Sette P ne la fronte mi descrisse

col punton della spada, et “Fa che lavi,

quando se'dentro, queste piaghe” disse.

(Purg. ix: 112–14)

(He inscribed seven “P”s on my forehead with the point of his sword, and said “Wash these wounds off when you have entered inside.”)

For both Dante and Augustine the link between body and text derives from a belief that reading correctly is a key to living correctly; the semiotics of the flesh that fascinates each author lies at the heart of both their text and their theology.

In Latin the word corpus, meaning both body and body of writing or text, points to this intersection, a nuance which, as Beryl Smalley makes clear, the early Fathers were well aware of. To a certain extent, Dante and Augustine delimit the span of the Middle Ages, and while it is interesting that they both ground their understanding of textuality in the body, it is perhaps not surprising given the dual nature of the Christian logos, the word made flesh. Of more interest is how the details of this metaphor shifted through the course of the Middle Ages; how, in short, the interrelationship of text and body changed in the intervening 800 years.