Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Paradiso, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Earthly and Heavenly Justice
Creation and God’s Providence
God’s Character and Will
Vision, Knowledge, and the Pursuit of God
Language and the Ineffable
Summary
Analysis
Dante has traveled to the realm that’s most filled with God’s light—that is, Heaven. While there, he saw things that he wouldn’t know how to explain, even if he could. But as much as he can remember and express will become the subject of this poem. He calls upon Apollo for help in his task.
At the end of Dante’s Purgatorio, the Divine Comedy’s second cantica, Dante had just left the Earthly Paradise, where he was purified from his sins. Now, he’s ascending into the heavens, symbolizing human progress toward God. Setting out on this journey, he calls upon God—by means of an allusion to the Greek sun god, Apollo, the chief of the Muses. As in the previous canticas, Dante will draw freely upon his classical literary heritage in order to give his narrative depth and richness.
Themes
When Dante and Beatrice begin their journey through Heaven, it is a few days after Easter Sunday. Beatrice gazes into the noonday sun, and Dante copies her, able to stare into the sun for a short time. After that, he redirects his gaze to Beatrice instead. When Dante hears heavenly music and sees blazing lights filling the sky, Beatrice says that they have risen beyond the Earthly Paradise toward the heavens. She explains how this rising is made possible: essentially, all created things have a natural tendency to fulfill the purpose of their existence by seeking God, like a form of heavenly gravity.
In Purgatory, Beatrice became Dante’s guide through the afterlife, taking over from Virgil, who guided Dante through Hell and most of Purgatory. She now resumes this role in Paradise. And as she did in Purgatory, Beatrice represents divine revelation. God’s love and truth are reflected through her in a way that Dante can perceive more easily than he could perceive them from God directly. After being purified in Purgatory, Dante exists in the same state of innocence that Adam was in before sinning. This means that Dante’s faculties, untainted by sin, are stronger than they’d be on Earth—hence being able to look into the sun, though only for a short time, at this point. Allegorically, Dante’s ability to look directly into heavenly light represents his deepening capacity for knowledge of God.
Themes
