By Teodolinda Barolini

Dante’s linguistic treatise, De vulgari eloquentia, is not without joy in linguistic difference and invention. However, the treatise’s signature view of linguistic difference is its powerfully punitive account of the Tower of Babel. Linguistic diversity, aka “confusion of tongues”, is the punishment meted out to Nimrod and his followers for their presumptuous building of the Tower of Babel: thus, difference is punishment. This essay traces Dante’s evolution as he moves from De vulgari eloquentia to the encounter with Nembrot (as Dante calls Nimrod) in Inferno 31 and then to Paradiso 26. The punishment of Inferno 31 is no longer differen- tiated language but lack of language: Dante punishes Nembrot not with linguistic diversity, but by assigning him a non-language that communicates non-sense. Adam’s great discourse on linguistic creation in Paradiso 26 signals full transition: from difference as punishment to difference as pleasure.

Textual Cultures 12.1 (2019): 137–154p.