Dante has not presented any allegory of such formality up to this point, and some readers have thought the allegory of the Pageant stiff and lifeless. One should bear in mind, however, that Dante is beginning to deal, now, not with reason but with revelation, and that the increased formality of his allegory here is apt to its content, and apt again in its resemblance to the rituals of the Church whose triumph he is representing. Note too, as distinct from the rest of Dante’s allegory, that these figures do not enter as themselves (St. John, for example, appears in three guises) but as heavenly
...more
