COGNITIO AND POETRY IN CANTO XXVI OF DANTE ALIGHIERI'S INFERNO

This text intends to analyze canto XXVI of Commedia's Inferno, focusing on the concept of cognitio that the poet represents through the story of Ulysses, whose approach has a clear derivation from Greek philosophy, in particular Aristotelian and Platonic. It is interesting to read the whole canto in the light of the dialectic that Dante outlines around the concept of cognitio, which can be expressed as a tension between the desire for knowledge and the danger of haughtiness that would derive from a search for it without limits. Finally, I analyze the consequences that this approach has on Dante's conception of poetry and on its cognitive function.