Where Dante Would Have Put Ser Ciappelletto?

Abstract

This text propose, in an audacious way, a possible lecture of absolution, in terms related to Dante Alighieri, of a famous character considered a ‘villain’ from the Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio’s masterpiece, in other words, Ser Ciappelleto da Prato, protagonist of the first Novel of the First Journey. Based in the texts themselves and in the moral structure made by Dante Alighieri in his otherworldly universe described in The Divine Comedy, we’ll use our imagination to assign a possible place to the wicked Ciappelletto. Acoording to our interpretation there are two possibilities for him: the Giudeca, Inferno’s deepest place; or the pre-Purgatory, a place for the sins’ expiation that still preserve a possible salvation, beside Belacqua, in the fourth Canto of the Purgatory’s Cantica. Even though is just a speculation, this text was developed considering the critical theories’ contribution about the Italian poets, in order to be presented as a contribution to the literary debate regarding the Dante Alighieri’s 700^th Anniversary of Death celebrated in 2021.