In the shadow of De amore . Dante between Capellanus and La Celestina

Abstract

The present study shows that the masterpiece of Capellanus is organized like a typical medieval quaestio, and answers to the same objectives of formal declaration and exhaustivity –pro and against– of a thesis finally carried to a definitive solution.    The author's conclusion appears in this case in a decidedly opposite manner to the eulogy of profane love, with their detrimental effects spanning –by the characterization of the Dante’s Inferno, fifth chant– the entirety of the literary peak that culminates with the unfortunate love affairs («homicidia malave multa sequuntur», according to the prediction established in De Amore) narrated in the Tragicomedy of the first Renaissance.