From The Letter to Can Grande

.. .. .. [6] Therefore, if one should wish to present an introduction to a part of a work, it is necessary
to present some conception of the whole work of which it is a part. For this reason I, who wish to
present something in the form of an introduction to the above-mentioned .part of the whole
Comedy, have decided to preface it with some discussion of the whole work, in order to make the
approach to the part easier and more complete?

2 There are six questions, then, which should be asked at the beginning about any doctrinal work:
what is its subject, its form, its agent, its end, the title of the book, and its branch of philosophy. In
three cases the answers to these questions will be different for the part of the work I propose to give
you than for the whole, that is, in the cases of its subject, form, and title, while in the other three, as
will be clear upon inspection, they will be the same. Thus these first three should be specifically
asked in a discussion of the whole work, after which the way will be clear for an introduction to the
part. Let us, then, ask the last three questions not only about the whole but· also about the offered
part itself.

[7] For the clarification of what I am going to say, then, it should be understood that there is not just
a single serise in this work: 3 it might rather be called polysemous, that is, having several senses. For
the first sense is that which is contained in the letter, while there is another which is contained in
what is signified by the letter. The first is called literal, while the second is called allegorical, or moral
or anagogical. And in order to make this manner of treatment clear, it can be applied to. the
following verses: "When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a barbarous people, Judea
was made his sanctuary, Israel his dominion."4 Now if we look at the letter alone, what is Signified to
us is the departure of the sons of Israel from Egypt during the time of Moses; if at the allegory, what
is signified .to us is our redemption through Christ; if at the moral" sense, what is signified to us is
the conversion of the soul from the sorrow and misery of sin to the state of grace; if at the
anagogical, what is signified to us is the departure of the sanctified soul from bondage to the
corruption of this world into· the freedom of eternal glory. And although these mystical senses are
called by various names, they may all be called allegorical, since they are all different from the literal
or historical. For allegory is derived from the Greek alleon, which means in Latin alienus ("belonging
to another") or diversus ("different").

[8] This being established, it is clear that the subject about which these two senses play must also be
twofold. And thus it should first be noted what the subject of the work is when taken according to
the letter, and then what its subject is when understood allegorically. The subject of the whole work,
then, taken literally, is the state of souls after death, understood in a simple sense; for the
movement of the whole work turns upon this and about this.

If on the other hand the work is taken allegorically, the subject is .man, in the exercise of his free
will, earning or becoming liable to the rewards or punishments of justice. .. .. ..

[10] The title of the work is, "Here begins the Comedy of Dante Alighieri, a Florentine by birth but
not in character." To understand the title, it must be known that comedy is derived from comos, "a
village," and from oda, "a song," so that a comedy is, so to speak, "a rustic song."5 Comedy, then, is
a certain genre of poetic narrative differing from all others. For it differs from tragedy in its matter, in
that tragedy is tranquil and conducive to wonder at the beginning, but foul and conducive to horror
at the end, or catastrophe, for which reason it is derived from tragos, meaning"goat," and oda,
making it, as it were, a "goat song," that is, foul as a goat is foul. This is evident in Seneca’s tragedies.
Comedy, on the other hand, introduces a situation of adversity, but ends its matter in prosperity, as
is evident in Terence's comedies. And for this reason some writers have the custom of saying in their
salutations, by way of greeting, "a tragic beginning and a comic ending to you." And, as well, they
differ in their manner of speaking. Tragedy uses an' elevated and sublime, style, while comedy uses
an unstudied and low style, which is what Horace implies in the Art of Poetry where he allows comic
writers occasionally to speak like the tragic, and also the reverse of this:

Yet sometimes even comedy elevates its voice,

and angry Chremes rages in swelling tones;
and in tragedy Telephus and Peleus oftert lament
in prosaic speeches ....

So from this it should be clear why the present work is called the Comedy. For, if we consider the
matter, it is, at the beginning, that is, in Hell, foul and conducive to horror, but at the end, in
Paradise, prosperous, conducive to pleasure, and welcome. And if we consider the manner of
speaking, it is unstudied and low, since its speech is the vernacular, in which even women
communicate. There are, besides these, other genres of poetic narrative, such as pastoral verse,
elegy, satire, and the hymn of thanksgiving, as could also be gathered from Horace in his Art of
Poetry. But there is no purpose to discussing these at this time.