Myrrha: Incestuous Passion and Political Transgression (Inferno, 30)

Abstract

The myth of Myrrha, as employed by Dante in the Comedy, bears a crucial political message. In the tenth pouch of Malebolge, Myrrha is condemned for her fraudulent act of impersonation as she counterfeited her identity in order to lie with her own father, thus breaking natural laws and social rules. In one of Dante's letters to emperor Henry VII, Myrrha is employed as the mythical counterpart of Florence. Florence's incest is a political one: the attempt to seduce the Pope, as “pater patrum,” against her own mother Rome. With her incessant and furious roaming, Myrrha indeed represents political instability caused by the inability or the unwillingness to comply with social expectations and to abide by the rules of human consortium. Through an overview of mythographic medieval sources and a brief analysis of the perception of the sin of incest in medieval society and literature, this paper attempts to establish which tradition of the myth of Myrrha was available to Dante and his readers in order to understand whether the poet was drawing on a traditional imagery or whether he was inviting the reader to find new meanings.