metaphor

Jiang uses metaphor to describe Dante’s way of explaining the human place in the universe without pretending to literal scientific adequacy.

Defined by Jiang as connections that clarify reality and reveal what the listener could not previously see.

A connection between previously unconnected things; a new thought and tool for thought.

Jiang's repeated pushback shows that none of these answers reaches the metaphor he wants; he is pressing the class past optics and vague abstractions toward a more exact spiritual or psychological reading.

Jiang explicitly identifies Dante's shadow as a metaphor for fame.

A student reads the washing command as proof that Cato sees Virgil as saturated with hell, while Jiang grants a metaphorical version of that reading: Dante must begin cleansing himself of Virgil's lies.

A student describes homosexuality metaphorically as violence against love because it stays on the physical plane rather than the celestial or emotional.

Jiang says the coin metaphor presents faith as a heavy and valuable object carried within the self rather than as a mechanism for buying redemption.

Jiang says the mirrored flame image is a major callback that Dante will use again at the very end as a metaphor for God.

Jiang says the mirrored flame from that experiment becomes Dante's metaphor for God at the end of the Divine Comedy.

A student proposes that the paradox may not matter because God is everywhere and can be felt in every place, like sunlight.