The contemporary debate over the Western canon seems to be...

The contemporary debate over the Western canon seems to be premised on a sharp opposition between Western and non-Western cultures, as if they were complete and irreconcilable antitheses, and even wholly unrelated. One of the principal charges against the Western canon is that it is Eurocentric, that it remains confined within a narrow orbit of European ideas and beliefs, thus excluding all other views of the world.

A corrolary of the idea of Eurocentrism is the concept of Orientalism, developed by Edward Said.3 Said argues that throughout its history, the Occident has defined itself in opposition to the Orient, basing its elevated self-image on a debased vision of the cultural Other. In Said's argument, the Occident views itself as rational as opposed to an irrational Orient, as emotionally disciplined in contrast to an emotionally uncontrolled Orient, and as masculine over against a feminine Orient.

In medieval Europe the Orient was chiefly represented by the Muslim world, and one does not have to look far in medieval literature to find the kinds of orientalist stereotypes about which Said writes. The French Song of Roland contains excellent examples, but even the Divine Comedy seems to provide grist for Said's mill.

Consider the portrait of the prophet Mohammad and his nephew Alì that Dante gives when he places them among the schismatics in the Eighth Circle of Hell: [End Page 139] No barrel, even though it's lost a hoop or end-piece, ever gapes as one whom I saw ripped right from his chin to where we fart: his bowels hung between his legs, one saw his vitals and the miserable sack that makes of what we swallow excrement.

While I was all intent on watching him, he looked at me, and with his hands he spread his chest and said: "See how I split myself! See now how maimed Mohammed is! And he who walks and weeps before me is Alì, whose face is opened wide from chin to forlock." (xxviii, 22­36)4 This viciously unsympathetic treatment of these central figures of the Islamic religious tradition is exactly what Said's theory of orientalism would lead us to expect in a bastion of the Western canon such as Dante.

But the portrait of Mohammad in the Divine Comedy is an isolated moment, and wider reading in Dante reveals a surprisingly positive treatment of figures from the Islamic world.