Fra Ovidio e Brunetto, nel fiume del tempo

This article attempts to show how Dante Alighieri, in defining the image of humankind as inspired by values of innocence and harmony in an earthly paradise, draws a condition of defective beatitude just before a burst of even superior joy. So in the aim of outlining a beatitudo huius vitae still valid for a Christian Eden, the poet appeals to the text of Ovid’s Fasti through which in many occurrences he is building a harmonic image of human living that, in the shadow of forebears’ sin, only a future intervention of Grace will dispose for Dante’s words. Through exact allusive quotations, Dante opposes to the absolute time of Eden the idea of an imperfect time, tied to the pattern of an all-human knowledge, which Dante himself connected to the teaching and character of Brunetto Latini.