Singularities in harmony: the rhyming hapax legomena in Dante's Commedia

This research will articulate the relationship between hapax legomena and rhyme in Dante's Commedia. Many of the
poem's singular usages appear in their line's rhyme-position, but the significance of this trend has yet to be fully
understood. Dante's hapax legomena transmit unknowable and alien elements of the Commedia, and their embedment
in rhyme weaves these epistemological challenges into the poem's very spine. In my definition, a hapax is not a unique
occurrence in all literature, but a singular usage within a text which, with no other examples for comparison, requires a
specifically tailored, artisanal interpretative approach. My research will present a significant development as it
demonstrates how the hermeneutic demands placed upon a reader of the Commedia by its hapax legomena are in
productive tension with the linkages provoked by the poem's rhymes. The Commedia's rhymes make links through
sound not sense; they are a material phonic force which, with the text's hapax legomena, create a space of otherness
within which readers must work to find alternative solutions to interpretative problems. My research will show how
rhyming hapax legomena have significant repercussions for how readers construct intratextual analyses and how they
might utilise the spatial metaphors of verticality and horizontality when approaching the text. It will also demonstrate how
these words engage in theoretical debates over the place of the individual in a community in the poem.