“La dolcezza […] / che, non gustata, non s’intende mai” (Par. III 38-39) Synesthetic sweetness as therapeutic rhetoric in Dante’s Comedy

The synesthetic “sweetness” constitutes a rhetorical form and an essential intellectual game in the itinerarium mentis of the Comedy and in particular of the Paradise. Dante develops a language of spiritual intersensoriality which supports the perceptual synthesis of the ineffable and thus acts as a form of “sweet remedy” for the intellect and poetic expression. On the via to dulcedo Dei, the author uses an unprecedented writing technique, where the aesthetic experience becomes a soteriological act.