| Preface | |
| Editions and Acknowledgments | |
| Ch. 1 | Detheologizing Dante: Realism, Reception, and the Resources of Narrative | 3 |
| Ch. 2 | Infernal Incipits: The Poetics of the New | 21 |
| Ch. 3 | Ulysses, Geryon, and the Aeronautics of Narrative Transition | 48 |
| Ch. 4 | Narrative and Style in Lower Hell | 74 |
| Ch. 5 | Purgatory as Paradigm: Traveling the New and Never-Before Traveled Path of This Life/Poem | 99 |
| Ch. 6 | Re-presenting What God Presented: The Arachnean Art of the Terrace of Pride | 122 |
| Ch. 7 | Nonfalse Errors and the True Dreams of the Evangelist | 143 |
| Ch. 8 | Problems in Paradise: The Mimesis of Time and the Paradox of piu e meno | 166 |
| Ch. 9 | The Heaven of the Sun as a Meditation on Narrative | 194 |
| Ch. 10 | The Sacred Poem Is Forced to Jump: Closure and the Poetics of Enjambment | 218 |
| Appendix: Transition: How Cantos Begin and End | 257 |
| Notes | 267 |
| Index | 349 |
