"La Figura": Image of Divine Love: The Figure of Beatrice in Dante's Vita Nuova and Mangan's Sister in Joyce's "Araby"

"… the figure … who had deigned to greet me … her image … was love's assurance of holding me."

—Beatrice, La Vita Nuova (1295)

"… (the) figure cast by my imagination … O love!"

—Mangan's Sister, "Araby" (1914)

In Joyce and Dante: The Shaping Imagination, Mary Reynolds wrote: "As an account of a young boy's worship of an idealized feminine figure, [Joyce's "Araby"] resembles [Dante's] Vita Nuova."¹ Over the course of her study, Reynolds notes "the directly allusive echoes of Dante … [including] action, phrasing and diction … that Joyce placed in 'Araby'" (Reynolds 164). Among these echoes, she details a variety of similarities between Dante's and Joyce's stories related to their protagonists' encounters with Beatrice and Mangan's sister. These include love at first sight, the adoration of the girls by the boys, the repetition of the loved one's name, the boys' inability to approach or talk to the girls as they walk down the street, their retreat to their rooms to think about the girls, as well as the critical turning point in each story, the first words of greeting spoken by the girls, much to the boys' astonishment:

Vita Nuova: … that was the first time her words had entered my ear… she greeted me so miraculously that I felt I was experiencing the very summit of bliss.

(Reynolds 238)

"Araby": At last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first words to me I was so confused that I did not know what to answer.

(D 22)

Reynolds also notes a striking similarity in the boys' reactions to the girls' words:

Vita Nuova: At that moment … [my] vital spirit … began to tremble so violently that even the least pulses of my body were strangely affected; and trembling … from that time forward, Love quite governed my soul.

(Reynolds 239)

"Araby": … my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires. … I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: O love! O love! many times.

(D 22)

Most pointedly, perhaps, Reynolds identifies a line in Joyce's "Araby" that appears directly inspired by Dante's Vita Nuova:

Vita Nuova: Her image, which remained constantly with me, was love's assurance of holding me.

(Reynolds 238)

"Araby": Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance.

(D 21)

The word "image" appears twice in "Araby;" "imagination" appears twice as well. "Image" has historically been closely linked with the word "figure" in religious representations of divinity. As Erich Auerbach notes in his foundational essay "Figura,"² "… imago long competed with figura … where the context made the meaning 'image' identical with 'prefiguration'" (Auerbach 48). "Image" and "figure" are also used frequently and interchangeably in literary representations of romantic love. This has particular relevance for both Vita Nuova and "Araby." Yet, ironically, despite the otherwise comprehensive nature of her study, Reynolds overlooks the significance of "figure" as a shared, crucial term that, like "image," is also found repeatedly in both Vita Nuova and "Araby." "Figura" is employed by Dante in his description of Beatrice in Vita Nuova and "figure" by Joyce, when the narrator of "Araby" speaks of Mangan's sister. "Figura" may be identified as a classical term, a trope commonly called "la figura." When used in a literary context, "la figura" refers to a feminine representation of divine love; Dante and Joyce both use it to convey the divine nature of their female characters. In "Araby," references to the young boy's "adoration" and his worship with "strange prayers and praises" (D 22) confirm this representation.

The word "figure" appears three times within "Araby's" mere seven pages. The first time is when the young boy sees Mangan's sister from a distance on her doorstep at dusk, calling her brother in to his tea: "She was waiting for us, her figure defined by the light of the half-opened door" (D 21). The description the narrator provides here—a...