Getting above the Thunder: Dante in the Sphere of Saturn

Dante's works show a resolve to avoid melancholy, or a repression of it. Boccaccio's description of Dante as 'malinconico e pensoso' indicates repression in the form of contemplation. His medieval melancholy revolves around a quiet Saturn. Freud's famous concept of melancholy in 'Mourning and Melancholia', and Julia Kristeva's deliberations on it in 'Powers of Horror' and 'Black Sun' which owes to Freud, are discussed. Melancholy removes the self's feeling of being in command, or of being a single subject.