From graphemic dependence to lexical structure: a Markovian perspective on Dante's Commedia

TL;DR

This paper models Dante's Divina Commedia using vowel-consonant encoding and Markov chains to analyze its structural and lexical organization, revealing patterns of dependency and progression across the poem.

Contribution

It introduces a novel Markovian symbolic framework to connect local graphemic patterns with higher-level textual structure in Dante's work.

Findings

Markov index increases from Inferno to Paradiso

Recurrent configurations link to lexical and orthographic features

Lexical anchors differentiate cantiche and show progression

Abstract

This study investigates the structural organisation of Dante's Divina Commedia through a symbolic representation based on vowel-consonant (V/C) encoding. Modelling the resulting sequence as a four-state Markov chain yields a parsimonious index of graphemic memory, capturing local persistence and alternation patterns. Across the poem, this index shows a slight but consistent increase from the Inferno to the Paradiso, indicating a directional shift in local dependency structure. Trigram analysis identifies a restricted set of recurrent configurations acting as graphemic probes, linking Markov patterns to lexical environments and orthographic phenomena such as apostrophised forms. A complementary classification analysis identifies cantica-specific lexical anchors, showing that local symbolic dependencies reflect both the separation among the three cantiche and a continuous progression across the poem. The results provide an interpretable framework connecting local symbolic structure with higher-level textual organisation.