This article analyzes Dante's presence in Dorothy Richardson's novel series Pilgrimage, focusing on Interim and making references to Deadlock and Revolving Lights. It argues that, although his words are never quoted directly, Dante is a strong presence in the novel and a revealing case study for understanding the complex theories of intertextuality at work in Pilgrimage. Dante is never an authoritative source to be used “as a code or a weapon … to crush someone,” but contributes instead to shaping the novel's reluctance to transform literary precedents in measurable cultural value. The article explores the significance of the “Dante lecture”; looks at how Pilgrimage throws a bridge across modernist experimentalism and the nineteenth century by engaging in a complex dialogue with Philip Wicksteed's theories of political economy; and focuses on the ironic ways in which Interim links Dante to gender via the figure of an almost invisible female translator, Wilhelmina Kuenen.
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