In the complex system where the language of metaphysics and that of erotic love overlaps to create registers of meaning, the convention of the simple hostility between love and knowledge acquires the quality of nonfunctioning. Hostility is complicated by symbiosis. The articulation of love in medieval literature involves considerable overlap of language used to describe either sensual or religious experience. Medieval formulations of the relationship between spiritual and sensual love are varied and complex. In the surpassing vision of his beloved Beatrice, Dante reflects on the history of his earthly love far her, a love that has found various expressions in the full range of his writings, from the Vita Nuova to the Paradiso. He uses recollection of physical experience as the basis to express the transport of what is now a thoroughly spirihml episode; sight not only provides the link but encapsulates the essence of either experience.