The article describes a query system on texts and
literary material with advanced information retrieval tools suitable to
retrieve the content of a text, either as material specifically
organized with respect to linguistic, stylistic and rethoric features,
and in its historical, social and cultural context. As a test bed we
chose the Dante’s characters of al di là. This method of
investigation should help a scholar of a literary text to realize part
of his interpretative intentions. For this purpose, we will adopt
advanced methodologies in knowledge management and knowledge discovery
to be applied to a rich representation of the tagged content of a text.