A word, phrase or image that returns several times throughout the work, tied to a character or an idea, and gains meaning with each return.
In Purgatory
cursed be you, ancient she-wolf, who have more prey than all the other beasts, through your hunger without end or bottom!
The "ancient she-wolf" is the same beast that closed Dante's path in the first canto of the Inferno. The return of the image, now as the name of avarice, links two canticles through the same figure and shows that the evil seen down below remains the enemy up here as well.
Cantos XVII to XXI: Love, sloth and avarice, Dante, narrator, in the fifth turn of the avaricious