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Odysseus and Dante

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The two stories or myths, The Inferno written by Durante Alighieri published in 1314 and the Odyssey by Homer in 800 B.C.E. are about true love, great journeys that are different but in some ways parallel and end with them back with their true love. Both Dante and Odysseus have a woman who waits for them and in their travels must search themselves and make the right choices to get back to them. Odysseus longs to be with his wife Penelope and Dante to be with the woman he wants to marry Beatrice. Both men are very much love the woman in their lives, go to their own hell and back and can think of nothing other than finding their way back to them. Beatrice even after death has a spirit that is very much in love with Dante. She has faith in him, and asks Virgil to guide him through hell to bring him back to her. As written by a professor in psychoanalysis, "Dante the voyager through this arduous voyage, a voyage that initially descends into ever deeper, ever more terrifying levels, is the love of and the love from two people: Virgil (his 'Psyche') and Beatrice (his 'Eros')" (Szajnberg, N. M., 2010). Dante travels through hell with Virgil's guidance to find his Beatrice that is lost on earth after suffering an early death. Dante's Inferno does not tell a lot about Beatrice but does show her deep love for him and that she will do what it takes to be with him again. "For I am Beatrice who sends you on; I come from where I most long to return; Love prompted me, that Love which makes me speak"(Inferno).

Penelope is very much in love with Odysseus even if he has been away so long. Many men come wanting to marry Penelope but she waits for her husband's return. She does not just deny marriage to suitors but uses great ideas to hold them at a distance. She uses tactics such as, she will not marry until a burial shroud is finished and then says she will marry the winner of

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