...Dante’s Influences on Modern Works Over the years some literature works have left a legacy throughout human history. Their legacy was built through their influences on the different works of art, sculptures, later pieces of literature, songs, poem, films and sometimes video games. The Inferno part of Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy is one such literature work that is also one of the most well-known, well-referenced pieces of work today. It described in great detail Dante's vision of what hell would be like, and in doing so invented many of the tropes associated with Hell. This has led to several film adaptations and— most recently — a video game "adaptation”. References to Dante's Inferno in film can be found as far back as, draws heavily from Dante's Inferno. Se7en is a 1995 American crime film starring Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, and many other star-powered actors and actresses. The film is about the hunt of two homicide detectives, Detectives Sommerset and Mills, for a sadistic serial killer who murders in correspondence to one of the Seven Deadly Sins which his victim has committed. The murderer is determined by his desire to punish the world for its ignorance of the Seven Deadly Sins, viewing himself as akin to the Sword of God in handing out punishment of sins. As Detective Sommerset researches the Seven Deadly Sins to better understand the motive of the killer, Detective Mills simply scoffs at his efforts. Throughout the film, the detectives make numerous references...
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...crimes committed in the real world coincide with the punishments for each sin in hell. As Dante and Virgil progress deeper into hell, the sins (received at the time) become more immoral and the penalties become even more severe. Gluttony is the third Circle of Hell. Souls of gluttons are observed by the monster Cereberus, a worm-like monster with three heads, and are punished by laying in filthy slush, while icy rain falls upon them. Elements of the punishment symbolize traits of gluttony. The slush represents the indignity when one indulges in excess of food, while selfishness is punished by having to lie where you can see no one else. Dante and Virgil speak to Ciacco, who tells of the symbolic purpose of Cereberus: “The ravenous hellhound is a torturer of gluttons. He feasts on our souls and disgorges them, so that he may always eat with insatiable hunger.” This creature may be meant to mock the gluttons as well, representing what God wants them to be seen as....
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...damnation not only comes from a sense of divine justice but also acts as a reflection on and a warning to Dante on his individual journey to God. Dante, along with many of his peers and influences, views Islam as a false sect broken off from the core of Christianity and Mohammed as a Christian with a corrupted view of doctrine that lures potential followers from a true path of righteousness. Mohammed, like Dante, feels a spiritual discontentment that leads him on a reflective journey; however, as Mohammed turns his personal path, beliefs, and interpretations into its own doctrine, he varies from Dante’s poetic but applicable tale of salvation. Dante’s encounter...
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...transform their beliefs and ideas. They go beyond their horizon and expand their knowledge. In Dante's Inferno, Dante Alighieri tells his voyage through Hell in a poem in order to display his journey to God in a time when he had lost his way. The Inferno, symbolizes Dante's recognition of sin and the need to deny the temptations of man in order to obtain paradise with God. The Hero's Journey is depicted throughout the poem. The Call: The Call is the beginning of the Hero's Journey. It is when the protagonist or hero of the book is brought out of their domain and into the unknown. They are called to pass the horizon and enter into a mystery that will lead them to their destiny. The poem of "Dante's Inferno" opens up with Dante being lost in his pathway to God. On the morning light of Good Friday he realizes the error of his ways and turns to go up the Mount of Joy in order to leave the Dark Wood of worldliness and enter into Paradise. After being denied entry into the pathway towards god by three beasts, Dante's...
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...Life After Death, What Happens After We Die? Contents Introduction 3 Ideas on Life After Death in Different Religions 4 Perception of Life After Death in Literature: Dante's “Inferno” 6 Life After Death in Art: Rodin's “The Gates of Hell” 8 Conclusion 10 References 11 Introduction The question associated with life after death is associated with people of all races, genders, ages and world religions. It is understandable that people cannot live forever, and death is an inevitable event. But still people are interested what will happen to them after death, and what it means to die. There are great numbers of assumptions on this issue, and people's opinions differ, but still it is difficult to reveal the truth, as nobody knows this for sure. This paper will focus on different assumptions and possible events taking place after people's death. Of course every person thinks about afterlife concept in the current period of time, as it would be really strange not to consider this issue at least once. People should understand and be aware of possible events happened to them after life in order to value the current state of affairs and life in the present period of time. It is necessary to make the right choice and build proper relationships with people surrounding you, as every day is unique, and it would be impossible to return it again. D'Souza (2009) stated that the Bible teaches people “that...
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...Scenes of great violence, as the prompt says, are often written into dynamic narratives of great literary merit. From Dante Alighieri’s Inferno to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the inclusion of violence as a literary technique is used to propel the narrative forward, all while adding action, intrigue, and engaging the reader. Despite it’s validity as a literary technique, the inclusion of violent scenes in literature serve much more than the simple purpose of pushing a plot along a set of structured points. Scenes of violence provoke thought in areas ranging from human nature to the nature of sin, thoughts that often can’t be provoked my images of calm, sublime, or tranquility. Extreme violence, juxtaposed with other scenes, provides insight into the amazing nature of human capability and human nature. In Dante Alighieri’s Inferno there is an abundance of violence that is illustrated in varying ways. Despite the copious inclusion of violence scenes throughout the text, violence does not appear throughout the literary work for its own sake. As one reads on through the Inferno, it provides it’s own clarity. As the levels of Hell increase, the severity of violence does so as well. The violence that appears occurs in different fashions, sometimes mentally, sometimes physically and many times both simultaneously. The scenes violence included in Dante’s Inferno contributes to the theme and darker overtone of the poem. An example of a scene of violence is shown in Canto 13, Circle Seven. Considering this Wright 2...
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...Analysis of Major Characters Dante Alighieri Thirty-five years old at the beginning of the story, Dante—the character as opposed to the poet—has lost his way on the “true path” of life; in other words, sin has obstructed his path to God. The Divine Comedy is the allegorical record of Dante’s quest to overcome sin and find God’s love; in Inferno, Dante explores the nature of sin by traveling through Hell, where evil receives punishment according to God’s justice. Allegorically, Dante’s story represents not only his own life but also what Dante the poet perceived to be the universal Christian quest for God. As a result, Dante the character is rooted in the Everyman allegorical tradition: Dante’s situation is meant to represent that of the whole human race. For this reason, Dante the character does not emerge as a particularly well-defined individual; although we know that he has committed a never-specified sin and that he participates in Florentine politics, we learn little about his life on Earth. His traits are very broad and universal: often sympathetic toward others, he nonetheless remains capable of anger; he weeps at the sight of the suffering souls but reacts with pleasure when one of his political enemies is torn to pieces. He demonstrates excessive pride but remains unsatisfied in many respects: he feels that he ranks among the great poets that he meets in Limbo but deeply desires to find Beatrice, the woman he loves, and the love of God. Dante fears danger but shows much...
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...connects to the prevalent idea of retribution, or an eye-for-an-eye, because the God of wealth, riches, and the underworld (money and evil) was around greed (evil due to money). My understanding of the retribution idea in The Inferno was also developed substantially through the interactive oral. Originally, it was easy for me to understand that the punishments were retributive; such as those who tried to look into the future will look backwards (to the past) for all eternity; gluttoners are rained upon by vomit (because they regurgitated what they ate), etc.; but what I did not understand was why. What really helped me grasp this concept is what was said about the laws in place when Dante was alive, such as, if one were caught stealing, his or her hand would be cut off. This helped me realize that Dante used retribution because almost everyone in his time believed that the best was to teach someone a lesson was to give him or her a taste of his or her own medicine. On the...
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...Nemo Zaragoza IGE 122 04/04/2012 Dante’s Inferno I have to start by stating that I was overjoyed when we were going to get the chance to read The Divine Comedy. This collection of Dante’s the poets’ poems have been a great and entertaining read. The reason why I was so excited to be reading this book is because of the fact that this book seems to take a few ‘religious liberties’ and explores the concept of hell and prods at the thought of possibly being more to hell than meets the eye. Not only that, but there was a game that came out a couple of years ago that took a more aggressive approach to the book and it was the same premise except that Dante was more of a warrior than a poet. Not just that, but the reason Dante went to hell (in the video game) was to save his beloved Beatrice from the grasps of the devil. Now the reason for her being with the devil is because she made a bet against him saying that, whilst Dante was away on the churches crusades he would remain faithful. Well she lost that bet, mainly because Dante not only was unfaithful, but as he progresses through hell, he notices that he actually committed each of the sins of all the circles. Anyway, back on topic, it seems that Dante responded in a sort of quizzical way. While he was walking through the circles he would sort of comment and jest on the people he recognized, but for the most part he would question Virgil as to why some people were there even though they followed the rules or something along...
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...Introduction Dante Alighieri wrote the epic poem “Divine Comedy” (Italian: Divina Commedia) in the period 1308 A.D to 1321 A.D. Considered one of the greatest works on World literature, the poem is an allegorical representation of man’s journey towards God. The poem is divided in three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Of all the three parts, Inferno remains the most celebrated and the most influential till date. Numerous artworks and books have been inspired by the Inferno. The works inspired by the Inferno range 1|P age The Devil and the Modern Manager from the Renaissance painter Botticelli’s illustrations of the hell to modern computer games. More than seven hundred years have passed; however, the Inferno continues to enthral readers all around the world. But, does the Inferno have anything in store for a manager seeking to achieve organizational efficiency? Dante’s macabre vision of hell was brought to life by Botticelli in his infamous painting “The Map of Hell” or, “The Abyss of Hell”, which remains one of the most fear-invoking artworks of all time. But, can that work invoke some new thoughts in the mind of a management student and expand his span of thinking, his horizons? Hell – the Model Organization “Organizational structure is more than boxes on a chart; it is a pattern of interactions and coordination that links the technology, tasks, and human components of the organization to ensure that the organization accomplishes its purposes.” Dante had written...
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...Research Paper: Divine Comedy Epic poems were popular as early as Ancient Greece. These poems depicted the events and the ideas of the time they were written in. One such epic poem was Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Written in the early fourteenth century the Divine Comedy takes on an allegoric view of the Christian and of the political beliefs held by Dante at the time. Dante was part of a political group in Italy known as the White Guelphs, who favored the Pope as leader over the Holy Roman Emperor. This held influence in the Divine Comedy. In trying to get these ideas out the people Dante wrote the epic poem in the vernacular of the Italian people. The Divine Comedy is centered on Dante and his two guides. The poem takes the reader on a journey with Dante and his guides through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. This is accomplished through the poem being broken up into three main canticles. Each one of these canticles contains thirty-three cantos. The number three is an important Christian symbol as it symbolizes the Trinity. This is important to Dante in his poem due to his religious beliefs. As the reader gets a literal description on Dante’s travels, the reader symbolically gains insight on how people viewed the progression of a person’s soul toward God. The first canticle is about Dante’s and his guide, Virgil’s, descent through the ten circles of Hell. As they descend through Hell the reader learns about the 10 circles. The deeper in Hell the...
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...life she goes to a special place in hell for those who commit suicide while Chris is in heaven. Once Chris realizes that Annie will never be able to join him in heaven he promises to journey to hell and retrieve Annie and bring her back with him to live in heaven together for eternity. A difference between Dante’s depiction of hell and the film’s view of hell is the concept of where one goes when he or she dies being subjective or objective. In Dante’s Inferno, he creates a hell that is full of creative monsters, and terrifying lands filled with unthinkable punishments for the crimes that were committed while the person was alive. This hell is divided and then subdivided again into smaller more specific realms of hell. In Canto 12-17 Dante describes circle 7 as a specific place in hell for those who have committed crimes of violence. Within this circle there are sub-circles divided up by those who have committed acts of violence against others, violence against god, violence against nature, and violence against self. Every one of these separate sub-circles has their own...
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...it. Correspondingly, however, chronological placement of the narrative from Good Friday through Easter Sunday, 1300, particularizes the experience even as it implies the death and rebirth that attends a critical stage of any person’s life. The poet tells his readers in the first line of the Inferno that he is midway through life, and indeed Dante would have been thirty-five years of age in 1300. Though he maintains present tense throughout the poem, he is, however, actually writing in the years that follow the events that he describes. This extraordinary method allows the Poet to place what amounts to prophetic utterance in the mouth of the Pilgrim. Dante thus maintains and further develops the thesis of The New Life, that the progress of the Pilgrim corresponds directly to the progress of the Poet. The literal journey that the Pilgrim undertakes toward the Beatific Vision succeeds only insofar as the Poet can transcend the finite barriers that signification imposes upon language. If one understands the task of the poem in these terms, the exponential symbolism of The Divine Comedy becomes inescapably clear. Like every human being, Dante carries the intellectual burden of what has formed him. At midlife, this includes the historical influences of his time and the artistic...
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...(1265–1321) while he was in exile from Florence, Italy . The fact that it has tremendous impact on art and literature is evident by the centuries of continuous study and the number of notable authors and artists whose works clearly reflect an influence from the theological, political or poetic value of the piece. T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) wrote in a 1929 essay that “Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third,”1 Certainly the word pictures in Inferno are vivid and memorable. But did Inferno actually influence society? Did it shape history? Did thought leaders of Dante’s time and over the centuries following find inspiration in its pages such that the Western world today is different than it might have been without Inferno? There are few works of literature to emerge from the Middle Ages with a lasting legacy to the modern world. Historically, Inferno was the first great literary work available in the vernacular, or common dialect, of a region. As such, it had an impact on the formation of the Italian language. More compelling, Dante’s work seems to be a dividing line between the epic poems of antiquity and the modern, humanistic, works emerging from the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. While the visual images in Inferno are Dante’s own, the underlying theology and political views were informed by scripture and based on his Christian beliefs, which were in turn influenced by the theology of and his experience with the Catholic Church. His work...
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...Monsters in Dante's Inferno The Inferno is the first section of Dante's three-part poem, The Divine Comedy. Throughout Dante's epic journey into the depths of Inferno he encounters thirty monsters and five hybrid creatures. The most significant of these monsters are of central importance to his journey and to the narrative, as they not only challenge Dante's presence in Inferno, but are custodians of Hell, keeping in order or guarding the "perduta gente". In this essay I am concentrating on these prominent beasts, namely Minos, Cerberus, Plutus and Geryon, establishing why they feature in Dante's eschatological vision and discussing the sources which influenced his inclusion of these particular creatures. These four monsters all fulfil important functions as well as representing important themes in Inferno, establishing them as symbols which reinforce Dante's allegory. Minos, as the infernal judge and agent of God's justice, represents our own conscience and morality. When the sinners come before him "tutta si confessa", which causes the reader to reflect on their own sins.His terrifying treatment of the souls is significant as after Charon, he is one of the first figures who they encounter on their passage into Hell, and his unique method of demonstrating which area of Hell that the souls should be sent to increases the horror and adds to the alarming atmosphere. His warning to Dante, is similar to several of the infernal custodians, who continually remind him that he...
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