Dante's Divine Comedy - Wolf Imagery in The Inferno
For years, I hunger like a wolf for a study of Dante, wracked with my own kind of greediness for knowledge of Dante's vision of the journey down. This hunger is fed by my initiation and priestesshood into a mystery tradition based on teachings that date back to 14th century Italy[i]. Through the years of my involvement with this tradition, I attempt to view the world through the lens of a 14th century Italian woman, trying to understand the deeper meaning of the rituals and myths. In this tradition, the hunger of the wolf plays an extremely important role in the mythos of the cycle of the year, the wolf taking on special relevance during the dark days of the year.
Hunger and ferocity are the attributes of the wolf in winter, as food becomes scarcer and scarcer. The wolf leaves the wilderness and ventures closer to civilization in search of food; preying on the weakest creatures it can find in order to sustain itself. The wolf, more than the exotic leopard or the lion, is the most fearsome animal known to Medieval Italians. Its presence is a real danger to all life. In the duocento, the late 13th century in Italy, wars and plagues devastate the land and devouring, greedy wolves, human or otherwise, are everywhere:
These [the wolves] could no longer find their usual prey of lambs and sheep since the farms were burnt down, so they gathered in hungry packs and howled round the city walls. At night time they would steal into the city itself and fall upon men asleep on their cards in the open halls, and on women and children too. (qtd. Nolthenius 44)
As Dant's journeys with Virgil into the regions of Hell, the images of hungry wolves howling around the limits of the cit...
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... This mystery tradition is called Stregheria and the specific form that I practice came down through a hereditary line founded by woman called Aradia in 14th century Italy. In our mythos of the year, we acknowledge a Stag God and a Wolf God. For more information, go to Stregheria.com
2 In the Inferno, only the despised, hungry aspects of the wolf are presented, since in the Hell regions, the evil aspects of all become dominate. Yet the wolf in Italy, as Helen Luke points out is also loved and honored as well as despised and feared (19). In my own tradition, each year during the darkest days of winter, the Lupercus, Golden Wolf[ii] appears to chase away the dark wolves of the night and bring hope back to the people. This time of the wolf is most celebrated in February, though our purifying ritual of Lupercus in which we emulate the freedom and power of the wolf.
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” ― H.P. Lovecraft. Fear drives mankind to hate what he cannot comprehend. With this irrational fear mankind is controlled and set on a path of destruction and chaos. In the autobiography Never Cry Wolf written by Farley Mowat, the main character (Farley Mowat), journeys to the Canadian tundra to study the much-feared wolf. There he discovers the fear brought upon by men, and how it can result horribly for the wolves. The human race was so frightened by the unknown species that they began to blame the wolves for cold slaughters, portrayed them as vicious killers, and because of the fear of the unknown tried to exterminate wolves all together.
Wood, Karen and Charles. “The Vonnegut Effect: Science Fiction and Beyond.” The Vonnegut Statement. Vol. 5. 1937. 133-57. The GaleGroup. Web. 10 March. 2014.
of the wolves and finds that they are more than the savage and merciless hunters
Priest, Paul. "Allegory and Reality in the "Commedia"" Dante Studies With the Annual Report of the Dante Society.96 (1978): 127-44. JSTOR. Web. 09 May 2014. .
For as long as mankind has been around the fascination of savage beasts were greatly integrated through its cultures. The concept of monsters has been used in many historical and ideological context to vilify what society deems abhorrent. Monsters serve as our own depictions of ourselves and the world around us. They challenge our cultural mores and force us to analyze what is within us. The reason why monsters are becoming increasingly popular is because it allows people to break out of social norms and immerse themselves into a world of immorality. Werewolves, in particular, we see are just like humans, facing the same issues we do. They are seeking love, affection, and acceptance, much like us. However, much of their approach may test our
“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.” This maxim applies to the poet Dante Alighieri, writer of The Inferno in the 1300s, because it asserts the need to establish oneself as a contributor to society. Indeed, Dante’s work contributes much to Renaissance Italy as his work is the first of its scope and size to be written in the vernacular. Due to its readability and availability, The Inferno is a nationalistic symbol. With this widespread availability also comes a certain social responsibility; even though Dante’s audience would have been familiar with the religious dogma, he assumes the didactic role of illustrating his own version of Christian justice and emphasizes the need for a personal understanding of divine wisdom and contrapasso, the idea of the perfect punishment for the crime. Dante acts as both author and narrator, completing a physical and spiritual journey into the underworld with Virgil as his guide and mentor. The journey from darkness into light is an allegory full of symbolism, much like that of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which shows a philosopher’s journey towards truth. Therefore, Dante would also agree with the maxim, “Wise men learn by others’ harms; fools scarcely by their own,” because on the road to gaining knowledge and spiritual enlightenment, characters who learn valuable lessons from the misfortunes of others strengthen their own paradigms. Nonetheless, the only true way to gain knowledge is to experience it first hand. Dante’s character finds truth by way of his own personal quest.
The wolves’ were hunted in late 1800 s’ and early 1900‘s in the United States because farmers wanted more land for their cattle’s to graze upon. As farmers were moving out west they felt threaten that the wolves would hunt their cattles so the farmers thought that the best solution would be to take them out of the picture. This was possible because at the time there were no government regulations on hunting....
Over the past several hundred years, werewolves have been an important part of Western Cultures. Werewolves have appeared in blockbuster movies and been the subject of countless books and stories. Werewolves are dark and powerful creatures that terrify us on multiple levels. While they are some of the most violent and merciless monsters that horror has to offer, there is something about the werewolf that we can identify with. Not only can we identify with the characters afflicted with the curse, but we can also identify that the werewolf is a beast and an evil force. The werewolf symbolizes the evil that is contained within us all. In this paper, I will explain the different evils that werewolves symbolize by taking a critical look at the real life history of the werewolf, the werewolf in literature and film, and the opinions of experts on the topic.
In Dante’s Inferno, throughout the epic journey of the character Dante into the depth of Hell, he encounters a number of beasts and monsters as he passes along the way, especially through the seven stations of the greatest monsters of Hell. The most significant of these seven major monsters is of central importance to the character Dante’s journey as well as to the narrative, for these monsters not only challenge the presence of the character Dante in Hell, but they are also the important custodians of Hell. Moreover, some of them even have more particular duty to perform, apart from being the Hell guardians.
“The Interlopers” is a short story written by Saki. The setting of this story is very gloomy, dark and bitter. In this story, two neighbors, Georg and Ulrich, had immense tension between each other. They both get trapped under a tree in the forest. While under the tree they decide it would be best to call both of their men to help them but, their yelling attracts wolves. The wolves started towards them foreshadow their death. The irony in this story is that right when they think they are going to be saved they get
...s Minos's warning to Dante and his unusual illustration of how the sinners are judged. The monsters also form strategic narrative devices, as their confrontations with Dante and Virgil continue the pattern of incident and movement in the text, adding variety and tension.
In Dante’s Inferno, the punishment for a sin is the representation and reflection of the sin itself. The law of Dante’s Hell is symbolic retribution, which means that the specific attributes of the sin--how it was committed, by whom, and its effects--are concretely embodied in the specific nature of the punishment. This paper will attempt to show, by going through the geography of Dante’s Hell, how the sins in Dante’s Inferno are related to their punishments.
Dante’s work Inferno is a vivid walkthrough of the depths of hell and invokes much imagery, contemplation and feeling. Dante’s work beautifully constructs a full sensory depiction of hell and the souls he encounters along the journey. In many instances within the work, the reader arrives at a crossroads for interpretation and discussion. Canto XI offers one such crux in which Dante asks the question of why there is a separation between the upper levels of hell and the lower levels of hell. By discussing the text, examining its implications and interpretations, conclusions can be drawn about why there is delineation between the upper and lower levels and the rationale behind the separation.
In conclusion, a great deal of tension and contrast between “dark” and “light” in The Inferno helps us to explore Dante’s self portrait—he fears dangerous desires and sinful darkness, but shows much courage and hope towards life since he nevertheless follows his guide Virgil to dive into horrible Hell. As shown in Canto I, such emotional reaction to dark and light symbols lays a great foundation for developing Dante’s broad and universal traits as his journey progresses.
Dante, the main character and the hero of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy found himself alone in the woods he was thirty-five years old and terribly frightened. “I had become so sleepy at the moment when I first strayed, leaving the path of the trut...