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Homosexuality has been a controversial topic for hundreds of years now and has grown in awareness and acceptance over time. Past mentions of the subject can even be seen in older works of literature and art although it was not easily found because of the lack of understanding or “Androgynous” context, according to author, John Boswell author of, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality. It was not until the past 50 or so years that same sex marriage and gay rights began to make a huge up rise and today is seen as common and for the most part socially acceptable. So my question would be if Dante were alive today would sodomy still be in the seventh circle of hell under homicide and suicide or in hell at all and should it have been in the first place?
Dante’s Devine Comedy was published in 1555; a time where homosexuality was around but had not been socially acceptable by any means. During this time the Catholic Church had a strong influence on peoples’ beliefs, which included thoughts on homosexuality. The history of homosexuality in the Bible may begin with Genesis 9:2-24, in which many Christian scholars believe that Ham, the youngest son of Noah, committed a homosexual act on his father, while the latter was asleep, having been overcome with wine. It was thought that the idolizing of false gods or the devils influence caused acts of homosexuality.
One of the most important figures in Dante's life and in the Divine Comedy is Brunetto Latini, placed among the sodomites of the Inferno. With the time period being the way it was, and having homosexuality be completely unacceptable and never talked about and religiously speaking sodomy would be enough to place you ...
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...uality, bestiality, and self-pleasure would be put into Hell together in the same circle just in different rings. But also Dante would have to accept that homosexuality will soon be accepted across the nation and those who read this book in the future will not understand how it was ever put into any part of hell and question his reasoning. Literature is an important part of our lives and history and as time moves on and ideals change it will give the ones reading it a chance to analyze and understand the context themselves.
Works Cited
Boswell, John. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980. Print.
Boswell, John E. "Dante and the Sodomites." JSTOR. Dante Society of America, n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2013.
Dante, Alighieri, and Mark Musa. Dante's Inferno: The Indiana Critical Edition. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1995. Print.
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno. Trans. Allen Mandelbaum. Notes Allen Mandelbaum and Gabriel Marruzzo. New York: Bantam Books, 1980
God states that we treat each other with the love he gives to us as individuals; while us stating violent acts against love, fraud constituting a corruption and, greed becoming normal thing amongst people defines everything god had envisioned for mankind. Yet, while Inferno implies these moral arguments, it generally states very little about them. Dante discusses with each of the souls in the different circles of hell although it is not truly stated as to why they are specifically in that circle. Only because God justifies there sin belonged there. In the end, it declares that evil is evil, simply because it contradicts God’s will and justification, and since God is God, he thus does not need to be questioned about his morals. Dante’s journey of evil progressed as he winded down the depths of hell pitiless and was driven to make it to purgatory. Inferno is not the normal text that most people would read, then think about how it relates to todays morals; its intention is not to think about the evil discussed but, rather to emphasize the Christian beliefs that Dante followed through his journey.
In analyzing this gradient of morality, it is useful first to examine a work from early literature whose strong purity of morality is unwavering; for the purposes of this discussion, Dante’s Inferno provides this model. It is fairly straightforward to discover Dante’s dualistic construction of morality in his winding caverns of Hell; each stern, finite circle of Hell is associated with a clear sin that is both definable and directly punishable. As Dante moves downwards in this moral machination, he notes that
No doubt deviant sex is almost as old as the race. There are few innovations in moral weakness. What is new is the homosexual ideology which has made devastating inroads into the Church from the ambient culture. One is made to believe that recalling the Church's teaching is an uncharitable act and that the Christian thing to do is to act as if sodomy were as normal as marital sex. Of course it is scarcely a defense of homosexuality to point out that many people commit sexual sins. The tu quoque here is singularly inappropriate. We began with the observation that we are all sinners. The question is, what next?
In the Inferno we follow the journey of Dante as he wanders off the path of moral truth and into Hell. The Virgin Mary and Santa Lucia ask Beatrice, Dante’s deceased love, to send some help. Thus, Virgil comes to the rescue and essentially guides Dante through Hell and back to the mortal world from which he came. However, things begin to seem kind of odd. When reading the Inferno one may begin to question the way Dante describes Hell and the things that occur within, or even the things we have always believed about Hell. Despite the way it is described and well known in western civilization, Hell is not at all how we expect it to be because of Dante's use of irony throughout this poetic masterpiece.
...ards monstrous figures and sympathy towards those who seem to be tortured unjustly. In his perverse education, with instruction from Virgil and the shades, Dante learns to replace mercy with brutality, because sympathy in Hell condones sin and denies divine justice. The ancient philosopher Plato, present in the first level of Hell, argues in The Allegory of the Cave that truth is possible via knowledge of the Form of the Good. Similarly, Dante acquires truth through a gradual understanding of contrapasso and the recognition of divine justice in the afterlife. Ultimately, Dante recognizes that the actions of the earthly fresh are important because the soul lives on afterwards to face the ramifications. By expressing his ideas on morality and righteousness, Dante writes a work worth reading, immortalizes his name, and exalts the beliefs of his Christian audience.
Moreover, Dante, the narrator of the Inferno, has succeeded in not only telling the frightening story of the Inferno, but also pointing out the importance of the relationship between human’s sins and God’s retribution, using the monsters as the symbols for each kind of sin and its punishment throughout the progress of the story, which teaches his readers to be well aware of their sins through the literature – a part of humanities; the disciplines that teach a man to be a human.
Dante Alighieri presents a vivid and awakening view of the depths of Hell in the first book of his Divine Comedy, the Inferno. The reader is allowed to contemplate the state of his own soul as Dante "visits" and views the state of the souls of those eternally assigned to Hell's hallows. While any one of the cantos written in Inferno will offer an excellent description of the suffering and justice of hell, Canto V offers a poignant view of the assignment of punishment based on the committed sin. Through this close reading, we will examine three distinct areas of Dante's hell: the geography and punishment the sinner is restricted to, the character of the sinner, and the "fairness" or justice of the punishment in relation to the sin. Dante's Inferno is an ordered and descriptive journey that allows the reader the chance to see his own shortcomings in the sinners presented in the text.
Despite the obvious flaws of Dante himself, he does give a clear vision of how punishments will be taken forth in the afterlife. He gives reason to fear and respect the law of God lest eternal punishment be your only promise in the afterlife. These punishments are as relevant as can be, so he offers a very vivid picture of hell. The men that he puts in hell give it a realistic twist, enhancing the fear that is felt upon reading this work
It is hard to place St. Augustine within just one of the levels of Dante’s hell for his sins were varied and not great. Today many of his sins are commonplace. For example, most people attempt to better their own lives without regard of others. They attempt to increase their standard of living and gain more worldly possessions. They are neither good nor evil but are just trying to make a living and keep up in today’s fend-for-yourself society. Before Augustine’s conversion, this was his goal. He was continually searching for “honors, money, (and) marriage” (Confessions, 991). This allows Augustine to be placed in the first area of hell, the Vestibule. It is a place for opportunists such as Augustine was before his conversion. It is a place for the “nearly soulless. . . who were neither for God nor Satan, but only for themselves” (Inferno, 1295). Augustine never intentionally hurt anyone, but his actions were led by his instincts to succeed and gain praise. These actions included kissing up to the Emperor, his study of law and the art of persuasion, and the mocking of newcomers to his profession. Since each of these sins also falls within a different realm of Dante’s hell, they will be discussed later in this paper.
To assume that norms from one place to another are the same is very dangerous to do because everything and everyone is different on how they handle and see things. This is shown on how sexuality is seen in today’s world vs. Caravaggio’s time. It could be said that Caravaggio when arriving in Rome that he noticed the norms and how society functioned within the high class was involved around the pleasure of sexuality when associated with the norms. Rocke, Ruggiero, and Gallucci pointed out that sexual relations between men and boys in Florence adhered to strict, ridged codes of behavior around the twin axes of power and gender (Gallucci 38). This is noticed with Caravaggio when he was working for Cardinal Del Monte, in which exposed Caravaggio to appreciate and love boys and young men. This was due to his high social ranking in
Dante’s Inferno presents the reader with many questions and thought provoking dialogue to interpret. These crossroads provide points of contemplation and thought. Dante’s graphic depiction of hell and its eternal punishment is filled with imagery and allegorical meanings. Examining one of these cruxes of why there is a rift in the pits of hell, can lead the reader to interpret why Dante used the language he did to relate the Idea of a Just and perfect punishment by God.
Alighieri, Dante. "The Inferno." The Divine Comedy. Trans. John Ciardi. New York: First New American Library Printing, 2003.
...ion. Dante cites now-historical and mythological figures to exemplify the sins and to make for the better understanding of sin to even the most inept of readers. This work stands alongside The Bible as one of the greatest religious-literary masterpieces of all time.
Dante eventually makes it out of hell and travels to heaven, but he really was not deserving of it seeing as he committed multiple sins along the way. Dante did this to the sinners themselves but considering how strictly kept they are for everyone else assumably it would work the same for him. One occasion of his sinful behavior is while he is traveling through styx the circle of the wrathful in which he encounters one of the sinful (an old enemy) and says “Master it would suit my whim to see the wretch scrubbed down into the swill before we leave”(81). While amidst the wrathful Dante ironically, but viciously, lashes out, being wrathful himself. While he is bru...