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Dante's whole literary work
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Close reading of dantes divine comedy
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Dante varies his presentation greatly throughout Malebolge. Each bolgia has its own particular atmosphere, and the abrupt tonal and structural shifts between them make the move from bolgia to bolgia a medley of styles and techniques. But no shift is so striking as that between the eighth and ninth, in which the reader leaves a bolgia marked by two eloquent, searching dramatic monologues for one characterized by pithy, epigrammatic comments. The heroic exhortation of Ulysses and the sinuous self-revelation of Guido da Montefeltro give way to the truncated, compressed rhetoric of Mohammed, Pier da Medicina, Mosca, and Bertran de Born. The earlier bolgia begs for psychological readings; the latter frustrates them.
The structures of these cantos present a similar incongruity. Ulysses and Guido are given ample opportunity for leisurely expansion, and their stories have a smooth development and denouement. Each is the absolute star of his canto, and Dante records both their coming and going with reverent attention. Inferno XXVIII, however, presents a rapid succession of scenes, and the cuts between them are as savage and inexorable as those delivered by the devil to the damned. The canto seems unified only by Dante's desire to present the contrapasso in as many ways as he can. Those who sowed discord in life are hewn in imaginative ways __ Mohammed split from chin to anus, Ali sliced from chin to hairline, Pier da Medicina clipped and nicked in different places, Curio's tongue hacked out, Mosca's arms lopped off, and Bertran de Born neatly decapitated __ a near Baroque variation on a single theme. One horror follows on the heels of another, and each permutation replaces the memory of the earlier one.
Despite this profusion in the particulars of the punishments, the structure of the twenty-eighth canto is relentlessly schematic. The canto can be easily divided into six compact episodes, four of which are fundamentally identical __ even somewhat repetitive. The canto begins with a familiar epic gesture: the ineffability topos. Dante despairs of ever doing justice to what he must describe (vv. 1-6):
Chi poria mai pur con parole sciolte
dicer del sangue e de le piaghe a pieno
ch'i' ora vidi, per narrar più volte?
Ogne lingua per certo verria meno
per lo nostro sermone e per la mente
Jacoff, Rachel and Jeffrey T. Schnapp. The Poetry of Allusion: Virgil and Ovid in Dante’s Commedia. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1991.
A majority of these individuals are linked through commonalities of their childhood as well as their personality traits and behaviors. The serial murderer’s personality is an intricate recipe of biological, environmental and social circumstances. Though early abuse can cause feelings of aggression and delinquency, childhood experiences alone cannot be to blame. Many people are abused early on as children, and never become killers. Similarly, biological issues, such as brain abnormalities, as we as certain personality disorders would not individually create a murderer. Rather, a distinctive combination of psychological issues, impairments in the brain, and personality disorders help mold a brutal serial killer. Killers cannot be simply born into this world, but under the right circumstances, they will be created.
The Divine Comedy, written in the 14th century by Dante Alighieri, is a heroic epic. Throughout Dante’s literary work, he outlines his scientific understandings of the world, his political views and provides the reader with a moral compass and spiritual map of which to follow. This poem is written in three parts, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradisio, each of which is broken down into individual cantos. Inferno includes 34 cantos, whereas Purgatrio and Paradiso each contain 33 cantos, however, the first canto of Inferno is really an introduction to the poem.
College students are often classified as “party animals,” but these students are most under the legal drinking age when starting college. Students are drinking under the legal age; therefore, they must accept the adult consequences for trying to take adult actions. Lowering the drinking age would show how easily our government is persuaded to choose a side in controversial issues. If the drinking age was lowered, student’s grades would start to drop and the student’s drop-out rate would rise tremendously. Students in this generation have plenty of distractions that take them away from fully focusing on school; therefore, if the age was lowered, students would only worry about the next party instead of their next class. Also, excessive amounts of alcohol have been proven to kill vital brain cells, and brain cells do not replicate like other cells within the body. The brain is not fully developed until age twenty-one, so an eighteen year old should not be killing brain cells necessary for everyday communication and decision making. In order for students to excel, they need minimal stress and minimal distractions. Alcohol will only increase stress and increase distractions, so students should refrain from any type of alcohol related activity. Keeping the drinking age at age twenty-one will result in more successful, responsible
Many studies suggest that there are significant differences in the brain between individuals who possess antisocial personality disorder (psychopathy). While not all people who possess an antisocial personality disorder will become serial killers, every serial killer studied has an antisocial personality disorder; “Neuropsychological testing revealed abnormalities in all subjects tested” (Blake, Pincus, and Buckner 1642). Brain injury, brain abnormalities, or mental illness affects all the serial killers tested. Even if all serial killers had some type of abnormality in the brain, would that mean that they were doomed to become a serial killer? According to the experimental findings discussed in Neurologic Abnormalities in Murderers; 64.5% of serial killers have a frontal lobe dysfunction and 29% have temporal lobe abnormalities. The frontal lobes of the brain “control the essence of our human...
“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.
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.
In circle three of Inferno, Dante conjures a despairing tone by use of vivid imagery and extensive detail to display the harrowing effects of gluttony. This is best exemplified through the weather patterns and general landscape of this circle, the Poets’ encounter with Cerberus, and Dante’s conversation with Ciacco, the Hog. These devices also allow for the conveying of ideas embedded within the text.
Movement is a crucial theme of the Divine Comedy. From the outset, we are confronted with the physicality of the lost Dante, wandering in the perilous dark wood. His movement within the strange place is confused and faltering; `Io non so ben ridir com'io v'entrai'. Moreover, it is clear that the physical distress he is experiencing is the visible manifestation of the mental anguish the poet is suffering. The allegory of the image is one of mid-life crisis, but it is physically represented by the man losing his way in a dark wood. Such an observation may seem far too simple and obvious to be worthy of comment. However, I would argue that it is from this primary example of the deep connection between the physical and the mental, that one can begin to categorise and explain the varying types of movement in the work. The first section of this essay will be a close analysis of several important moments of physical activity or the absence of such. The final section will be an overview of the whole and a discussion of the general structure of the Comedy, how movement is governed and the implications of this.
By 1978, roughly thirty women were dead and mutilated by the same man with little explanation as to why. Ted Bundy, one of the most infamous serial killers in history brutally took the lives of numerous women for seemingly no reason at all. His justification for these murders was simply that he felt like committing them. A serial killer is defined as someone who has killed more than three people over a period of a month or more for seemingly no reason at all. Most serial killers have no real motive for killing; for them it is an urge that they must satisfy. Was Ted Bundy and others like him always a violent psychopath or did certain events cause him to behave this way? One common belief is that abusive childhoods and other environmental factors are the main reason serial killers develop the way they do. The other belief is that serial killers are born with an innate desire to kill. The answer to this question lies within both arguments and there is no secret serial killer formula. Serial Killers are neither born nor made; instead many factors, both biological and psychological, contribute to the making of these destructive monsters.
In spite of the “pleasing human traits” of some of the sinners, Hollander argues that “we are never authorized by the poem” to truly sympathise with the sinners, because Dante insists on God’s justice (106,107). Indeed, inscribed over the gates of hell is “Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore” (Sacred justice moved my architect, III,4).
Dante’s work Inferno is a vivid walkthrough 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.
Dante's "Inferno" is full of themes. But the most frequent is that of the weakness of human nature. Dante's descent into hell is initially so that Dante can see how he can better live his life, free of weaknesses that may ultimately be his ticket to hell. Through the first ten cantos, Dante portrays how each level of his hell is a manifestation of human weakness and a loss of hope, which ultimately Dante uses to purge and learn from. Dante, himself, is about to fall into the weaknesses of humans, before there is some divine intervention on the part of his love Beatrice, who is in heaven. He is sent on a journey to hell in order for Dante to see, smell, and hear hell. As we see this experience brings out Dante's weakness' of cowardice, wrath and unworthiness. He is lead by Virgil, who is a representation of intellect. Through Dante's experiences he will purge his sins.
In terms of structure, Canto I functions as an introduction, explaining the two major characters and the motivation of their journey. Dante portrays himself as the protagonist and speaks in the first person from a subjective perspective. Through the establishment of such a strong voice, readers are given clear insight into his emotions and motivations. He strikes the contrast between "dark" and "light" to strengthen that he fears the dark and sinful desires within himself but he pursues the hope of light at the same time, which is the key of his spiritual journey. To symbolize the dark side, Dante illustrates his encounter with three beasts while the rescue from Virgil signifies the light side. The image of “light” and “dark” as well as their allegorical meanings is shown through these lively imageries, rich metaphors and strong voice in order to pre...