Dantes Divine Comedy Essays - Literature, Divine Comedy, Fiction

Dante's Divine Comedy Essays - Literature, Divine Comedy, Fiction Dante's Divine Comedy In Dante's Divine Comedy, Dante incorporates Virgil's portrayal of Hades from The Aeneid into his poem, and similarities between the Inferno and Hades can be drawn, however Dante wasn't attempting to duplicate Virgil's works. Although the Hell depicted in Dante's Inferno is essentially based on the literary construction of the underworld found in Virgil's Aeneid, in their particulars the two kingdoms are quite different. Virgil's underworld is largely undifferentiated, and Aeneas walks through it without taking any particular notice of the landscape or the quality of suffering that takes place among the dead. Aeneas' first concern is with the fate of his friends, then with meeting his father once more: the philosophical and religious significance of sin and death is nothing to him, and there is no moral judgement implied in the fate of the departed. In Dante's Inferno, on the other hand, there is a systematic differentiation of the landscape, and each progressively lower circle of he ll implies a deadlier sin. The quality of punishment given out to the sinners is thus increased as Dante's descend, and Dante's compassion for the dead lessens as he moves downward to the bottom of hell. Virgil's underworld is really an extension of the natural world, being entered through a cave mouth at the end of a beach at the Euboian settlement of Cumae, renowned as the dwelling of Sibyl, it is she who permits his passage to the realm below: The cavern was profound, wide-mouthed and huge, Rough underfoot, defended by dark pool And gloomy forest. Overhead, flying things Could never take their way, such deathly Exhalations rose from the black gorge Into the dome of heaven.(Fitzgerald, p168) Virgil's first descriptions of the underworld are dramatic and turbulent, and there is even a series of symbolic fates that are medieval in their abstraction: And pale Diseases and sad Age are there. And Dread, and Hunger that sways men to crime. And sordid want in shapes to affright the eves And Death and Toil and Death's own brother, Sleep(Fitzgerald, p.169) But once Aeneas gets past these figures, and the on rushing horde of the dead and dying at the boatman's shore, the underworld turns out to be relatively calm and stable setting. There are some further similarities between Virgil's and Dante's hells, no doubt due to Dante's close reading of the Latin and his wish to make Virgil his guide and mentor. For example, there are periodic challenges to the living as they walk through hell, and the boatman warns Virgil, It breaks eternal law for the Stygian craft to carry living bodies. Virgil also conceived the idea of separating the dead infants wail in one area, the falsely accused and condemned in another, the suicides in yet another. But all Virgil's dead are condemned to the same hopeless fate, and it is only the memory of life which torments them. Conscious of this, Aeneas apologizes to Dido for deserting her at the behest of the gods; unfortunately, Dido repudiates him and joins Sychaeus, her former mate. A central concern of many of Aeneas encounters is whether or not the burial rituals have been carried out; the unburied are not even allowed to cross the River Styx, and those whose rituals have not been properly performed seem to suffer some kind of anguish on that account. The main purpose of Aeneas' visit to the underworld is to see his father, and the encounter with Anchises is one of the high points of the Aeneid. The basic distinction of Virgil's hell is that the elect are sent to the Blessed Groves, where, as one of them tells Virgil, We walk in shady groves, and bed on riverbanks and occupy green meadows fresh with streams. (Fitzgerald, p183) Here Aeneas meets Anchises, and his father gladly tells him about the great secrets of eternal life, and how those Souls for whom a second body is in store drink from the waters of forgetfulness. In Virgil's scheme, the virtuous dead are reborn through the device of cleansing their memories, thr ough a vague process of purification at Elysium. Most important of all, however, is the knowledge that the living Aeneas will go on to found Rome

Correct Use of the Adjective Reincarnate

Correct Use of the Adjective Reincarnate Correct Use of the Adjective Reincarnate Correct Use of the Adjective Reincarnate By Maeve Maddox The word reincarnate used as an adjective is extremely popular with writers who comment on politics and entertainment. Many of the ways in which the word is used, however, are questionable. First, some definitions. Incarnate is related to the Latin word for flesh (caro). To incarnate is to enter into a fleshly body. The Incarnation is the Christian doctrine that God inhabited a human body as Jesus. Pre-Christian belief included the belief that a god could walk the earth in human form. The religious concept of reincarnation is the belief that when a human body dies, the spirit that inhabited it is reborn into another body. As an adjective, incarnate often follows a noun and means in the flesh. Ex. Some regarded Hitler as the devil incarnate. Like incarnate, the adjective reincarnate is almost always placed after the noun it describes. Ex. Many believed that John the Baptist was Elijah reincarnate. As an adjective reincarnate means reincarnated. Here are some examples of reincarnate from the web. Some are used incorrectly. 1. Palin may well be Dick Cheney’s reincarnate. 2. The big question: Is G.W. Bush the reincarnate of our lord and savior? 3. Look at GOP’s embrace of Sarah Palin – a Bush reincarnate – as its future savior. 4. Bush essentially describes himself as a reincarnate of Harry Truman. 5. But what if shes pregnant with the Michael Jackson reincarnate? 6. I dont know anyone, liberal or conservative, that thinks Michelle Obama is some kind of Jackie Kennedy reincarnate. 7. Hoping in vain to be perceived as John F. Kennedy reincarnate, in the summer of 1999 Bill Clinton†¦ 8. From the beginning I have said that this hot young man must be Elvis reincarnate. 9. If Bush pardoned someone who re-offended, the Times would run 47 front page stories on the person and act like he was Son of Sam reincarnate. 10. Bush’s agenda to reincarnate NATO, inspired by the Wolfowitz document, is key to this oil strategy. Comments Items 1-5 use reincarnate as if it were a noun. The noun form is reincarnation. Corrections: Dick Cheney’s reincarnation (the possessive calls for a noun) the reincarnation of our lord and savior (the article the calls for a noun) a Bush reincarnation (the article a calls for a noun) a reincarnation of Harry Truman. (ditto) the reincarnation of Michael Jackson (see number 2.) NOTE: Strictly speaking, for a person to be somebody else reincarnate, the somebody in question should be dead. We can suggest that someone is Truman reincarnate, or Michael Jackson reincarnate, because Truman and Jackson are dead. In the case of the living, like Cheney and Bush, a play on the word clone might be more apt. To suggest that someone is a living person reincarnate conjures up the spooky idea of two spirits inhabiting one body. Items 6-8 use the adjective reincarnate correctly. Item 9 is iffy. In one sense Son of Sam is still alive in the person of lifer David Berkowitz. On the other hand, the murderer Son of Sam is presumably dead, i.e., off the streets. Son of Sam reincarnate works, but the writer could have come up with a murderer who, like the Wicked Witch of the East, is not only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead. Item 10 uses reincarnate as a verb. The questionable use here is not that NATO is not a fleshly body inhabitable by a spirit. Reincarnate and its forms are often used figuratively. Whats wrong here is that NATO never died. If NATO had been dissolved and then a new organization formed under a new name to include the old Soviet bloc, reincarnate would be appropriate. ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), for example, is busily reincarnating under various new names in the different states. Bottom line: dont confuse the post-positional adjective reincarnate with the noun reincarnation. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Misused Words category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:50 Synonyms for â€Å"Leader†Select vs. Selected10 Humorous, Derisive, or Slang Synonyms for â€Å"Leader† or â€Å"Official†