Dante’s Poem of Fire

2020 ◽  
pp. 299-323
Author(s):  
Emma Gee

In Dante’s Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy), the journey through the universe represents the integration of the human intellect into the cosmos as it was envisaged at the fourteenth-century apogee of the Classical worldview. The cosmic ladder of Dante’s work stretches fully from the top to the bottom of that universe. Characteristically of afterlife narratives, there are two types of space in Dante’s Commedia. The universe that is traversed in Dante’s journey is also set forth in a revelatory vision toward the end of the work, at Paradiso XXVIII. In our final chapter, we concentrate on this vision, which is both a culmination of the afterlife vision we’ve seen elsewhere in the book, and a departure from it. Whereas the vision we see earlier is a vehicle toward psychic harmonization, the vision in Dante explores not merely the need for psychic harmonization but the difficulties of it. This is done through a series of complexifying and interlocking images, of mirror and reflection, music, rhythm and note. All of these images fall short in expressing the goal of harmony of soul and universe. Psychic harmonization can only be achieved, finally, at the price of silence. When the soul is harmonized with the universe, it is undifferentiated from it. We can no longer speak of the universe as of something outside ourselves. Thus Dante’s poem falls silent.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Giovanni Vito Distefano

ABSTRACT: Le Grandi Parodie Disney dei classici della letteratura costituiscono un’originale e intensa impresa creativa, cominciata nel 1949 con L’Inferno di Topolino e ancora oggi portata avanti con successo dagli autori Disney italiani. L’articolo si concentra sui procedimenti adattivi alla base delle Parodie, privilegiando quelli che investono in prima battuta l’elemento narrativo del personaggio. Il close reading condotto sull’Inferno di Topolino, parodia antesignana e manifesto dell’intero corpus, permette di osservare come sul personaggio della parodia si giochi in larga misura il mix di intertestualità e serialità che, con una considerevole prevalenza della seconda sulla prima, caratterizza questi adattamenti. In conclusione, si mostra come le risorse espressive e semantiche del personaggio seriale non solo comportino l’immediata riconoscibilità della parodia, ma sostengano significative innovazioni di ordine tematico-ideologico rispetto all’opera dantesca e coraggiose prese di posizione sull’importanza del fumetto seriale nel sistema culturale contemporaneo.Parole chiave: Grandi Parodie Disney. personaggio seriale. Intertestualità. Divina Commedia. Topolino. Resumo: Le Grandi Parodie Disney dos clássicos da literatura constituem um trabalho criativo original e intenso, que começou em 1949 com o Inferno de Mickey e ainda hoje é apresentado com sucesso por autores italianos da Disney. O artigo enfoca os procedimentos adaptativos subjacentes às paródias, privilegiando aquelas que envolvem, principalmente, o elemento narrativo do personagem. A leitura atenta realizada em O Inferno de Mickey, precursor da paródia e presente em todo o corpus, permite-nos observar como a mistura de intertextualidade e serialidade desempenha, em grande medida, o caráter da paródia que, com uma prevalência considerável do segundo sobre o primeiro, caracteriza essas adaptações. Desse modo, observa-se como os recursos expressivos e semânticos do personagem serial não só levam ao reconhecimento imediato da paródia, mas também sustentam significativas inovações temático-ideológicas no que diz respeito à obra de Dante e às posturas corajosas sobre a importância dos quadrinhos seriados no sistema cultural contemporâneo.Palavras-chave: Grandi Parodie Disney. Personagem serial. Intertextualidade. Divina Commedia. Mickey Mouse. ABSTRACT: The Great Disney Parodies of the classics of literature are a major creative enterprise, begun in 1949 with L’Inferno di Topolino and still successfully carried out by Italian Disney authors today. The article investigates the adaptive procedures of the Parodies, with a special focus on those involving the pivotal narrative element of the character. From the close reading of L’Inferno di Topolino, the first parody to be written and a manifesto of the entire corpus, it is possible to observe how the mix of intertextuality and seriality which distinguishes these adaptations hinges largely on the expressive and semantic resources of Disney serial characters. In the conclusion, the main effects of the prevailing of seriality over intertextuality are discussed, showing how it makes for the immediate recognizability of the parody, supports significant thematic-ideological innovations with respect to Dante's work, and allows for courageous metaliterary assertion on the importance of serial comics in the contemporary cultural system.Keywords: Grandi Parodie Disney. Serial character. Intertextuality. Divine Comedy. Mickey Mouse.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 1135-1136
Author(s):  
Raffaella Bianucci ◽  
Philippe Charlier ◽  
Antonio Perciaccante ◽  
Otto Appenzeller ◽  
Donatella Lippi

Italica ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 411
Author(s):  
Fabian R. Alfie ◽  
Dante Alighieri ◽  
Stanley Appelbaum

Author(s):  
Станислав Борзых ◽  
Stanislav Borzykh

This book is devoted to the issues of the uniqueness of matter, life and consciousness - or mind. Despite the fact that we are taught to look at the world around us through the prism of this concept, in reality it is much more prosaic than it is customary to think. Neither the universe settings that allow the matter to take place, nor the complex machinery of a living cell that leads to the emergence of a new phenomenon in physical reality, nor even the human intellect, which we believe is the apex of evolution, cannot be recognized as something special and unique. Those laws and norms that allow all this to happen belong to this world and they are by it constituted, and therefore are not something outstanding and surprising. The infinity of the universe makes any talk that all of the above is unique and original meaningless and futile. On the contrary, there are good reasons to think that life, reason, and whatever else in what we see the uniqueness of both the world and ourselves, are an inevitable consequence of those processes that are observed in physical reality. Moreover, they were both predictable and expected. This paper shows that all these phenomena are trivial and relatively simple. We were just lucky players in the lottery, which somewhere necessarily had to lead to a win, and exactly this we are observing around. Much more experiments have ended in nothing, and this makes our case far less interesting than it seems to us. In dry residue, neither being, nor life, nor reason is something amazing, but all that is just banal.


Elements ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Aste

<span style="font-family: mceinline;">A <span style="font-family: mceinline;">time o<span style="font-family: mceinline;">f <span style="font-family: mceinline;">great musical development, the fourteenth century is the per<span style="font-family: mceinline;">fect back<span style="font-family: mceinline;">drop for the auditory all<span style="font-family: mceinline;">usions of <span style="font-family: mceinline;">Dante Alighieri's <em>Divi</em><span style="font-family: mceinline;"><em>ne Comedy</em>. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>This article argues that Dante utilizes musical imagery as an essential component of his allegory. Influenced by both Christian thinkers and philosophers, Dante likely viewed scholastic music as an adjunct of religion. In the Divine Comedy, therefore, Dante presents auditory allusions as an inextricable factor of the protagonist's epic pilgrimage through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Through a progression of anti-music in Inferno to human context in Purgatory to the music of the spheres in Paradise, this essay explores how the musical langauge of Dante's <em>Divine Comedy</em> conveys humanity's innate connection with God.


PMLA ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 452-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward P. Vargo

The Centaur is a complete ritual, a patterned ceremony of word and action in which Peter Caldwell celebrates his former experiences with his father. The explicit use of the Greek Chiron-myth serves the functions of comedy, a sign of Caldwell's estrangement from the Olinger aristocrats, and a quality of Peter's memories. What sustained Peter during the three days that he spent in town with his father was his adolescent myth of Art, the City, and the Future, by which he hoped to answer the tyranny of time and the inevitability of death. Now, in his atheist maturity, with that myth tarnished, he must depend upon a reenactment of his father's sacrifices for him, another myth that enables him to face the transcendent questions of time, life, and death. Man is presented as a creature in the middle, a participant in the conceivable and the inconceivable, a mediator between heaven and earth. The ritual actions of The Centaur—notably the lectures on the universe by Caldwell and Chiron, the obituary, and George's acceptance of life in the final chapter— serve as actions of communion or as actions against death in an atmosphere of the Barthian visibilia et itwisibilia.


2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Ansell-Pearson

In this essay I focus on the text Creative Evolution (1907) and show that although Bergson intended to make a contribution to the science of biology and to the philosophy of life, the primary aim of the text is to show the need for a fundamental reformation of philosophy. Bergson wants to show how, through an appreciation of the evolution of life, philosophy can expand our perception of the universe. I examine in detail the two essential claims he makes in the text: first, that we have to see the theory of knowledge and the theory of life as deeply related; second, that there is a need to “think beyond the human condition” or human state. Indeed, Bergson conceives philosophy as the discipline that “raises us above the human condition” and makes the effort to “surpass” it. This reveals itself to be something of an extraordinary endeavour since it means bringing the human intellect into rapport with other kinds of consciousness. Moreover, if we do not place our thinking about the nature, character, and limits of knowledge within the context of the evolution of life then we risk uncritically accepting the concepts that have been placed at our disposal. It means we think within pre-existing frames. We need, then, to ask two questions: first, how has the human intellect evolved?, and second, how can we enlarge and go beyond the frames of knowledge available to us?


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-65
Author(s):  
Maria Maślanka-Soro

“Non vide mei di me chi vide il vero”: L’art “verace” in the circle of proud as a mise en abyme of Dante’s art in the Comedy The purpose of this study is to discuss the problem of meta-poetic themes in the Divine Comedy, focusing in particular on the relationship between God’s art and Dante’s art in the context of the impression caused by the sight of the rock reliefs in the cornice of the proud in the Purgatorio, where the poet, presenting and imitating the art of God, in fact shows the mastery of his own art. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the examples of humility and pride carved on the walls and the rock path – the perfect work of God-the Artist, vibrant with life and called by Dante visibile parlare – are, on the one hand, a mise en abyme of its macroscopic version, which is the Universe created by him, and, on the other hand, a mise en abyme of the universe narrated with the simile perfection by Dante.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 227-238
Author(s):  
Marino Alberto Balducci

The sacrilege of Vanni Fucci, the beast of Pistoia, in the Divine Comedy This hermeneutic analysis presents a reflection on the complex nature of the concept of theft in the Christian world, compared to the pagan one. The author develops the idea of the desperate blasphemy of the infernal prisoner as a form of unconscious prayer. Vanni Fucci from Pistoia, the sacrilegious and blasphemous character of Dante’s Inferno, is analyzed by referring to the fundamental difference between the classical and medieval philosophical perception of metamorphosis as a symbol.


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