Classical Horror in Dante's Inferno
Classical Horror in Dante's Inferno XXVDante Alighieri's Inferno is a piece of classical literary horror, influenced primarily by the classical writers Ovid and Virgil. Alighieri, as a poet, refined the classic techniques of horror to an art.[01] A shrewd and imaginative poet, he used graphic images to appease the appetite of the common reader while not neglecting their need for imaginative cultivation. His unique blend of image and substance is demonstrated best in two cantos in the Inferno, Canto XIII (The Wood of the Suicides) and Canto XXV (The Den of the Snake-Thieves), and it is in these two cantos that we see Alighieri as the master of the art of horror. In discussing Alighieri's technique of creating horror in these two cantos, one would also note that he was greatly influenced by the image-evoking techniques of Ovid, Virgil, and other classical poets. Canto XXV is the second of two cantos in this part of hell, the den of thieves. It is important to realize Aliqhieri's poetic motives for creating a torture for petty thieves as painful and grotesque as this one. Fraud, as Virgil explained in canto XI, is a basic degeneracy of God's gift of intelligence for private gain. Theft, being a type of fraud, is, in Alighieri's
As when one grafts a twig on some tree, he sees the branches grow one, and with common life come to maturity, so were these two bodies knit in close embrace: they were no longer two, nor such as to be called, one f woman, and one, man. ' He tried to say more, but suddenly his tongue divided into two parts - though he wished to speak words failed him: whenever he made an attempt to lament his fate, he hissed. His epic narrative journey, although consisting of three parts, is mostly remembered for the Inferno. At the end of these two encounters, we can see the effect that it has had on Dante. Upon viewing Ovid's story we can see the clear similarities and differences between Alighieri's and his: As he was speaking, his body did indeed begin to stretch into the long belly of a snake; his skin hardened, and turned black in color, and he felt scales forming on it, while blue-green spots appeared, to brighten its sombre hue. After this revolting change of bodies, Alighieri adds a bit of humor to signify the end of the terror, almost to let us off the hook. First, the "smoke" of their souls meet and mix together; in doing so, they "answered each other" (XXV, 103). H!e writes: "And so I saw the seventh ballast change / and rechange [mutare and transmutare]; may the strangeness plead for me / if there's been some confusion in my pen" (XXV, 142-144). As horrifying as it is, Alighieri's transformation of Agnello and Cianfa was probably influenced by Ovid's Metamorphosis. Their heads join together, then extremities appear while others disappear, so that, in the end, it is a new lifeform, unlike any thing else in the world or beyond it. It is ironic that Alighieri portrays the thief as similar to the serpent in nature: as the thief uses his stealth and cunning to steal material goods, the snake uses his guile and deceit to kill. As we can see, Alighieri's style is very different. The man, Cianfa Donati, now a hideous six-footed serpent-monster, attacks Agnello Brunelleschi.
Common topics in this essay:
Ovid's Metamorphosis,
Mercury Hermaphroditus,
Guercio Cavalcante,
Fraud Virgil,
Agnello Brunelleschi,
Dante Alighieri,
Truly Longfellow,
Virgil Alighieri,
I'd Buoso,
Den Snake-Thieves,
transformation act,
effect dante,
ovid virgil,
canto xxv,
alighieri's style,
influenced primarily,
metamorphosis story,
ovid's metamorphosis,
|
Acceptance Essays
