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Dante's Inferno And The Heroic Quest
Like Homer's "The Odyssey," and "The Iliad," Dante's "The Inferno" begins with a kind of god's eye view of the world. However, rather than the gods looking down and squabbling about the morality of humans they see, Dante begins with his hero's face-to-face encounter with the divine, or at least a representative of the divine, the pagan poet Virgil. Virgil will be the poet's first guide through the world of the dead. Virgil is a pagan and thus cannot enter the Christian version of heaven, so he will guide Dante through "The Inferno." Virgil cannot enter heaven even though he is a 'good' pagan because he is being punished for being born before Jesus came to teach and suffer upon the earth. The good pagans are punished for being able to envision nothing beyond the existence of Homer's gods, essentially.
The hero of Dante's quest, however, is not an abstract 'he' but the poet himself.
Unlike Virgil's own "Aeneid," and Homer's epics, where the poet appears mainly to invoke the muse, it is...
There is a geographical meandering as occurs in Homer's "Odyssey," but the protagonist's own spiritual development, after being in a wood, wandering and lost, is the ultimate focus of interest in "The Inferno." Although both Odysseus and Dante strive homeward, and have a divine intermediary (for Dante in the form of Virgil and for Odysseus, Athena) to help them in their quest, Dante does not experience a physical reward at the end, of a wife and a kingdom. Rather the benefits for Dante are spiritual in nature and comes to his heart and mind through understanding.
Like the titular, nationalist hero of the anonymous author of "Beowulf," thus Dante as a poet must slay a kind of beast. But the beast that must be slain exists within the poet's own spirit and mind, rather than anything that exists in the outside world. The monsters Dante sees as he descends lower and lower…
Heaney's translation may seem a little more indirect since it is in verse, and given from an objective perspective but the message stays the same in both texts. Thus, Beowulf replies to Unferth's challenge by giving this time his own account of his sea experiences and the way in which he had defeated all the monsters. First of all, in both texts Beowulf begins by returning the mockery and
" (Ibid) Reflecting on Hall's revelation of Gardner's interpreting Beowulf's in terms of "the Three Ages, in which "youth is identified with the irascible part, middle age with concupiscence, and old age with the search for wisdom." Biblical comparisons include: Youth: "Foolishness [is] bound in the heart of a child..." Proverbs 25:15. (Blue Letter Bible) Middle Age: "The glory of young men [is] their strength..." Proverbs 20: 29. (Ibid) Old Age: And God
Beowulf, Grendel, and Grendel's Mother Monstrous? To be monstrous is to be something other than human, but monstrous means more than extraordinary; it is a term with a bad or evil connotation, so that those who are monstrous are not only outside of the realm of the average human being, but also outside of it in a negative way. In the novel Beowulf, one encounters three different characters who have
Beowulf: Examining Grendel One of the reasons that Beowolf is such a timeless text is because of the entrancing ambiguity of many of the characters described. Perhaps the most quixotic is Grendel, an entity which is described as monstrous, but which might not actually be a monster. This paper will discuss how Grendel in many respects embodies so many forms of all that is monstrous. However, when determining if Grendel is
Grendel And After that it's Elephants All the Way Done Wagner's Grendel is one of the most finely crafted pieces of postmodern fiction because it performs both of the functions with which postmodern literature is tasked. First, it is a work of literature that shines on its own, that offers a significant reward to the reader regardless of whether or not the reader is familiar with literary traditions. Second, the work addresses,
. Beowulf is an example of the perfect hero. He is selfless, in that he sacrifices his safety to save other people. He is also lonely, ironically as lonely as Grendel in his own way, as he waits for the monster he must kill alone in the hall. However, Beowulf is also tied in a network of social obligations to his lord and king, as he only agrees to fight Grendel