Inferno
Essays

An Analysis of the Impact of the Black Death on Western Society

This study examines William Blake's relation to Emanuel Swedenborg, and in particular how their respective considerations of heaven and hell relate to human expression or repression. Blake takes some inspiration from Swedenborg but condemns the latter's tendency to reiterate dogma and moral codes. In contrast to Swedenborg, Blake celebrates human expression and desire as a means of attaining a greater knowledge of the universe and the means for ensuring human happiness.

Dante knew that the best way to make a point was to use examples that were real and, more than anything, something to which people could relate. In the "Inferno," Dante uses real characters to illustrate what it means…

The concept of Autonomy in "Paradise Lost"

The cliche saying, "a picture is worth a thousand words," is true in a great many circumstances, but in the case of many great works of literature it seems that the opposite is true, and that a few carefully selected…

Dante is characterized as a sort of foolish, blundering figure because he lost his path to God through sin. By giving into sin, this caused him to act foolish enough to lose himself as well.

Ben Jonson is a writer who was deeply influenced by earlier novels in both themes and structures. In the opening of the Prologue to Volpone, the play of interest in this paper, Jonson invokes Horace and Aristotle,…

Goodness According to Aristotle and Alighieri

Reading Revelation: A Revelation in and of Itself

Alessandro Manzoni's only novel The Betrothed is a national institution in Italy and second in popularity in this history of Italian literature only to Dante's Divine Comedy. He was a liberal nationalist from an aristocratic family and a leading supporter of the reunification (Risorgimento) of Italy. His novel is set in Lombardy in 1628-31 and was in fact a call for liberation from foreign rule, which was still the norm in the fragmented Italy of the 1820s. Manzoni had been an unbeliever as a young man, but later rejoined the church and became very devout, which is why he took Dante seriously and incorporated themes and images from his work into The Betrothed. He believed in sin, salvation and damnation, and the power of conversion experiences that both he and the characters in his story underwent. Dante was also from the aristocracy and his family opposed the imperial party in Florence that was allied with the Holy Roman emperors, although he was not a liberal or nationalist in the modern sense.