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Monday, January 27, 2014

Inferno Revealed: From Dante to Dan Brown

The Journey Continues



After my sabbatical hiatus and year in Italy,  I am back in Oklahoma with a full slate of classes and other professorial activities. As I return to reading and re-reading Dante and Boccaccio, listening to my students' impressions and novel interpretations of these two masters, I can refresh my blog with new material. Not living in Italy now, the material will be more focused on Dantean and Boccaccian takes on the New World, but don't be surprised to see Italian subjects appear. Follow my posts for some information, interpretation, and, most especially, entertainment.

PLEASE COMMENT ON ANY POST PAST OR PRESENT.


My first thoughts reach back to earlier posts in 2013 in which I discussed the advent of Dan Brown's new thriller: Inferno. From almost a year's distance, we can see that Brown's book was almost universally panned as poorly written, and yet, spent a good deal of the year on the top of many lists of bestsellers. None of this is surprising. Dan Brown himself spent part of May in Florence talking up his book in a series of events sponsored by the city itself to bring more tourists to town, as if they needed any goading… Some of my most esteemed Dantista colleagues took time from their intellectual labors to consider Dan Brown's book, with the entirely predictable conclusions that Dan Brown is an imbecilic idiot whose novel proves two things: he neither knows how to read or to write.

Robert Harrison's review in the New York Review of Books is an excellent example:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/oct/24/dante-most-vivid-version/?pagination=false

Harrison's criticisms of Dan Brown cannot be denied; indeed, I made some of the same in my first review of the book on this blog. However, another colleague took a different and, certainly, more original if not bold approach to Dan Brown's book. Deborah Parker, a scholar of Dante and the Italian Renaissance at the University of Virginia, co-authored with her husband, also a literature professor at UVA, a book that attempts to take Dan Brown's book for what its worth and to put Brown in context of other authors/painters/ musicians/ etc… who have used Dante to create their own art.

Inferno Revealed: From Dante to Dan Brown turns out to be a very useful guide for the reader of Dante as much as for the reader of Dan Brown's Dante. It is yet another effort by Professor Parker to make Dante more available to readers today. Her excellent website worldofdante.org has already been the subject of this blog and is cited by Dan Brown in the notes to his Inferno.

http://www.amazon.com/Inferno-Revealed-Dante-Dan-Brown/dp/1137279060/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390852020&sr=1-1&keywords=inferno+revealed

The first half of the book takes a rapid tour through Dante's Inferno giving the reader necessary and nuanced background on many of the important characters and episodes that have made the Inferno standard reading for 600 years. What is key here and what is most surprising is the rich detail of interpretation that the authors can fit into this study. I think most readers of Dante, forget about Dan Brown, would get a great deal of help from the authors' discussions in this book.

The second half of the book looks at the important legacy that Dante's vision of the afterlife had on poets/artists/ and musicians that have come after. The authors note that they will stick to English language uses of Dante, so we find Shakespeare, Milton, Pound, T.S. Eliot, and James Joyce treated with clear and concise sections. Then we look at popular or "lower" treatments of Dante in the contemporary graphic artist Sandow Birk's novel and subsequent animated feature based on Dante.

After all that the authors had accomplished in the first 2/3rds of the book, I found my self reading the Dan Brown sections at the end with a fair amount of skepticism. I have read Dan Brown's book, and I have noted, as others have, Dan Brown's errors, or to be more generous, "misprisions" of Dante. Thankfully, we do not have to read again how Dan Brown fails to live up to the standards set by Dante, or by Milton, Eliot, etc. Instead, the authors show how Dan Brown gets it right while admitting that he got some things wrong. This is not an apology for Dan Brown, but rather, a generous reading of the ways in which the character of Zobrist, the "villain" has a nuanced understanding of Dante's moral system as author of the Inferno.

I am not convinced of the excellence of Brown's novel, but I do not think the authors have that as a goal. Rather, they do well to show how Dante's Inferno, the entire Commedia, have set the stage for others to take up his imagined world, just as Dante took up Virgil's.  But, Dan Brown aside, this book is a great tool for the non-specialist reader of Dante, which is just about all of us. As Dante himself said of his readership:

PARADISO CANTO 2PARADISO CANTO 2
O voi che siete in piccioletta barca,2.1O you who are within your little bark,
desiderosi d'ascoltar, seguitieager to listen, following behind
dietro al mio legno che cantando varca,my ship that, singing, crosses to deep seas,
  
tornate a riveder li vostri liti:2.4turn back to see your shores again: do not
non vi mettete in pelago, ché forse,attempt to sail the seas I sail: you may,
perdendo me, rimarreste smarriti.by losing sight of me, be left astray.
  


2 comments:

  1. 5
    PS2
    E CHE SIA CHIARO, IO NON SON PER NULLA GENIO, RE MIDA ED EROE CIVILE MICHELE NISTA. NON LO SONO, ANCHE SE LO VEDREI BENISSIMO SULLA SEGGIOLA DI STO CESSO NAZISTA E MAFIOSO DI MATTEO RENZI, CORROTTISSIMO DA SILVIO BERLUSCONI, PER FARE LEGGI, E PRENDERE DECISIONI, PRO, QUEST‘ULTIMA „FASCIOCAMORRISTAM ED PEDOFILAM PERSONAM“. DA POSIZIONE DI FINTISSIMO CENTRO SINISTRA, CHE E‘ ORMAI IN REALTA‘, ESTREMISSIMA DESTRA. CERCANDO COSI‘ DI FREGARE TUTTI! SGOZZANDO A MORTE, DEMOCRAZIA, GIUSTIZIA, E LIBERTA‘. NON SONO GENIO, RE MIDA ED EROE CIVILE MICHELE NISTA, CHE, MAI DIMENTICHIAMOCI, OVUNQUE IN VITA SUA ABBIA MESSO LE MANI, HA SEMPRE, SEMPRE E STRA SEMPRE RESO LE PIETRE, ORO. COME QUANDO CIRCA VENTENNE, PREVEDETTE E CON TRE MESI DI ANTICIPO IL MEGA CROLLO DEL DOW JONES DELL’OTTOBRE 1987. AVVENUTO FRA LO SHOCK DI TUTTI, IN BORSA, A MILANO, CHE LO INIZIARONO A CHIAMARE „ IL PROFETA“ ( ED INTANTO SI STRAPPAVANO DALLE MANI, MICHELE,. DA UN POSTO DI LAVORO ALL’ALTRO, IN QUANTO RENDEVA SEMPRE, DESKS CHE FACEVANO ZERO PROFITTI, MILIARDARIE, PUR SE IN LIRE, SUBITO DOPO.. DA QUI IL PASSAGGIO DEL SUO NICK, COLE TEMPO, DA „PROFETA“ A „ RE MIDA“.. E SENZA MAI CHE GIOCASSE SPORCO, SENZA MAI CHE CORROMPESSE O ELUDESSE UNA LIRA, CHE UNA, DI TASSE). A SEGUIRE, MICHELE PREVEDETTE ALLA PERFEZIONE IL MEGA RIALZO DELL’ERA CLINTON, IL CROLLO DEL NASDAQ CON L’ARRIVO ABUSIVISSIMO, FIGLIO DI MEGA FRODI ELETTORALI, DI „ADOLF HITLER - GEORGE [WC] BUSH“. E SPECIALMENTE, QUI, ANTICIPANDO IL TUTTO VIA INTERNET, DAVANTI AGLI OCCHI DEL MONDO INTERO, MICHELE URLO‘ NEL SETTEMBRE 2007 CHE IL DOW JONES SAREBBE CROLLATO DA 13400 A 6900 ENTRO UN SOLO ANNO! TUTTI A DARGLI DEL MATTO, MA IL DOW JONES UN ANNO DOPO VALEVA ESATTAMENTE 6900. LI TUTTI A DARGLI DEL GENIO! COME PREVEDETTE ALLA PERFEZIONE IL PIU‘ CHE RADDOPPIO DEL DOW JONES NELL’ERA DELL’AMMIRABILE OBAMA BARACK ( RIALZO DA LUI PREVISTO SEMPRE DAVANTI AGLI OCCHI DEL MONDO INTERO, DI NUOVO, VIA INTERNET, BEN SEI MESI PRIMA DI QUANDO INIZIO‘ A VERIFICARSI: NEL 3.2009). E DA APRILE 2014, RIPETO, DA APRILE 2014, MICHELE HA DETTO A TUTTI „NOI“, CHE IL DOW JONES SAREBBE SALITO ANCORA, MA PER POI SEMICROLLARE NELLA PARTE FINALE DEL LUGLIO 2014: ACCADUTO AL MILLESIMO. E „NOI“ SAPPIAMO GIA‘ ANCHE DOVE SARA‘ IL DOW JONES ALLE PROSSIME ELEZIONI USA DEL 2016. E SIAMO CERTI CHE SARA‘ ESATTISSIMAMENTE LI, OVE CE LO HA DETTO LUI: GENIO, RE MIDA ED EROE CIVILE MICHELE NISTA. CON LUI SI VINCE SEMPRE E STRA SEMPRE, ALTRO CHE POR-C-ORROTTO BERLUSCONICCHIO SGOZZA DEMOCRAZIA, GIUSTIZIA E LIBERTA‘, PROVETTO DITTATORE PAZZO: MATTEO RENZI ( CHE MICHELE CI DICE FINIRA‘ PEGGIO DI B-O-TTINO CRAXI, E QUINDI CI CREDIAMO, OLTRE CHE LO STRA AUSPICHIAMO... BASTA CHE ACCADA PRESTO, PRIMA CHE IMPONGA ALTRE RIFORME CON LA SVASTICA AL BRACCIO, CHE MANCO HITLER AVREBBE OSATO ANCHE SOLO PENSARE, NON FARE). IL VERME RI SDOGANATORE DI ASSASSINISSIME MAFIA, CAMORRA, NDRANGHETA, FASCISMO E PEDOFILIA, A PALAZZO CHIGI. PUAH.

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  2. 2
    E QUI A SEGUITO, LEGGETE, SEMPRE, PLEASE, LA TESTIMONIANZA DI STEFAN CUMESCU, CHE DA BAMBINO FU STUPRATO, FU SODOMIZZATO A SANGUE, FU SODOMIZZATO A MORTE, DAL BASTARDO NAZIPEDERASTA DANIELE MINOTTI, MASSONE NEO PIDUISTA, AVVOCATO DI MAFIOSI E CRIMINALI DI OGNI, DI GENOVA E RAPALLO
    http://www.devsuperpage.com/search/Articles.aspx?hl=en&G=10&ArtID=1908142&KeyWords= ).
    ED ECCO UN ALTRO TESTO CHE CHIARISCE QUANTO IL FIGLIO DI PUTTANA DANIELE MINOTTI STESSO, DA SEMPRE, RICICLI SOLDI KILLER, DI COSA NOSTRA, CAMORRA E NDRANGHETA, A GO GO!

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    http://anti-matrix.org/Convert/Articles_Conspiracy/Conspiracy/Conspiracy-Selected-Articles-140730152020.html

    PRESTO SCRIVEREMO TANTISSIMO, GIORNO E NOTTE, A TURNO, PER DECENNI, GLI INTERI TESTI, (A) DEL POVERO EX BAMBINO STEFAN CUMESCU, SODOMIZZATO QUASI A MORTE, DAL VERMINOSO BASTARDO PEDOFILO AVVOCATO DANIELE MINOTTI, E (B) DI COME LO STESSO RICICLI CASH ASSASSINO, DI COSA NOSTRA, CAMORRA E NDRANGHETA DA SEMPRE. SOON BACK!!!

    E3

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