Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
“…the literary critic Walter Benn Michaels went so far as to suggest that the beauty and difficulty of watching “The Wire” in English — the multifarious 21st-century English of Baltimore detectives and drug dealers — compares with that of reading Dante in 14th-century Italian.” [. . .] –Wyatt Mason, The New York Times, March 15, 2010
The protagonist of the novel, Paul, names a book of poetry after his girlfriend, Beatrice La Dulce Shaliqua Schneck “and after Dante’s muse, presumably because he, too, was a poet who made his fame in hell.” [. . .] –Fiona Maazel, The New York Times, March 18, 2010
Evil Diva is a webcomic about a young devil who becomes a superhero. With the help of “Mr. Virgil,” Diva learns how to control her powers and find her place among the forces of good and evil. Dante appears in the sporadic mini-comics entitled “(Really) Old Man Adventures” as well as in some of the other sketch comics on the site. A four part series in the “(Really) Old Man Adventures” reinterprets and illustrates early parts of the Inferno and references the Vita Nuova.
Contributed by Michelle Scharlock (McGill University)
“…Inspired by Dante’s Inferno and Greek mythology (the writer and director, Minos Papas, was raised in Cyprus), Shutterbug invites us on a listless, photographic odyssey through a nighttime Manhattan populated by the usual human detritus. Lured by flickering sightings of a lovely young woman, Alex searches for his muse in the vicinity of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway while the film coughs up a succession of After Hours-beholden characters to fill his reality-starved lens: a chatty rat catcher, a wheezing psychic, a creepy pimp peddling under-age treats. The only suspense lies in wondering which one will beat him up first.” [. . .] –Jeannette Catsoulis, The New York Times, March 19, 2010
“In the year or so since I started blogging, I’ve found myself ingrained into a number of internet communities which will here remain unnamed. But I have stumbled a cross an unwritten set of rules governing these communities, and someone took these general principles and fashioned them into this handy ‘Dante’s Inferno’ type chart.” […] -Paul Tassi, Unreality Magazine, February 18, 2010
Contributed by Victoria Rea-Wilson (Bowdoin, ’14)
All submissions will be considered for posting. Bibliographic references and scholarly essays are also welcome for consideration.
Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante’s Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.
