TV Tropes: “Word of Dante”
“Word Of Dante is stuff the creators haven’t said is true about their universe — but everyone assumes it is true because an independent authority, scholar of the work, or Big Name Fan has said it — often with supporting arguments. It’s a kind of ascended Fanon. A more literary criticism friendly technical term for it would be deuterocanon.” [. . .] —TV Tropes
TV Tropes: “Literature: The Divine Comedy”
“What is this about? This wiki is a catalog of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction.” —TV Tropes
Some examples:
-“Alien Geometries – While Hell and Purgatory have clearly defined geography, that of Paradise is more complicated. The spheres of Heaven correspond to the celestial spheres of a geocentric universe, but can equally well be seen as orbiting around God in the Empyrean, or as all existing in the same space. To enter Paradise or cross between the spheres, one must Ascend To A Higher Plane Of Existence, rather than doing any physical climbing. The structure of Heaven has been interpreted as an early description of the fourth-dimensional hypersphere.”
-“And I Must Scream – The Inferno is made of these. In particular, suicides are turned into trees. They can scream, when someone breaks off a branch. And traitors are just frozen. Their eyes are actually frozen shut with their tears. The worst off are probably the ones at the very bottom, completely frozen in ice in grotesque positions. There’s also the penance for the sin of Pride in the Purgatorio: the sinners are made to carry boulders, the weight of which is proportional to the sin’s weight. Dante even remarks that the punishment is the simplest, and yet quite terrible.”
-“And That’s Terrible – Dante really hated corrupt priests.”
-“Author Avatar – Purgatory has seven levels corresponding to the Seven Deadly Sins. Dante experiences the penances for only three: Pride, Anger, and Lust. Translator Dorothy L. Sayers commented that these were precisely the three faults people tend to accuse Dante of, so sharing these penances was probably a deliberate confession on the poet’s part.”
See more Dante TV Tropes.
“The Temperature of Hell, a Colloquium”
“According to the best scientific data currently available, both the average and the mean temperatures of Hell have risen 3.8 degrees since 1955. Although an increase of this size may seem insignificant, especially to those not spending eternity there, the reality of the situation is quite different when experienced in concrete terms. For example, occupants of Hell who in 1955 were standing night and day in boiling pitch up to their knees report that, owing to the expansion of pitch at higher temperatures, they now must endure the torment all the way up to mid-thigh, or even higher, during Hell’s warmer seasons. Condemned souls who have to lie on their backs chained to a flat rock while a white-hot sheet of iron is lowered to within inches of their faces have stated that the rise in Hell’s ambient temperature now makes the iron seem much closer to their faces than it actually is.
Former Vice-President Al Gore, who was among the first to raise concerns about this problem, convened an interdisciplinary gathering in December of 2008 to discuss some of Hell’s climate issues and how we might begin to address them.” [. . .] –Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, July 20, 2009
Contributed by Elizabeth Ann Coggeshall (Stanford University)
Lee K. Abbott, “One of Star Wars, One of Doom” (2007)
“The story follows Mr. DeWine, a high school civics teacher looking for the love that will bring meaning to his middle years, and the two alienated students who plot death, havoc, and woe.” —Fantastic Fiction
“The first reference is to the two high school boys who shoot up the school as ‘founding members of the ninth circle.’ (Abbott) The second reference is made by Mr. DeWine as he notes a student’s inscription on a desk in his classroom, ”Abandon all hope,’ someone has scribbled. Dante-what a bozo. Blame the whole fiasco on Beatrice.’ (Abbott) This reference foreshadows the outcome of the story. –Katie Tiller
Contributed by Katie Tiller (University of Texas at Austin)
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