Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
“The City of Sin is embodied in Dante’s Hotel and Casino, which reaches out to a more adult audience with its gothic theme. Its opening is planned for the end of the year.” —Rainbow Six Vegas, Ubisoft Montreal, July 3, 2010 (retrieved February 21, 2024)
Developed and published by Digital Extremes, Warframe is a free role-playing online game based on a league of ancient warriors set to defeat enemy forces. Recently, this game has been updated to feature Dante himself in the Dante Unbound upgrade.
“Described as the ‘master of reality’s pages,’ Dante is the star of the Dante Unbound update, and has been created with the ‘classic-MMO caster classes’ in mind. He comes equipped with his own Exalted Weapon, called Noctua, and Warframe 56 is capable of destroying his enemies by ‘pelting them with spectral pages and covering them in countless cursed paper cuts.'” — Jakob Barnes, “The New Warframe Is Here, and He’s Perfect”, PCGames, January 26, 2024.
“Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic is a 2010 adult animated dark fantasy film. Based on the Dante’s Inferno video game that is itself loosely based on Dante’s Inferno, Dante must travel through the circles of Hell and battle demons, creatures, monsters, and even Lucifer himself to save his beloved Beatrice. The film was released on February 9, 2010.” —Brandon Auman, “Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic,” Wikipedia, (retrieved January 24, 2024)
In the video game Castle Crashers (The Behemoth, orig. release 2008), which is set in a fictional medieval world, players come upon an item shop called the Volcano Store. The shop is located in a cave-like setting, and the clerk, a Fire Demon (pictured), notifies the player that “Dante is our best customer.”
Contributed by Noah Seckman
“Rumors have been surfacing regarding the potential return of an old franchise that is expected to be announced during next month’s EA Play.
“Dante’s Inferno is a fantastic game that received a lot of marketing and heavy support from EA at the time, even having a Super Bowl ad. It also received generally positive reviews and was impressive-looking for its time. Even though it has some graphic elements, it caused little controversy and went on to inspire a comic, an animated short, and a planned film adaptation.
“Dante’s Inferno was fantastic, but it didn’t get a chance to blossom. Instead of resurrecting games and franchises everyone knows and already loves, it’s time for the industry to pay attention to some underrated gems, giving life to titles that could have flourished if given the chance. Dante’s Inferno is a prime candidate for such treatment — after all, dark beat ’em ups certainly haven’t gone out of style.” [. . .] –Gina Roberts, Comic Book Resources, June 22, 2021 (retrieved January 12, 2022)
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.
