Dante’s Divine Comedy Impact on Modern Films

Medieval and early modern figures appealed less universally than the ancients, though each of the great ones had their followings. Dante’s Divine Comedy rises highest in the canon from this period, sufficiently biblical to suggest orthodox earnestness yet humane enough to accommodate the uncertainties of the nineteenth century (Davensport 2004 p. 312). In an age of poetry, Dante was ubiquitous and admired by cultural figures as diverse as Edward Burne-Jones, Eugene Delacroix, William Gladstone, Giuseppe Mazzini, Auguste Rodin, and Taras Shevchenko (Cunningham and Reich 2006 p.

112). Dante’s Divine Comedy describes a universe in which most of us can no longer believe. To say that Dante’s inferno is characterized by stasis is to refer to the fact that those he finds there are condemned to dwell there forever. In the Inferno, progression in time and space is limited to Dante and his guide Virgil only (Cunningham and Reich 2006 p. 112).

These two are the only travelers here; they are visitors to, not inhabitants of Inferno (Davensport 2004 p. 314). For Dante, the intensity of the suffering he meets is further augmented by the thought that it is everlasting.The divine comedy of Dante has evidently impact the concepts of modern film industry throughout the evolution of arts and theatrical modernism.

In the study, the primary subject involves on how Dante’s Divine Comedy has affected the evolution of modern film industry, such as in the movies the 1979 Disney film The Black Hole, “The Core (2003), and Pirates of the Caribbean: the Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). Discussion Modern criticism of the Comedy has raised the issue of sound in a particularly interesting way, in a debate that began at the beginning of the twentieth century on the effects of rhythm, alliteration, and assonance in the poem.According to F. Garlanda’s II verso di Dante of 1907, Dante’s poem is characterized by an extensive USC of alliteration and assonance, notably between the first and last tonic syllables of each Line: and by a predominantly iambic rhythm, in contrast to which the occasional shift to a trochaic pattern (particularly with accents on the 1st and 7th syllables of the line) acts as a source of special effect.

Frascino insists on the perfect unity of sound and sense in the Comedy: similar structures correspond to similar elements of content (Davensport 2004 p.314).Even Shakespeare’s plays contain references of prevailing conceptions and overarching metaphors such as the great chain of being that are no longer current. Dante’s Divine Comedy magisterially rewrites the allegory from the Christian vantage-point of medieval Europe (Cunningham and Reich 2006 p.

112). Anticipating Heart of Darkness, Dante’s epic exploits two interrelated principles of narrative presentation: the association of learning and travel, and the use of Dante as both narrator and main character.Of the epic’s three main parts the inferno is more closely related to Heart of Darkness than Purgatorio and Paradiso (Davensport 2004 p. 314).

In the Disney movie the Black Hole, the main influence of Dante’s divine comedy resides in the fact that of heaven, hell and earth existence. In the movie, the idea of three realms has been split via the existence of a black hole, wherein these worlds reside in the other side of the black hole. Dante has definitely impact science fiction trend at this point by the concepts of inferno and blazing fires in hell, as illustrated in the movie.Since his A TV Dante Inferno, Cantos 1-Vill (directed with the collaboration of Tom Phillips, 1988), a post-modem adaptation of the first eight cantos of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Peter Greenaway has been experimenting with multilayered, intertextual imaging where each frame within a frame offers both connections with arid digressions from the original frame.

He has explored this technique even further in Prospero Books (1991) where Shakespeare’s world is literally unfolded as the contents of twenty-four books come to life in front of the reader’s/spectator’s eyes.The influence of Dante’s Divine Comedy has revolutionized the aspect of comprehension in terms of the meta-physical world and further applies it in the concepts of modern films. As Dante’s divine comedy portrayed the various layers of Meta worlds, heaven and hell, the modern movie transcends to a unique perspective of combining the scientific concept through the existence of black hole, and further link it as a subdividing figure in accessing the two worlds from Dante’s imagery.Much of Dante’s works in his novel are portrayed in the movie, The Core (2003), wherein the aspects of earth layers have been theoretically establish in various sequential worlds constituting of magnetic worlds, inferno and the virgil. In the movie, scientists decided to drill towards the inside or the Earth’s core in order to correct the imbalance that is occurring in the outside part of the Planet (Cunningham and Reich 2006 p.

114). In the quest of exploration inside the Earth, the passengers of the ship eventually experience the vast transcendence of different worlds, much like in the concepts of Dante’s comedy:“As soon as they were created, part of the angels fell as possible from Heaven, hurtling all the way into the center of the earth like an extraordinary meteorite (Dore and Alligieri 1976). ” In the movie, the center of the earth has been embedded in deep inferno more likely illustrated in the concepts of Dante’s divine comedy. Dante’s Divine Comedy belongs to this tradition of the otherworld journey, though the greater literary scope and complexity of the work obscures the relationship (Pearce and West 2002 p.

213).Though Dante travels not across the surface of the earth but down through the earth and out on the other side, the concept is similar in essence, the representation of a spiritual quest in terms of physical images of place and the idea of a troubled progress along a route lull of astonishing sights and encounters, in comparison to the rather episodic structure of earlier otherworld journeys Dante’s “the most carefully wrought and the most precisely and intricately symmetrical of great literary works” (Jackson 2004 p.21).After an introductory canto, each of the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso consists of thirty-three cantos, making a total of too, and the three-lined stanzas of term rima establish the tripartite structure in even the smallest unit in which the poem may be defined, as it is in the largest, the Trinity itself. Dante uses the guide found in other vision literature, but has two figures.Virgil and then Beatrice, to explain the meaning of the different scenes through which he passes.

Lastly, on the film of Jack Sparrow, the Pirates of the Carribean depicted the unnatural world traveled by their crew that brought Sparrow in the midst of technically underworld. This is a first-person narrative in the manner of the visionary describing what has been experienced in dream, though it is presented as a literal journey (Jackson 2004 p. 21).The personal, autobiographical perspective is densely and repeatedly reinforced by references to contemporary people and events. While the literal level of the story is richly circumstantial the sense of the work is also allegorical and The Divine Comedy is probably the medieval narrative most often read in terms of layers of meaning (Pearce and West 2002 p.

215). Conclusion The personal, autobiographical perspective is densely and repeatedly reinforced by references to contemporary people and events.While the literal level of the story is richly circumstantial the sense of the work is also allegorical and The Divine Comedy is probably the medieval narrative most often read in terms of layers of meaning. The Divine Comedy of Dante has clearly provided a great impact in the aspects of world separations from the reality and unrealism, such as paradise and inferno as seen in the three films depicted in the discussion.