Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

Limbo (Playdead, 2010)

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Limbo is a 2010 puzzle-platform video game developed by independent game developer Playdead.

In a presentation at the 2021 Middle Ages in Modern Games Twitter conference scholar Claudia Rossignoli presented a thread on the relationship between Limbo and the “intense emotional landscape” of Dante’s Inferno. Rossignoli commented, “The boy’s journey originally revisits classical katabatic narratives (also inspiring Dante), including in its final unsettling encounter (his sister?), which brings no closure and instead intensifies the initial loss, eliminating any remaining hope of finding a way out.”

Read the full thread here.

Learn more about the game here.

Watch the trailer for the game here.

See more from #MAMG21 here.

Deborah DeNicola, “Desire with Mountain and Dante” (2010)

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Deborah-De-Nicola-Desire-With-Mountain-and-Dante-Full-Text

Deborah DeNicola’s poem “Desire with Mountain and Dante” was published in the collection Original Human in 2010. In a personal email communication, DeNicola recounts, “I am an east-coast person and I was in Seattle and Mt. Rainier was in the distance. I had not been in a relationship for several years and was aware of my own ‘desire without an object of desire,’ as Wallace Stevens puts it. I had been teaching The Inferno so Dante was on my mind.”

Original Human can be purchased at Amazon. Many thanks to the author for permission to reprint the poem.

“Dante’s Inferno” at Kirkstall Forge

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“This was the large shed to the south of the water and my position is a best guess, especially as this area is now flat. This shed contained several hammers but these two were hard at work and quite spectacular. I think they were of eastern European construction (possibly Polish). Although working on compressed air these were essentially the same as steam hammers.”    –Chris Allen, Geograph, February 17, 2010

“Iraq: Dante’s Hell for Animals?”

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“Nearby, a brown bear that once roamed the Kurdish mountain reaches from the shadows of a filthy enclosure for a wafer biscuit that a boy holds just out of reach. Meanwhile, in a central cage that seems to double as the zoo’s garbage dump an adult male baboon makes lewd gestures to a group of teenage boys poking him with sticks. This sad place is not the beastly equivalent of Dante’s third hell, but a zoo — and a typical one for captive animals in Iraq.”    –Tracey Shelton, Public Radio International, May 22, 2010

The Nine Circles of Writing Hell

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“With apologies to Dante Alighieri…

“We have all probably started ill-fated novels that, shall we say, did not go where we wanted them to go. For one reason or another, either our will or our preparation or the idea failed us, and sure enough, they ended up in novel hell.

“Based on the Nine Circles of Hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy, here are the nine circles of writing hell.

“Save your novel from these sins, my fellow writers! Repent before it is too late!” [. . .]    –Nathan Bransford, on his blog, November 23, 2010

How to Cite

Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.

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