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Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

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“Observations on Heaven from Dante’s Paradiso That Also Apply to These Stills of Linda Hamilton”

January 19, 2020 By lsanchez

“In a literary and historicist sense, Dante’s Divine Comedy was a multi-volume narrative poem that advanced some notable theological suppositions about the afterlife as well as some hot takes about Italian political and religious figures of the age and also working in some somewhat yikes fantasies about Dante’s crush, Beatrice, and idealized bromance with dead poet Virgil. In a looser, more abstract, in some ways more honest sense, though, Dante’s hysterically adulating depictions of Heaven and his crush Beatrice hanging out in it in Paradiso are also about what a fucking unreal silver fox Linda Hamilton is in the latest Terminator offering, Dark Fate. (Mackenzie Davis gays, you will have your day; this one is mine.)

When Dante was writing about being so overcome with emotion at the luminous landscape of Paradise that he was unable to speak, he may have been originally referencing an extremely specific medieval Catholic spiritual concept — but we have the benefit of centuries of context and wisdom that Dante did not, and can see that in another, more accurate way, they also reference the fact that Linda Hamilton remains an untouchable smokeshow, and is arguably even more of one than when she originally featured as my root in Terminator 2.”    –Rachel, Autostraddle, October 9, 2019

Categories: Performing Arts, Written Word
Tagged with: 2019, Beatrice, Divine Comedy, Films, LGBTQ, Movies, Paradise, Paradiso, Virgil

The Forgotten Inferno: Tinderbox and the Up Stairs Lounge Fire”

February 10, 2019 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

“It was 45 years ago this month that a man bought a can of Ronsonol lighter fluid at a Walgreens on Canal Street, walked to the Up Stairs Lounge, emptied its contents on the stairs and struck a match. Within minutes, the bar was engulfed in flames and choking smoke. Ceiling tiles and fabric melted and stuck like napalm to the skins of the people inside. With the entrance blocked and the windows barred, an emergency exit hidden and a fire escape with no stairs, patrons were trapped.

“Though the blaze was controlled in 17 minutes, firefighters found the room a crematorium with 28 bodies inside — ‘stacked like pancakes,’ in the words of The States-Item the next morning. Four more people died from injuries in the days afterward. (Had bartender Buddy Rasmussen not led 15 to 20 people out the hidden emergency exit, the death toll would have been higher.) The bodies were burned so badly that positive identification was impossible; New Orleans Police Department officers relied on scraps of identification. One of them, Maj. Henry Morris, cautioned, ‘We don’t even know if these papers belonged to the people we found them on. Some thieves hung out there, and you know this is a queer bar.’

“‘The fire came quickly and it was snuffed out quickly,’ wrote Lanny Thomas in The States-Item. ‘But the holocaust is one of the worst this city has seen.’ The Times-Picayune’s headline compared the scene to ‘DANTE’S INFERNO, HITLER’S INCINERATORS.'” [. . .]    –Kevin Allman, The Advocate, June 11, 2018.

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 1973, 2018, History, Inferno, Journalism, LGBTQ, Louisiana, New Orleans

Inferno: A Poet’s Novel by Eileen Myles (2010)

February 18, 2017 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

Eileen-Myles-Reading-Inferno“I was completely stupefied by Inferno in the best of ways. In fact, I think I must feel kind of like Dante felt after seeing the face of God. My descriptive capacity just fails, gives way completely. But I can tell you that Eileen Myles made me understand something I didn’t before. And really, what more can you ask of a novel, or a poet’s novel, or a poem, or a memoir, or whatever the hell this shimmering document is? Just read it.” — Alison Bechdel

“From its beginning — ‘My English professor’s ass was so beautiful.’ — to its end — ‘You can actually learn to have grace. And that’s heaven.’ — poet, essayist and performer Eileen Myles’ chronicle transmits an energy and vividness that will not soon leave its readers. Her story of a young female writer, discovering both her sexuality and her own creative drive in the meditative and raucous environment that was New York City in its punk and indie heyday, is engrossing, poignant, and funny. This is a voice from the underground that redefines the meaning of the word.” — OR Books

Read an excerpt here, or listen to Myles read an excerpt here.

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2010, Fiction, LGBTQ, Memoirs, Novels, Poetry

Guy Raffa on Dante and Same-Sex Love

January 23, 2016 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

In a response to Rod Dreher’s 2015 book How Dante Can Save Your Life, Guy Raffa (creator of the Danteworlds website) discusses the question of same-sex love in the Comedy:

Raffa-on-Dreher-Dante-Same-Sex-Love-Pop-Matters“In his otherwise fine explication and application of the Divine Comedy, Dreher badly misunderstood—or just plain missed—Dante’s view of same-sex love. […]

“The point can’t be made often or forcefully enough: getting Dante straight means getting him gay, as well. When it comes to the sex or gender of the people we love best, Dante doesn’t give a fig. This is something that Dreher and other serious readers of Dante ought to know.” — Guy Raffa, “What Rod Dreher Ought to Know about Dante and Same-Sex Love,” Pop Matters

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2016, Gender, Homosexuality, LGBTQ, Love, Lust, Reviews, Sex

Satire from The Onion: “Hell Now a Thriving Epicenter of Gay Culture”

April 9, 2014 By Professor Arielle Saiber

“THE MALEBOLGE, NETHER REGIONS OF DARKNESS—Noting the incredible rate at which the community has grown, sources confirmed Thursday that Hell, the Endless Kingdom of Misery, is now a booming haven of gay culture.

“The Great Abyss, home of the damned, is reportedly inhabited by some 600 million condemned homosexual or transgender souls, a large proportion of its total population, and has by many accounts blossomed into an oasis of gay activism and community events.

” ‘I’ve only been here for a few months, but I’ve already fallen in love with it,’ said 49-year-old Daniel Edelson,..” […]

“The gay community has really flourished here, and I have to say, they’ve been great for the place,” said Nephirem the Malevolent, a 10,000-year-old, 70-foot-tall minotaur who has resided in hell since rising from the ashes of a smokeless flame. “At the end of the day, they’re just like anyone else. Everyone has the right to express their love for whomever they want. They don’t bother me in the slightest, and if anything, we in the Dark Lord’s Army encourage any and all public displays of affection between same-sex couples.”    —The Onion, September 19, 2013

Contributed by Olivia Holmes

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2013, Hell, Homosexuality, Humor, Inferno, LGBTQ, Malebolge, Satire

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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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