Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

  • Submit a Citing
  • Map
  • Links
  • Bibliography
  • User’s Guide
  • Teaching Resources
  • About

Garry Wills, “The Bishops Are Wrong About Biden—and Abortion” (June 27, 2021)

June 29, 2021 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

“What is the worst crime a society can commit? Some people (I among them) would say the Holocaust, the cold methodical murder of six million people just for being Jews.

“But some Catholics and evangelicals say they know of an even greater crime — the deliberate killing of untold millions of unborn babies by abortion. They have determined that a fetus is a person and abortion is therefore murder. This is a crime of such magnitude that some Catholic bishops are trying to deny the reception of Holy Communion by the president of the United States for not working to prevent it.

“No one told Dante that this was the worst crime, or he would have put abortionists, not Judas, in the deepest frozen depths of his Inferno. But in fact he does not put abortionists anywhere in the eight fiery tiers above the deepest one of his Hell.” [. . .]   –Garry Wills, “The Bishops Are Wrong About Biden—and Abortion,” New York Times (June 27, 2021)

Read the rest of Wills’s opinion piece at the New York Times.

See also this response to Wills’s essay in The National Review, which includes an extended discussion of Dante and his era.

Contributed by Hilary Barnes (Widener University)

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2021, Abortion, America, American History, American Politics, American Religion, Catholicism, Communion, Joe Biden, Judas, Ninth Circle, Political Leaders, Presidents, Sin, United States

Trump and his Enablers belong in Dante’s 9th Circle of Hell

June 16, 2021 By Ezra Berman '23

each-betrayal-begins-with-trust-martin-luther“If Dante’s deepest circle of Hell did exist, it would be reserved for Trump and his enablers. It would be reserved for those who betrayed our country and this beautiful blue world for profit. It would be reserved for those who allowed a pandemic to take tens of thousands of lives and affect millions. It would be reserved for those who are silent about the bounties placed on our active duty troops’ heads, who disparage our military, intelligence agencies, our scientists, and health care professionals. It would be reserved for those who place all that we love in danger.

“It would be reserved for those who supposedly care for us, but expect silence about their support of Trump or of those who support him.

“The list of betrayals in my life is long and old.” […]    –Onomastic, Daily Kos, September 15, 2020

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2020, American Politics, Betrayal, Circles of Hell, Coronavirus, Covid-19, Donald Trump, Hell, Inferno, Journalism, Ninth Circle, Political Leaders, Politics, Treachery, Trump

France Štiglic’s The Ninth Circle (1960)

June 16, 2021 By Ezra Berman '23

“After the qualification of the digitally restored Štiglic’s film The Valley of Peace (1956) for the 2016 Cannes Classics competition, the celebration of the 60th anniversary of its making, and its Cannes premiere, the same director’s film The Ninth Circle (1960) was the third work of his that was screened in Cannes (the first one had been the 1949 film On Our Own Land).” [. . .]    —The Film New Europe Association, July 28, 2020

Categories: Performing Arts
Tagged with: 1960, 2020, Cinema, Circles of Hell, Croatia, Films, Inferno, Ninth Circle, Yugoslavia

“The Ninth Circle of Hell – Dante and the DMV”

April 23, 2021 By Jasmine George, FSU '24

“Dante once wrote that Hell had nine circles within its depths. Dante’s Inferno is an amazing literary work that describes in great detail the horror of a place where no person wishes to go. Dante must have been inspired by a trip to the local DMV.

“You see, I recently journeyed into an inferno of abandoned hope, discomfort, and pain when I was forced to visit the Queens DMV. Like Dante, I encountered the nine circles of Hell, though not necessarily in the same order. But first, some backstory . . .”   –Jason Greene, The Good Men Project, 2012

Read the full article here.

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2012, Circles of Hell, Hell, Ninth Circle, Queens

Jim Shaw, Donald and Melania Trump descending the escalator into the 9th circle of hell reserved for traitors frozen in a sea of ice (2020)

March 19, 2021 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

Jim Shaw’s silkscreen print Donald and Melania Trump descending the escalator into the 9th circle of hell reserved for traitors frozen in a sea of ice (2020) depicts the former US President and First Lady passing into the ninth circle, populated by members of the Trump inner circle: John Bolton, Michael Cohen, Omarosa Manigault, Anthony Scaramucci, Jeff Sessions, and others. The lake of Cocytus appears to have been displaced to the ground floor of a dilapidated American shopping mall.

Simon Lee Gallery describes Shaw’s collected works thus: “The practice of American artist Jim Shaw (b. 1952, Midland, Michigan) spans a wide range of artistic media and visual imagery. Since the 1970s, Shaw has mined the detritus of American culture, finding inspiration for his artworks in comic books, pulp novels, rock albums, protest posters, thrift store paintings – his ever-growing collection of found artworks has been the subject of its own exhibition on several occasions – and advertisements. At the same time, Shaw has consistently turned to his own life and, in particular, his unconscious, as a source of artistic creativity. Providing a blend of the personal, the commonplace and the uncanny, Shaw’s works frequently place in dialogue images of friends and family members with world events, pop culture and alternate realities. Often unfolding in long-term, narrative cycles, the works contains systems of cross-references and repetitions, which rework similar symbols and motifs, allowing a story-like thread to be perceived.”   –“Biography,” Simon Lee Gallery

See a discussion of Shaw’s exhibit Hope Against Hope, hosted by the Simon Lee Gallery (London) from October 20, 2020, to January 16, 2021, in The Art Newspaper.

Contributed by Deborah Parker (University of Virginia)

Categories: Visual Art & Architecture
Tagged with: 2020, American Politics, Cocytus, Commentary, Donald Trump, Gustave Doré, Ice, Ninth Circle, Political Leaders, Presidents, Printing, Prints, Shopping, United States

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • Next Page »

Categories

  • Consumer Goods (194)
  • Digital Media (126)
  • Dining & Leisure (107)
  • Music (190)
  • Odds & Ends (91)
  • Performing Arts (361)
  • Places (132)
  • Visual Art & Architecture (416)
  • Written Word (845)

Random Post

  • Enrico Cerni, “Dante per i manager” (2010)

Frequent Tags

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 700th anniversary Abandon All Hope America American Politics Art Artists Beatrice Blogs Books California Circles of Hell Comics Dark Wood Divine Comedy England Fiction Films Florence France Games Gates of Hell Hell History Humor Illustrations Inferno Internet Italian Italy Journalism Journeys Literary Criticism Literature Love Music New York City Non-Fiction Novels Paintings Paolo and Francesca Paradise Paradiso Performance Art Poetry Politics Purgatorio Purgatory Religion Restaurants Reviews Rock Science Fiction Sculptures Social Media Technology Television Tenth Circle Theater Translations United Kingdom United States Universities Video Games Virgil

ALL TAGS »

Image Mosaic

How to Cite

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

Creative

 





© 2006-2023 Dante Today
research.bowdoin.edu