Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
In Episode 6 of Season 3 of the HBO television series Succession, Kendall Roy describes the planned theme of his upcoming 40th birthday: “ End Times: Weimar meets Carthage meets Dante meets AI and antibiotic-resistant superbugs.”
Succession has been featured multiple times on our website: see another reference from Season 1 here and a promotional poster citing here.
“Succession is an HBO series created by Jesse Armstrong which showcases a fictional battle between four adult siblings to succeed their father, Logan Roy, as CEO of Waystar/Royco, a multibillion-dollar media conglomerate.
“In Season 1, Episode 8, entitled ‘Prague,’ Roman Roy, one of Logan Roy’s four adult children, recites a line from Canto 3 of Dante’s Inferno: ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter.’ This is a variation of line 9 of this canto as translated into English by John Ciardi in 1954, the full line being ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.'” –Contributor Cesca Craig
See also the related post on HBO’s Succession here.
Photo and citing contributed by Cesca Craig (University of Arkansas, ’23)
“HELL – In a significant boost to the area, Satan confirmed today that the Underworld’s long-awaited 10th Circle will include the Acadiana Mall amongst its very first tenants.
“The project has been almost fifteen years in the making, however construction is now complete and officials are beginning to slowly but surely usher in people, places and businesses.” –thedailycrawfish337, The Daily Crawfish
Read the full article here.
In early December 2018 British cartoonist Steve Bell published a series of Dante-inspired images in his If… cartoon strip. Adapting Doré’s illustrations of Cocytus (with one addition from the Malebolge), Bell’s cartoons comment on the Parliamentary Debate over Brexit. Contributor Nick Havely glosses, “[the cartoons] depict Theresa May’s journey through ‘Brexit Hell’ accompanied by Arlene Foster (leader of the N. Ireland ultra-Protestant DUP on whom May is dependent for her majority). The Dantean sequence began on 29 November and seems to have culminated last Thursday [6 December] in an encounter with Trump as Lucifer.”
The If… cartoons can be viewed on The Guardian‘s website at the following links: Nov 29, Dec 3, Dec 4, Dec 5, and Dec 6.
Contributed by Nick Havely
