Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

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

Matthew Pearl, “What Writers Can Learn From Dante—Seriously, From Dante”

December 6, 2020 By Laura Chatellier, FSU '23

matthew-pearl-what-writers-can-learn-from-dante“As a reader and writer, I was always drawn to historical fiction; later, I added writing narrative nonfiction to my interests, often with a historical bent. Dante’s Comedy projects a variety of lessons in those arenas. Dante recruits mythological and historical figures and mixes them into a high stakes story filled with danger and risk, much like we often do in historical fiction. In the process, Dante sometimes reshapes our perspective on those figures. Ulysses, for example, appears during Dante’s trek through hell, and Ulysses’s brief monologue marks one of the most striking versions of that character outside of Homer. Dante, of course, was not perfect, and his refashioning of his own persona through the course of the poem conceals some of his questionable life choices, including his failure to try to reunite with his wife and family after his political exile. As modern readers, we also have to contend with the fact that Dante’s attitudes toward other religions (outside of Catholicism, and an idiosyncratic version of Catholicism, at that) is very problematic.

“Purgatory is the middle child of Dante’s poem, sandwiched between the terrors of hell’s punishments and the heights of salvation in heavenly paradise. But Purgatory was always my personal favorite canticle (Dante’s term for each of the three sections). This canticle contains the most dramatic storytelling structure, in which Dante must carve out an independent track from his mentor Virgil (one of the historical and literary figures recruited into the story), and must rediscover his lost love, Beatrice (another historical figure). Beatrice’s appearance is one of the more surprising moments of the whole poem. I still have the first copy of Purgatory I read in college, and I remember reading the scene in which we finally meet Beatrice while on the edge of my seat.” [. . .]    –Matthew Pearl, Crime Reads, September 16, 2019.

Check out more of Matthew Pearl’s work here.

Share this postShare on twitter
Twitter
Share on pinterest
Pinterest
Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on email
Email


Closely Tagged Posts:
Dante Micheaux wins 2019 Four Quartets Poetry Prize for Circus
A Profound Meditation on Hell
“I Have Wasted My Life,” Justin Phillip Reed (2020)

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2019, Literature, Poetry, Writing

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

  • L’Orfeo – Claudio Monteverdi

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