Skip to main content

Minding the Monsters // Ian Blair

    Ok so Dante has now included just about every major mythological story or monster that he can besides the Scylla monster and Charybdis. Multiple people have pointed out how the story includes references and callbacks to various other works that Dante no doubt was a fan of. Speaking of fandom, Dante’s love of Greek mythological stories is quite obvious from Cerberus, Charon, and many other characters being included thus far. One specific creature that Dante describes in Canto XVII intrigued me extensively, mainly because of the fact that the Spanish King that this creature is based on took a much different form in Greek stories. Geryon was depicted by the old stories as a three-headed, three-bodied giant who would lure weary travelers to his realm and then kill/rob them. Dante uses Geryon as an embodiment of fraud here, and it works well, but he takes on a more peculiar form in The Inferno that I wanted to point out in specifics. Dante’s description of the beast is quite appalling:

    “His face was innocent of every guile, benign and just in feature and expression; and under it his body was half reptile. His two great paws were hairy to the armpits; all his back and breast and both his flanks were figured with bright knots and subtle circlets… His tail twitched in the void beyond that lip, thrashing, and twisting up the envenomed form which, like a scorpion’s stinger, armed the tip.” (Canto XVII, lines 10-27). 

    In order to give a more fiendish feel to the monsters of hell, the draconic body is a fitting change, and a scorpion tail to go along with a pair of wings is not unlike a creature that fantasy setting fans may remember the name of: the Manticore. In order to have a horrifying underworld, one needs horrifying monsters inhabiting said underworld, and Dante continually puts on a clinic with how he builds his setting. I think the main question looking toward the end of the story will be the fate of lower circles of hell, and I personally can’t wait to see what other characters he will stumble across next.


I commented on...

Comments

  1. Emmett BryantMarch 22, 2021 at 11:35 AM

    I have never been one for Greek mythology, but it is amazing to see how much Dante incorporates it into his work. It's almost exciting because we read the Inferno assuming what hell is going to be like and then we get all these surprises that give us nostalgia of the Greeks. I am not sure if hell would be more or less terrifying with or without the Greek monsters. I suppose I won't have to find out.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Haylee LyndMarch 22, 2021 at 10:29 PM

    I think its fascinating that he makes his creature kind of take on pieces of the leopard and lion. The gaudily-spotted suggest the leopard and the hairy paws the Lion. I love the use of the human face because it symbolizes the human nature of Fraud. I love his use of Greek monsters.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lovers of Wisdom, Not Power—Lily Caswell

In Book VIII of Plato’s Republic, Socrates talks about the possibility of having a well-governed city. However, he also talks about how that particular form of government is impossible to have. A well-governed city becomes a possibility only if you can discover a better way of life for your future rulers than holding office.” (Plato, p 215) Maybe his version of a better life was for those in office to not be lovers of power, since it would then become a fight among rival lovers. Socrates gets to the point that the only rulers who don’t love power are true philosophers. Philosophers are lovers of wisdom and knowledge and not power, ergo they are the perfect rulers. Absolute power corrupts and power corrupts absolutely, so I’m thinking that maybe the trick to being a good ruler is for you to be a philosophical person who loves wisdom and not power. I commented on Jamie’s and Isabelle’s posts.
4 comments
Read more

How to Make a Clone - Clabo

I found books three and four to be very cringy. I mean, to me the idea of structurally producing good soldiers/guardians through heavy censorship is somewhat inhumane. I feel as if human beings should be allowed to experience every bit of knowledge they can at some point in their lives. To me, it seems as if the guardians are being guarded against information throughout their entire lives so they can solely fulfill the duties they were birthed into.  However, the influence and importance Plato places on poetry and music do make me wonder what it would be like if we had the same values as our military today. What if the United States military invested in the souls of its soldiers and placed within them emotional and intellectual values outside of what they have learned previously. Perhaps the military instills values and principles within soldiers to fulfill the same purpose as the guardians would in Plato's Republic and that is to only be that which the government wants you to be....
5 comments
Read more

Dystopian Origins Uncovered ////// Isabelle Ferguson

  I think that ideas eventually run out of originality and circle back to the original idea. During this week's reading, many of Socrates’ suggestions for a place of perfection reminded me of some novels I’ve read depicting dystopian worlds. Disclaimer: There are spoilers ahead. You have been warned.        To begin, in  The  Giver  by Lois Lowry censorship is a major theme. The novel is centered around a boy who is receiving memories withheld from the population! The government in The Giver is especially careful to censor the memories that may cause strife, anger, fear, sadness, etc. In the adults, this society is cemented. So, the government is especially strict with the youth. Socrates talks about verses to “obliterate” to prevent the descriptions from doing “harm to our future warriors” for the better half of Book III (Plato, page 44). The warriors he speaks of are the youth. He goes on to list the multitude of verses that should be done ...
7 comments
Read more