Post date: Feb 12, 2017 11:38:09 PM
Slowly coming off the work high of attempting to complete (and make somewhat good) my Hust comp, my brain is full of ancient Greek and Roman references. Having read some of the intro, I know we're supposed to question a lot of the story in order to keep us reading but I mean come on. There seemed to be a lot missing. First of all, I spent a lot of first cantos trying to figure out what Dante was doing in the underworld. With the reference of Virgil, I kept trying to make references to the Aeneid and sometimes the Odyssey but came up short a lot. Aeneas and Odysseus always knew their end goals whether it was to found Rome or make their way home. Apparently there is the magical beast who wants Dante to explore all the levels of hell before he is able to escape but WHY???!!!!
As I keep reading, I continually tried to come up with ways to frame this "journey" of Dante's. Maybe this is an informational journey exploring the flaws of man, maybe there is going to be an important tie in to Rome and a new foundational story to be associate with the Renaissance, or maybe Dante isn't trying to draw upon the old ideas of the journey and is creating something new. Older stories didn't have such as involved guide, more of guidance from afar. Anytime Dante gets in trouble, Virgil is able to save him so there's not too many challenges associated in this journey. There is also the Christian element I feel like smacks me in the face every twenty pages. There is the Christian hell mixed in with the mythological hell and many Christian references to heretics, popes, and the Harrowing of Hell.
So maybe this is a new foundational story for Rome. In the times of Homer and Virgil, Christianity hadn't really caught on yet so maybe he's inserting it into the Roman past. There's so many ways the story can go that all I can do right now is speculate and finish the book!