Inferno is Dante’s first poem in his The Divine Comedy. The poem starts with Dante traveling in dark where he loses his way. He is trying to get to his beloved Beatrice who is waiting for him. She sends ghost of Virgil to bring Dante to her. In order to get to Heaven, Dante will have to go through heaven, something that almost everyone did in Christian world. At the beginning, they enter the gate of hell. The First Circle of the Hell is for those people who never done anything good or bad in their life, here they run all day long with hornets biting them. In the Second Circle of the Hell, Dante sees that the some souls are stuck in a devastating storm. In the Third Circle of Hell, Dante sees that Gluttonous…
In this chapter the author is trying to express how John Winthrop sent his companion to the new world called America in 1962. The main idea of John Winthrop was to improve the population over the colonies with eyes on how to improve the economy. Back in England the over population, poverty, and famine was a really big problem that have to be solve. So then, in this new world, America, there are a lot of new resources that can be explored such as timber, furs, fish, and almost infinite portions of lands. At that time the first colonizers who migrated to America had their first task and it was to cultivate the “Lord’s…
At this point a brief synopsis of the movie would seem to be in order,…
Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’ and Nelson’s ‘O’ both capture the themes of jealousy, deceit and racism through the main characters Iago who is named ‘Hugo’ in ‘O’ and Othello who in ‘O’ is named Odin.…
In Act V of The Tempest, Prospero begins to speak about giving up his beloved magic. He recounts the acts he was able to perform with magic fondly saying, “I have bedinn’d the noontide sun, call’d forth the mutinous winds, and ‘twixt the green sea and the azured vault.” (lines 10-11) Prospero refers to his magic gratefully calling it a “potent art” in line 18. Magic allowed Prospero to perform many great acts and allowed him to confront those who wronged him in years past. However, Prospero makes the decision to give up his power as he plans to head back to Milan.…
The Tempest by William Shakespeare was written in the 17th century, a time where exploration and colonialism were of high priority in Europe and the people were fascinated with the discovery of new lands. In the play, Propsero, once the Duke of Milan, resides on a remote island in the Caribbean with his daughter Miranda where he has spent many years ever since his brother Antonio dethroned him. Prospero possesses magical powers which allow him to control the entire island. Caliban, the only native to the island, exchanged his knowledge of the land for the knowledge of language. Prospero takes advantage of his inherit powers and makes Caliban his slave. The story begins when Prospero uses his magic to coordinate a storm called, The Tempest, which causes a shipwreck that leaves his brother Antonio and the rest of the crew abandoned on the same island. All members of the ship end up in different areas of the island. Assuming it is unsettled, the characters become power hungry and aim towards ruling the island themselves until they find out the daunting news that Prospero resides there. This play addresses colonization and prejudice towards the indigenous people, the dependance of the native people to the survival of the colonizer, and can relate to today's endeavors the West has in the Middle East.…
Since the Renaissance, when Shakespeare born and wrote his works, many of the plays and literature styles have gained wide popularity among the readers and influenced many of the readers and the critics. Furthermore, people often say, it is widely believed at this time that role of males stand completely opposite to that of females; however, through the play of Hamlet, Shakespeare portrays a complex representation of human beings including femininity in its protagonist and title character, prince Hamlet. The Women in Literature and Life Assembly states in one of their articles, “Defining masculine and feminine characteristics allowed writers like Shakespeare to draw males with certain ‘feminine’ characteristics and females with certain ‘masculine’…
In Shakespeare's, Macbeth, (1606), and as in many of his tragic plays, gender roles have an important impact upon the courses of events. Besides the obvious difference of gender, these roles convey a unique and important processes throughout a short, tragic, and bloody play. Weather it's the ambition of a man, and the greed of a woman, their biggest fear of them all, would be fate and their chosen destiny.…
The sociological notion that the hierarchy of society is habitually patriarchal, an idea formally named “masculine hegemony”1, is influenced by literature beginning as early as the Medieval times and remains unchallenged until the appearance of the works of William Shakespeare in the heat of the English Renaissance. Masculine hegemony as a concept arises from the prison writings of Marxist scholar Antonio Gramsci meanwhile he was imprisoned within a fascist jail in the 1920s.2 Creating a sexist doctrine that rules over early societies it filters itself into the pages of some of the most renowned historical pieces of literature. The Iliad by Homer, the Oresteia Trilogy by Aeschylus, the Old Testament, and Decameron by Boccaccio can all be studied from a feminist viewpoint in criticism of their show of masculine hegemony. Eternally famous playwright and innovator of our English language William Shakespeare is the first author to break the chains of this dangerous cultural concept with his powerful, diverse female characters.…
Virgil is a key component of Dante’s Inferno, the classic novel written by Dante Alighieri. Some would say he is the most important part of the Inferno but does he really have as much power as we think and how does he affect the novel itself? Throughout the Inferno we see him use the fact that he is on a heavenly mission to delivery Dante to Beatrice. Taking a closer look at the cantos 7-9 of the Divine Comedy, we see the first-time Virgil struggles to continue Dante’s journey. At the gate of Dis, Virgil is perplexed by the now closed gate, “We have to win this battle”, as, in the past, it was open after the earthquake caused by Christ’s decent into Hell (Inferno 9.7). During this Harrowing of Hell, Jesus took souls to heaven who were before the time of Christianity, which…
Authors can make discoveries and through their texts present these ideas to an audience who then come out with new understandings and renewed perceptions of their world. Shakespeare had a great understanding of humanism and through the tempest passed on his ideas. He created an island that was a microcosm for society, which amplified all the characters flaws. Through the character of Prospero Shakespeare can illuminate his ideas. This is done through the dramatic action focusing on different characters being on different parts of the island. This dramatic structure of the play is an important vehicle for discovery. The contrived effect of all these characters being on the island together and being effectively unable to escape takes the audience to a position of uncertainty and ambiguity, inviting us to question humanity, ourselves and the world so that we arrive at a deeper understanding of the human condition. Through the discoveries and understandings that Shakespeare had on humanism, by portraying them in a play he invites his audience to make discoveries and thus represents a domino effect.…
In 1834, when P. T. Barnum drew up his carnival, he imagined a place filled with freaks, exotic animals, and jaw-dropping performances (“P. T. Barnum, American Shoman”, 2018). Spectators paid a small fee to enter the festivities, often screaming with delight while watching ridiculous stunts and acts. On the other hand, Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin pictured a different version of the carnival, more like that of the Renaissance times (Chan, 1). He envisioned a place where literary characters would change roles, overtaking their oppressors and escaping a life of repression. Bakhtin claimed carnivalization was the key for any person, fictitious or historical, to become equal to or more powerful than those who repressed them.…
In A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen and Othello by William Shakespeare women were treated as victims of their era due to male dominance. Women in the 16th, 18th and 19th centuries were considered inferior to man. They would tackle tasks such as taking care of the household and the children while men were out making the family income. Men did not believe that women were capable of thinking on the same level as them. However, the two plays mentioned give us examples of two characters that disobey the superiority of men, but have rather different outcomes because of the time period in which the plays have been written.…
In Dante’s Inferno, Montaigne’s Essays, and Boccaccio’s Decameron, it seems that storytelling functions for entirely different purposes. Dante curiously prods for stories to add to his "notes" or remembrances of his trip to hell, making storytelling a method of entertainment in the depths of hell. Each of Montaigne’s stories are meant to leave his family and friends with an accurate memory of himself and his values, not an attempt to gain fame. The seven women and three men in Boccaccio’s work recount stories to sustain themselves by distracting their minds from the plague, a method of survival. These purposes may appear radically different but actually share a common theme. In all three works the authors seek to blur conventional distinctions…
The tempest is a comedy even though the play is filled with moments that can end in chaos but are greatly avoided. The story begins with the ship of Alonso king of Naples in a huge storm, which is called a “Tempest”. Which is conjured by the story’s protagonist Prospero who is the resident witch of the island and who is also the rightful duke of Milan.…