Period 4
World Lit/Advanced Comp
Unit 4 Essay Test Literature from the medieval time period is mostly about one person and their problems. The tales describe a mistake made by an individual (mortal/god or goddess) and provide insight into the individuals destiny and fate. Destiny and fate were very influential to a person or characters life during this time period. The central concern of medieval literature is the individual person working out his or her individual destiny through the conflicts they faced. Inferno talks about people and how they chose their fate. The story is about Dante's view of hell. Dante believed hell had 9 layers. Each canto tells of the 9 layers and where a person of sin will dwell due to the choices they made in life. For example, in Canto XXXIV (9), it tells of Satan's fate. “And there before them, in an infernal parody of Godhead, they see Satan in the distance, his great wings beating like a windmill.”It also reads, “He is fixed into the ice at the center to which flow all the rivers of guilt; and as he beats his great wings as if to escape, their icy wind only freezes him more surely into the polluted ice.” The more he flaps his wings to try and escape, the more it forces him to be stuck where he is. His destiny is to to be stuck experiencing all of the guilt in the world due to his own actions. The Lay of the Werewolf gives foreshadowing of what is going to happen to the wife. The wife herself says, “Very quickly shall I die for reason of my dread.” Her relationship with Bisclavaret, her first husband, dies away when she betrays him. Later in the story, it tells of how he rips off her nose. By the end of the story it reads, “So she went forth, she and her second lord together, to seek a more abiding city, and were no more seen.”Because of the dread she felt due to her first Lord being a werewolf, she had many negative things happen which could metaphorically be classified as death or dying away. The foreshadow tells of