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Dantes Divine Comedy Essay - College Paper

Dantes Divine Comedy Essay


Among the various tools Dante Alighieri employs in the Commedia, his grand imaginative interpretation of life after death, scenes involving figures and beasts from classical mythology provide the reader with allegories and exempla effectively linking universal human themes with Christian thought and ideology. Among these, the figure of the Siren, found in Canto 19 of the Purgatorio, exists as a particularly sinister and moribund image. Visiting Dante in a dream upon the heights of Mount Purgatory, the Siren attempts to seduce the sleeping traveler with her sweet song. Dante finds himself on the brink of giving in to her deadly charms when Virgil, through the intercession of a heavenly ...

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to Odysseus before he sets out for home, "You will come first of all to the Sirens, who are enchanters / of all mankind and whoever comes their way…/ They sit in their meadow, but the beach before it is piled with boneheaps / of men now rotted away, and the skins shrivel upon them" (Homer 12.39-50). Odysseus chooses to listen to their sweet song as his boat passes their island, and, were it not that he were bound fast to the mast, would have jumped overboard to seek his death upon their shores. According to Vernant, examination of the original Greek text, as well as the popular conception of these creatures "locates them in all their irresistibility unequivocally in the realm of sexual attraction or erotic appeal" (104). These seductive creatures however, as seen in the piles of decaying bodies upon the shores of their island, are truly creatures of death. Vernant further asserts, "they are death, and death in its most brutally monstrous aspect: no funeral, no tomb, ...

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nothingness" (138). In this manner sloth becomes a gateway to other sins, just as it is only through his sloth that the Siren reaches the traveler. This contemplation of empty matters engenders a perilous idleness, which, in turn, leads to pursuit of exorbitant earthly pleasures and leads the soul down a baneful path towards death.
This evil path is delineated by the sins of avarice, gluttony, and lust-the tendencies toward which are redirected at virtue on the three remaining terraces of Mount Purgatory. These sins of incontinence can all be described as different types of inordinate lust. Whether it is lust for material wealth, lust for food and drink, or lust in its traditional ...

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PAPER DETAILS
Added: 8/20/2007 04:31:25 PM
Category: English
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 1932
Pages: 8

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