Choose one of the following topics and respond to it in a four-page paper (in other words, approximately 1,000 words). Your grade will be lowered if the following procedures are not followed:
a) Analyze only the cantos assigned for reading for this class. Why? One goal of the paper is to integrate what we’ve done in class with your own thinking. Verify on the Study Schedule all of the cantos to be read for class. Comment on these cantos as appropriate for your topic. Do not comment on the whole Inferno.
b) Give credit to all your sources. Put quotation marks at the beginning and end of any remarks you are quoting word for word.
c) Keep your paper focused on the key idea indicated for each topic.
1. Analyze the effect of opening the story of the Inferno in the dark and threatening wood, with wild animals blocking the narrator’s path out of the forest. How would the Inferno be different if Dante simply presented a vision of hell without this vivid opening framework created in Canto I? Key idea: how the author introduces a story is crucial to shaping the reader’s reception of the entire story.
2. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.†Where in the Inferno is this statement found? How does it prepare the reader for what will follow? What is the place of hope in the universe Dante creates in the Inferno? Consider how hope and hopelessness are presented in the cantos of the Inferno that we have read. Key idea: Punishment in the Inferno has psychological and moral aspects that go beyond physical pain.
3. Look in the recent news (the last five years) for an incident of the following type: one person’s deliberate wrong-doing caused great suffering for others. Include with your paper a clipping or a print out that describes the event. Imagine where in Hell Dante would locate this sin or evil, and how it would be punished. Key idea: contrapaasso is symbolic retribution, fitting the punishment to the crime.
4. Discuss the work of one visual artist (Salvador Dali, Gustave Doré, William Blake, and others) who illustrated scenes from the Inferno. Analyze how this artist depicts 3 scenes in Dante’s Inferno. Key idea: an illustration of a literary text is an interpretation of the text.
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