(April 29, 2020 at 5:47 pm)Belacqua Wrote:Quote:His "Comedy", the "Divine" was added almost a century later, was a systematic description of Hell, complete with all the best bigotry that our species has to offer.
That's true about the title.
About a third of the Comedy is a description of hell. What part specifically did you find bigoted?
Mostly the usual Christian prejudice that everybody who doesn't agree with them suffers for eternity. Some of the "noble pagans" merely got Limbo, but Dante has people who lived and died long before Christ burning in the sixth circle with the heretics.
It's also hard to miss how both heaven and hell are populated by people that Dante liked or disliked. Inferno is one long grudge list.
Quote:Quote:It's a condemnation of humanity that nobody has every penned a systematic description of heaven.
Dante's Paradiso, cantos 30-33 give a systematic description of heaven. And there are many others.
It's not accurate to say that nobody has ever penned one.
Inferno is devoted to a systematic and exhaustive description of all the tortures of Hell. Paradiso has just 4 canti devoted to describing heaven and does so in more general, nebulous terms. I have yet to hear of a description of heaven, by any author, that was anywhere near so detailed as Dante's description of hell.
