Comparing Vergil's Aeneid, And Apocalypse Now

In his Philosophy of Composition, Edgar Allan Poe informs us that he begins writing with “the consideration of an effect” (430). Most of Poe’s poetry and fiction exemplifies his assertion that a preconceived effect upon a reader is undoubtedly fundamental to his creative work. Poe’s tales of terror in particular epitomize the supremacy of his craft in that each component of his narrative strategy functions to achieve the final effect of generating unmitigated terror in his readers. Focusing primarily on The Fall of the House of Usher, I argue that Poe employs a preconceived narrative

Often, we cannot see the good until we have experienced the bad. Dante Alighieri, a poet who makes himself the main character in his Divine Comedy, finds himself lost in a dark wood at the start of The Inferno. Though he sees a safe path out of the wood towards an alluring light, he is forced to take an alternate route through an even darker place. As the ending of the pilgrim Dante’s voyage is bright and hopeful, Alighieri the poet aims to encourage even the most sinful Christians to hope for a successful end. Thus, Dante the pilgrim goes to hell in The Inferno to better understand the nature of sin and its consequences in order to move closer to salvation; his journey an allegory representing that of the repenting Christian soul.

In Dante’s Inferno, part of The Divine Comedy, Canto V introduces the torments of Hell in the Second Circle. Here Minos tells the damned where they will spend eternity by wrapping his tail around himself. The Second Circle of Hell holds the lustful; those who sinned with the flesh. They are punished in the darkness by an unending tempest, which batters them with winds and rain. Hell is not only a geographical place, but also a representation of the potential for sin and evil within every individual human soul. As Dante travels through Hell, he sees sinners in increasingly more hideous and disgusting situations. For Dante, each situation is an image of the quality of any soul that is determined to sin in

The author’s use of imagery also leaves the listeners crying at their misfortunes. To fully illustrate the burning, agony of Hell, the author frequently uses the phrases “glowing flames” and “Hell’s wide gaping mouth open”. This depict that Hell is very “hot” to endure

There are many similarities between Dante’s The Inferno and Virgil’s The Aeneid, be it their characterizations or descriptive imagery, but foremost in their ideas of what the afterlife consisted of. Each each epic hero in the works here have descended in to the depths of hell, with The Inferno depicting Dante’s descent into the depths of hell and with Virgil in Book VI of The Aeneid depicting Aeneas’s decent into hell. It can be argued that although different, the knowledge acquired by each character’s descent was equally important to accomplishing their greater tasks at the ends of their journey. Had their descent into hell been skipped their outcomes would have concluded in a different way because their voyages to Hell each played a crucial role in the advancing each narrative.

The Inferno is a tale of cautionary advice. In each circle, Dante the pilgrim speaks to one of the shades that reside there and the readers learn how and why the damned have become the damned. As Dante learns from the mistakes of the damned, so do the readers. And as Dante feels the impacts of human suffering, so do the readers. Virgil constantly encourages Dante the pilgrim to learn why the shades are in Hell and what were their transgressions while on Earth. This work’s purpose is to educate the reader. The work’s assertions on the nature of human suffering are mostly admonition, with each shade teaching Dante the pilgrim and by extension the reader not to make the same mistakes. Dante views his journey through hell as a learning experience and that is why he made it out alive.

Dante’s work Inferno is a vivid walkthrough the depths of hell and invokes much imagery, contemplation and feeling. Dante’s work beautifully constructs a full sensory depiction of hell and the souls he encounters along the journey. In many instances within the work the reader arrives at a crossroads for interpretation and discussion. Canto XI offers one such crux in which Dante asks the question of why there is a separation between the upper levels of hell and the lower levels of hell. By discussing the text, examining its implications and interpretations, conclusions can be drawn about why there is delineation between the upper and lower levels and the rationale behind the separation.

The aim of my report is to explain how the view of the afterlife in Ancient Greece has shaped works of art, books and the mentality of people. In order to do this I am going to explore how ancient Greek people saw the underworld as well as Roman people and the Renaissance period. Because Greeks saw the underworld as a dark, dreadful and gloomy place, many of the works that refer to it, either in Roman times or the Renaissance, are influenced by this view. In particular works like the Odyssey by Homer or The Phaedo by Plato, explained to a certain level the structure of the afterlife in ancient Greece. These two pieces of literature severely influenced works like the book VI of the Aeneid by Virgil where he depicts the underworld referencing to the Greek point of view. But a deeper description of the underworld is given by Dante in his Divine Comedy where he uses Virgil as his guide, from the depths of hell to the Purgatory while Beatrice, Dante’s ideal woman, guides him through heaven. All these time periods shared the idea of the underworld as being a place where souls pay the sins they committed during their lives.

The historical relationship between the Aeneid and the Inferno originates with Dante’s own definition of the former as “the canonic epic model” (Jacoff 3). By definition an “epic model” dramatizes events of historical or legendary importance (Webster). Thus Dante, who “had no direct access to Homer” and the first epic models of Western literature--The Illiad and The Odyssey--chose Rome’s national epic, The Aeneid, as his historical inspiration (Jacoff 3). Specifically, the Inferno finds its overarching structural and thematic antecedent in Book VI of The Aeneid, where Aeneas descends into the realm of the shades. Here among hell’s carnage Aeneas finds his idea of eternal beauty embodied within the shade of his father, Anchises, who has survived in the heaven-like Elysian Fields. In the Inferno, the pilgrim undertakes the same journey as his historical prototype but instead searches for spiritual absolution in a Christian heaven. The motif of the journey remains, but the specific religious overtones of hell become slippery from the time of Aeneas to the pilgrim. For example, in his essay entitled "Imagination and Thought in the Middle Ages," Umberto Eco notes that “the medieval period was a prolongation of the mythopoetic dimension of the Classical period, though

In the note to Canto V regarding Francesca and Paulo, the Hollanders exclaim that “Sympathy for the damned, in the Inferno, is nearly always and nearly certainly the sign of a wavering moral disposition” (112). Indeed, many of the touching, emotional, or indignation rousing tales told by the souls in Hell can evoke pity, but in the telling of the tales, it is always possible to derive the reasons for the damned souls’ placement in Hell. However, there is a knee-jerk reaction to separate Virgil and, arguably, some of the other souls in limbo from this group of the damned, though, with careful perusal of the text, the thoughtful reader can discern the machinations behind their damnation.

   In the opening scenes of the documentary film "Hearts of Darkness-A Filmmaker's Apocalypse," Eleanor Coppola describes her husband Francis's film, "Apocalypse Now," as being "loosely based" on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Indeed, "loosely" is the word; the period, setting, and circumstances of the film are totally different from those of the novella. Yet, a close analysis of character, plot, and theme in each respective work reveals that Conrad's classic story of savagery and madness is present in its cinematic reworking.

Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now lacks the impact of its inspiration, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. While the basic elements of imperialism and human nature remain intact, the characters of the film bare little resemblance to their literary counterparts. The film serves as a re-interpretation of Conrad’s novella, updated from 19th-century British imperialism in the Congo to a critique of 20th-century U.S. imperialism in Southeast Asia. Coppola’s changes in setting and plot structure, however, force the film to sacrifice the character development so crucial in the literary work. This detracts from the overall effectiveness of the film.

The aim of this paper is to examine the elements of modernism in The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Sons and Lovers by D.H Lawrence and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.

On the one hand, with the prediction of the coming “fall,” the reader is provoked by some expectation about how, when, and why. The reader is exposed from the beginning to the narrator’s style and without realizing it will be ruled by the logic of that fictional world, in which melancholy and spiritual impatience reigns.

When you think of Hell, what do you see, perhaps a burning pit full of criminals and crazed souls? Or maybe you’re like Dante and have a well organized system of levels in correspondence with each person’s sins. In Dante Alighieri’s epic The Inferno, Dante and his real life hero, Virgil, go on an adventure through a rather elaborate version of Hell. In this version of Hell numerous thoughts and ideals are brought to the attention of the readers. Through Dante’s use of both imaginative and artistic concepts one can receive a great visual impression of how Dante truly views Hell, and by analyzing his religious and philosophical concepts the reader can connect with the work to better understand how rewarding this work was for the time period.