The Cantos

Orlando Furioso is a is an epic poem of the Renaissance written by Ludovico Ariosto. The poem consists of cantos including different characters. There are important characters that show how woman behaved and the domestication process in connection to men. The character of Bradamante, a female Christian knight, who falls in love with a Saracen warrior named Ruggiero, can be analyzed through specific cantos in the story. This character is a figure of how woman want to be seen with a sense of respect, fearless, and fair in other peoples eyes versus what woman are feeling on the inside about themselves. However, as the reader there are questionable traits that Bradamante presents as to whether she can go from an Amazonian character to a domesticated…

In this canto the diviners’ heavily distorted bodies have twisted necks with their tears strolling down their backside. Upon seeing these sinners in this state he says “I leaned my face upon the projecting stone/and let my tears flow down” (Dante Alighieri 73). The state in which Dante sees these sinners is so disturbing that it appeals to his human heart and he does not feel even an ounce of trepidation before he starts crying for these sinners. Dante being the only person to cry for these…

groaning tree, as he makes his way through the seventh level of Hell. Dante was introduced to Pier della Vigna, a trusted counselor of Frederick II, in the form of a tree as his punishment. As Dante enters conversation with Pier della Vigna it become clear to the true significance of della Vigna’s contrapasso. As Dante says on the seventh level of Hell, “I am convinced he thought that I believed the groans I heard were issuing from shades who hid from us behind trees.” (Canto XIII, 24-26). Here…

canon. In the world of Dante’s Inferno, components of real history and Greek and Roman mythology exist simultaneously. An excellent example of Greek and Roman myth and history merging is in Canto IV, where we see a combination of poets, scientists, and mythological characters co-inhabit limbo. Vergil, who usually inhabits limbo as well, points out famous writers when he says, “that shade is Homer, the consummate poet; the other is Horace, satirist; the third is Ovid” (88-91;35). All of these…

creative joy on the still deep of the eternal’s peace. Our earth starts from mud and ends in sky. When the transformation comes, “all is new – felt in God” (10.3.452). When unity is one, then strife is lost. All this is nothing but the vindication of the victorious power of poetry. Such poetry’s progression is through the constant see-saw of negation and affirmation. Its path is paved through the dialectics of opposites. Paradox, which alone could unfold the truth, emerges at its best only when…

“Thus, if the present world has gone astray, in you is the cause, in you let it be sought, and now I will be a true spy of it for you.” (Purg 16.82-85) For this canto, it is important to keep in mind that Dante is not just in the middle of his journey through Purgatory, but also the entire afterlife. Purgatorio 16 is the 50th canto of all the comedy and takes place in the third terrace, which is for wrathfulness. Here Dante encounters Marco from Lombardy, who is suspected to have been a…

Canto VI of the Inferno lends itself well to the traditional format of a lectura Dantis, in which one canto is lifted from the context of the whole work, and considered as a single poetic entity. This canto is one of the shortest in the Comedy: only one other, Inferno XI, has as few as 115 lines. Canto VI can be regarded as a self-contained unit, since it holds the complete description of one circle of Hell, the third, where Gluttons are punished. The action of the canto is symmetrically framed…

The Canto starts off as a conversation between Dante and Virgil that has begun to last all day. The sun is setting and that causes Dante to prepare for the upcoming night. This giving him the virtue, Dante invokes the Muses help. Being afraid and doubtful of his ability he enlists the help of Virgil in a long way why he was the one chosen for the journey. He begins to compare himself to Aeneas, from Virgil’s Aeneid and also St. Peter both traveled in the Underworld and Heaven. Dante begins to…

In Canto 15, there was a few lines about how when a spirit spoke, Dante Pilgrim did not understand what he was saying: “Then, joyous to hear and to see, the spirit added to his beginning things I did not understand, so deeply he spoke, nor by choice did he hide them from, but by necessity, for his meaning shot beyond the mark of mortals” (p. 305, lines 37-42). At times, I forget that the Pilgrim is still a mortal because he is able to know and see so much in Heaven, but these lines showed…

In the novel Bel Canto, written by Ann Patchett, the author creates a diverse and multicultural environment in an enclosed setting. The tale chronicles the interactions between individuals from various backgrounds in a sundered world within a developing Latin American country, once colonized by a rich, European country. Many businessmen and political officials from all around the world gather in the home of the vice-president, Ruben Iglesias of physically, politically and economically unstable…