Dante in 2011 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Dante in 2011 - Essay Example This blogger uses the same religious structure as Dante, creating circles of hell which are like the circles in Inferno, but rather than filling them with tortures that would be terrible with anyone he shows how hard it is to live with an atheist in society today. Dante’s structure, based on hell, purgatory and heaven are not a big barrier to people in our modern/postmodern world liking Dante, nor do they make it out of date. Everyone still knows what hell, heaven and so on are, and can understand the structure very well, and as this blogger shows can still make very funny content that fits into that religious structure. The first non-religious blogger talks about the fact that he thinks the Divine Comedy is â€Å"the most overrated book in history.† He says that he understands the political situation of the time, understands why people are where he put them and so on. But the problem is that understanding is not the same thing as actually getting the cleverness of work . When someone has to explain a joke to you, you can understand why it is funny after they have explained it but that does not mean that you will ever actually find it funny. For instance, if someone from Italy today made a joke about the prime minister of Italy suffering from the punishment of having to run from one beautiful naked woman to another for all eternity without ever being able to reach them, but still having to make each one of the beautiful women a senator, an Italian person would probably think it was clever or funny because they would know that the Italian Prime Minister has a habit of sleeping with models and making them senators, and would understand immediately why the punishment was clever. To someone from Mexico, however, the joke would not make any sense at first, and once it was explained the person could still understand it but would no longer find it funny or clever. So even though the blogger â€Å"gets it† because he kind of understands the politica l situation and has read short explanations of how each punishment fit each person, he will never truly understand how clever it would have been to the people who lived in Dante’s time. A good example of this problem can be found in Purgatio. In Purgatory, Dante meets a person, Omberto Aldobrandeschi, who is overly proud and that is why he was put in purgatory. He was very proud because of his descent, saying â€Å"I was Italian, son of a great Tuscan: / My father was Guiglielmo Aldobrandesco† (Canto XI). For someone today to understand why this is funny or representative, they would have to understand things like the reputation of both Italians and Tuscans, and how much pride they took in their parents and family. Even once this is explained, someone can â€Å"get it† without it truly seeming clever still. If, however, one wrote a book today about Paris Hilton being in purgatory because she was too proud of her family history, everyone today would understand it and think it is clever immediately. This type of satire just does not age well, and one must accept while reading it that they will never truly enjoy it in