The Great Divorce and The Divine Comedy - 3095 Words

The cultural impact of Dante’s Divine Comedy is widely seen through a sundry of literary works, television programs, films and even video games. Yet, one of the most prominent works the Divine Comedy has impacted is C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce. Lewis’s book is greatly indebted to Dante’s work, as both try to teach the reader how to achieve salvation. Furthermore, Lewis and Dante’s protagonists discover the path to salvation through choices, and learning what causes one’s refusal of God. Both authors explore the path to righteousness and enquire about life’s most difficult questions. Therefore, the dialogue between Dante’s Divine Comedy and C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce is witnessed through the conception of the distortion of love,†¦show more content†¦Lewis’s text however is written in prose, presenting various places ranging from the â€Å"gray town† to â€Å"the valley of the shadow of lifeâ € , which are Lewis’s depictions of hell and the foothills of heaven respectively. Nevertheless, Matthew Swift, citing Alan Lee Brewer’s dissertation states that, â€Å"Despite radical structural differences, Lewis’s afterlife seems to mirror Dante’s afterlife as the direct product of continued choice (Brewer 213-214, 218-219)† (Swift 9). Therefore, though the structures are dissimilar in most regards, including the author’s approaches to the process of purging one’s self of sin, the texts are in dialogue with one another, simply due to the fact that Lewis’s work was created based on Dante’s epic vision. Moreover, the vision of Dante’s emphasizes how distorted love or excess is punished, because distorted love is a form of hubris. The hubris or exaggerated pride is punished because it alters the ascent to love or communion with God. Therefore, Dante’s pilgrim travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven to see the perfection of God’s justice and journey towards a higher understanding of love. In order to understand God’s justice, Dante the pilgrim must first understand the degradation of man and the punishments of sin. However, the torment of sinners causes Dante to question how a loving God would allow people to suffer, but as Allan H. Gilbert asserts, â€Å"Dante’s answer is that these sufferings counteract man’s tendencyShow MoreRelatedDante s Inferno And The Divine Comedy1208 Words   |  5 Pagesessay will discuss the issues in Dante’s Inferno and The Divine Comedy that are still true to this day as they were back when Dante wrot e this comedy. Some views Dante considers are not the same to everyone, but some views are still apparent in today’s society. With these views being common it can be said that Dante’s views are common for people in today’s society. Many people do not understand the journey that Dante describes in this comedy. 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