Upon reviewing my blog posts, I have noticed that I have been mainly following the theme of remembrance through the Inferno.  With the exception of my third post, which focuses on the Old Man of Crete and Dante’s use of classical mythology, all my other posts have either directly addressed the way the act of remembrance is used in the text or alludes to it by examining the representation of sinners in comparison to their living appearance.  In my most recent post, I still follow this theme, but take it in a somewhat different direction by addressing it in relation to Dante and the Pilgrim as opposed to the sinners as I had been doing in my other posts.

As I follow this theme through the cantos, my ideas in my posts have become more complex as the theme itself expands in the text.  In my first post I commented on how some sinners are allowed to be remembered and others are not and that this act of remembrance is an act of pity and alleviates suffering.  At that early stage in the Inferno this was all clearly defined as Virgil told the Pilgrim (and the readers) which sinners could and could not be remembered and why.  However, later on this becomes more complicated as the sins become worse.  What we knew changes–being remembered can be an act of punishment, some sinners can be remembered but not by physical appearance which alters their previous identity, and in my last post I reflected on Virgil’s explanation to the Pilgrim that there are different types of remembrance (fame and infamy) for different people.  This last one ties together all the confusing and conflicting things the Pilgrim feels and describes surrounding the memory of the sinners he encounters.

I found that while I quote a lot from the Inferno, I do not often quote from outside sources like many other students do.  I did use an outside source in my post on the Old Man of Crete and I noticed that it bolsters my ideas in that post more than just quoting from Inferno does in my other posts.  I will try to incorporate more outside sources in my future posts.  I also have not used any artwork or images in my posts like I have seen many other students do.  I am not necessarily a visual learner in this way and so I did not think to try it, however I would like to try doing one of my future posts this way to see if my understanding of text can benefit from it.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.