Going through my blog posts I started to appreciate some of the changes I’ve made when writing a response to the work of Dante. I see a lot less discussion of the text in my earlier posts than I do in more recent published works, and I think that that’s a real and tangible improvement. I stand by the topics I’ve written about, though I think that as my perception of Dante and his Comedy have been refined and developed, so too have my topics of discussion. I think that I’ve made a lot of progress since my first post, and that I’ve better and more effectively engaged and built-off of the text in my posts.

Comparing my oldest and most recent work you can really start to see a lot of improvements. Not just in analysis, but also in how I engage with the text. I used a lot more quotes than I think was necessary in my first few posts. Not exactly a bad thing, but something I think could have been better considering my current works which rely a lot less on excerpts from the text, and more on an analysis of what Dante’s really saying through the Inferno. While the quotes establish a good dialogue and development of the text as I build up to my arguments, reflecting on them now I think these quotes really result in more of a summation than analysis. My second assignment on Canto 7 really shows this, especially through descriptions like “Just as these souls went against the will of Fortune, a device of God, they now take what they have (their weights) and collide and push against each other, a metaphor for their behavior on Earth.” While I stand by the post itself, which focuses on the degrees of sin and the idea of contrapasso, I think that my work has improved a lot from this base. I think that my analysis is a lot more thorough in recent posts than it was in posts like “Dante’s Vision of Contrapasso in the Punishment of Sin,” which isn’t to say that posts like these are bad, only that I’ve developed beyond them.

I noticed a main focus in my works, or a favorite topic at the very least. My favorite works so far are those which include Dante’s perception of God’s “Divine Plan,” and the construction of the Inferno with the intention of contrapasso. Dante’s exploration of contrapasso in the Inferno is something I find very interesting, as readers can probably tell from the numerous times that I’ve brought it up through my blog posts. My favorite post so far has likely been my analysis of the “Progression of the Recognition of Sin,” a post drawing a line between the sinners in the first couple bolgia and the “anti-inferno” from the first few Cantos of the Inferno. I think that the parallels between sin and punishment as well as the parallels between sinners in the Inferno (as I explore in my post) are fascinating, and it’s ideas like this that I feel really embody my development through these posts. In earlier posts, I think I was really just getting my footing in the Inferno. And now with a better understanding of Dante and the construction of his Inferno, I feel that a lot of my ideas are a lot more free-flowing and interesting, especially now that I’ve really solidified an interest in Dante’s work.

Ultimately I think my posts are improving, but they still need work. I think that my topics are improving in terms of thought, but in terms of writing I think I can still do better. A lot of my main shortcomings are a result of relying on the text a lot more than I should, and while I feel that I’ve definitely progressed a lot from that, I can certainly continue to improve.

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