Thursday, November 3, 2016
Why do we read so many books that have incest?
In Circle 2, Lust, we meet Francesca and Paolo. Francesca was married to Paolo's brother. Francesca and Paolo were caught having an affair and damned to Hell. This isn't directly incest, but it still counts. Francesca's husband is damned to Caina for murdering them. However, shouldn't Francesca and Paolo join him? They betrayed family, yet they are in circle 2.
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5 comments:
I think this speaks to the basic human desire to do that which is forbidden. Of course, evolutionarily, incest is bad for the species. But we all have a sort of morbid curiosity, like when you have a desire to touch a hot pan even though you know it will hurt you. Incest is just a kind of archetypal forbidden action.
I agree that people want to do what's wrong. If people didn't do anything wrong there would be no need for hell and Dante would not have written the story Inferno because there would be no reason for him to. Incest in particular is a common theme throughout the stories we read and it shows that no matter the time period, people have been having incest which shows that people always have and always will sin.
I'm surprised Dante didn't have a circle for this considering how taboo it was for the time. Today, you do not hear of incest, but back then it happened more often than people may think.
Further, since incest is taboo, it is easy to use incest as a metaphor for another equally as atrocious behavior. That is why many of the books that we have written use it. In One hundred Years of Solitude, incest was used as a metaphor for European nations colonizing Latin America. In The Unbearable lightness of Being incest was used as a metaphor for the communist regime. It is shocking to me that Dante did not use incest as a metaphor political turmoil.
I think the topic of incest is a reoccurring theme in literature. As we've seen in several books thus far, main characters have been involved in incest with one another. I think Dante'a representation shows how incest can be a part of human nature and therefore, is negative and should be punished.
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