Dante’s Inferno is basically just fan fiction. It’s beautifully written, profound, and well thought out, but it’s fan fiction. Fan fiction is defined as:
fiction written by a fan of, and featuring characters from, a particular TV series, book, movie, etc.
Dante writes about famous characters from mythology, the Bible, etc. When people are super into classical literature, it’s not often thought of it as fan-girling. However, I believe it kind of is. It seems to me that the definition matches up perfectly. Dante’s Inferno has several elements that are associated with fan fiction. First of all, it’s a crossover between different characters Dante likes. Fan fiction is a medium that likes to bring characters from different TV shows, books, etc. together in a single story. Dante brings characters from the Bible, Greek mythology, and the like into the play. Another element of fan fiction is wish-fulfillment. We can see people who Dante didn’t like being punished in hell. Meanwhile, he is being given a tour of the underworld by his idol. People he likes engage in respectful conversations with him, while people he doesn’t like are punished for eternity. Sounds like wish-fulfillment to me. Another common device used in fan fiction is the self-insert. People who write fan fiction often like to write it so that other people can see themselves inserted into the story. Sometimes the self-insert is an author’s idealized version of themselves, sometimes it is its own separate character, and sometimes they make the self-inserted character more blank, a spectator, so people can imagine themselves as the person. Dante the pilgrim seems to be a younger, more naive version of the author. He acts as a spectator, but also is the author’s self-insert into a the story. This self-insert then gets to interact with the literary characters he feels most strongly about. Anyways, please let me know if there are any other elements of fan fiction I forgot about.
4 comments:
Hey Abby! I like this post a lot, because what you're saying is very true: Dante's Inferno is pretty much a fan fiction. That's the part I love about the story. He incorporates all of his heroes in one story and becomes good friends with them. It's interesting to see who his heroes were during his lifetime, but his heroes ultimately helped define literature today, because some people may know his heroes from Inferno. It is also really interesting how similar it is to a fan-fic, yet it's so praised by scholars all over the world. It's not known to be a fan fiction, it is simply known as Dante's Inferno, one of the greatest works of all time.
Hey Abi! I really love this comparison. Every time Dante hypes himself up in Inferno I kind of giggle. It just seems so casual, and I can just imagine him happily writing about himself. Also, the way he talks about Virgil I super fan fiction like. He puts him on such a pedestal. Even though Inferno is super allegorical and interesting, I think it’s fun to just take a step back and recognize it’s fan fiction qualities.
Abbigale, I completely agree. I said countless times last year when we were reading Paradise Lost that the entire book is literally just Bible fanfiction. Mrs. Klebba scoffed at me, but I was definitely correct. There was undoubtedly some chemistry between Adam and Lucifer, and you can't convince me otherwise. Apparently, it is a common theme amongst old dead scholars to write fanfiction about God Himself and their interpretations of Him. Dante definitely wrote a self insert, because in the first circle, he just sits around and has a casual conversation with all of his favorite poets/scholars who just happened to all be in the same circle and not being tortured. Gotta respect the guy's imagination and determination, though. He went through a lot just to wrote himself having fun with his idols.
I am a huge fanfiction reader if y'all didn't know. I read a ridiculous amount of Harry Potter fanfiction, and sometimes the fanfictions are so elaborate that I think they are more complex than the original books. I have always read stories that are Hermione-centric stories because she is my favorite character, and I think that she has been under valued.
There are a lot of books that are literally just fanfiction for authors with plots/settings just different enough to pass as different perspectives, like Grendel, which is literally Beowulf fanfiction. Also, we will read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which is about two characters in Hamlet that are seen once in the entire play. Side note- my dad did Speech in highschool with a friend, and they did the scene in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead where they see Hamlet. He says that it was a pretty common Duo piece, but they did this thing were in the middle of the scene, when Hamlet crosses, they stopped in unison and watched an imaginary person walk by them.
We can call it fanfiction, but so many of the books that we read are based heavily or loosely on other books, poems, or works.
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