Book Sectionhttps://doi.org/10.25620/ci-02_05
Angela Merte-Rankin
Dante’s Inferno and Walter Benjamin’s Cities
Considerations of Place, Experience, and Media
When Walter Benjamin wrote his main texts, the theme of the city as hell was extremely popular. Some of his German contemporaries, such as Brecht or Döblin, also used it. Benjamin was aware of these examples, as well as of examples outside Germany, including Joyce’s Ulysses and Baudelaire’s poetry. And he was — at least in some way — familiar with Dante’s Inferno and used it, and in particular Dante’s conception of hell, for his own purposes. Benjamin’s appropriation of the topos of the Inferno has been seen as a critique of capitalism and as a general critique of modernism by means of allegory. In the following analysis, I would like to take a slightly different approach and, despite Benjamin’s status as an expert on allegory, consider hell in its literal sense as a place and examine the issues of emplacement that might follow from this standpoint.
Keywords: Alighieri, Dante – Divina Commedia – Inferno; productive reception; Benjamin, Walter; eschatology; hell (theology)
Rights: © by the author(s). This version is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
| Title |
Dante’s Inferno and Walter Benjamin’s Cities
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| Subtitle |
Considerations of Place, Experience, and Media
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| Author(s) |
Angela Merte-Rankin
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| Identifier | |
| Description |
When Walter Benjamin wrote his main texts, the theme of the city as hell was extremely popular. Some of his German contemporaries, such as Brecht or Döblin, also used it. Benjamin was aware of these examples, as well as of examples outside Germany, including Joyce’s Ulysses and Baudelaire’s poetry. And he was — at least in some way — familiar with Dante’s Inferno and used it, and in particular Dante’s conception of hell, for his own purposes. Benjamin’s appropriation of the topos of the Inferno has been seen as a critique of capitalism and as a general critique of modernism by means of allegory. In the following analysis, I would like to take a slightly different approach and, despite Benjamin’s status as an expert on allegory, consider hell in its literal sense as a place and examine the issues of emplacement that might follow from this standpoint.
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| Is Part Of | |
| Place |
Vienna
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| Publisher |
Turia + Kant
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| Date |
2011
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| Subject |
Alighieri, Dante – Divina Commedia – Inferno
productive reception
Benjamin, Walter
eschatology
hell (theology)
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| Rights |
© by the author(s)
This version is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
|
| Bibliographic Citation |
Angela Merte-Rankin, ‘Dante’s Inferno and Walter Benjamin’s Cities: Considerations of Place, Experience, and Media’, in Metamorphosing Dante: Appropriations, Manipulations, and Rewritings in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati, Fabio Camilletti, and Fabian Lampart, Cultural Inquiry, 2 (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2011), pp. 77–87 <https://doi.org/10.25620/ci-02_05>
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| Language |
en-GB
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| page start |
77
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| page end |
87
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| Source |
Metamorphosing Dante: Appropriations, Manipulations, and Rewritings in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati, Fabio Camilletti, and Fabian Lampart, Cultural Inquiry, 2 (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2011), pp. 77–87
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| Format |
application/pdf
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Cite as:
Angela Merte-Rankin, ‘Dante’s Inferno and Walter Benjamin’s Cities: Considerations of Place, Experience, and Media’, in Metamorphosing Dante: Appropriations, Manipulations, and Rewritings in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati, Fabio Camilletti, and Fabian Lampart, Cultural Inquiry, 2 (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2011), pp. 77–87 <https://doi.org/10.25620/ci-02_05>