MY DANTE. A CONVERSATION WITH THEODORE CACHEY ON AMERICAN DANTE STUDIES

Theodore J. Cachey Jr. is one of the major representatives of the new American Dante Studies. This article proposes a conversation with the scholar on various aspects of his work and personal experience in the American Dante studies between the 1980s and recent years

Moral structure

Chapter 12 provides a comprehensive overview of the moral structure of each of the three realms of Dante’s afterlife: Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. It examines Dante’s sources, ethical criteria, and topography, as well as his representation of moral structure in the narrative itself, and its political implications. The first section analyses the four principal regions of Hell through Virgil’s rationale: the circles of incontinence, the ‘rings’ of violence, the ‘pouches’ of simple fraud, and the pit of treacherous fraud. It then explores the three groups of souls that Virgil strikingly leaves out: the ‘neutrals’, the virtuous pagans in Limbo, and the heretics. The second section addresses four key differences between Infernal and Purgatorial suffering, explains the moral theories of disordered love and the seven capital sins underpinning the seven terraces of Dante’s Purgatory, and examines the theologically original antechamber of Purgatory, and the Earthly Paradise at the mountain’s summit. The third section highlights Dante’s distinction between what Paradise is and how it is conveyed, and shows how his layered vision of Paradise overlaps the scheme of the four cardinal and three theological virtues with the theory of astral influence on personality.Postprin

MY DANTE. A CONVERSATION WITH THEODORE CACHEY ON AMERICAN DANTE STUDIES

Theodore J. Cachey Jr. is one of the major representatives of the new American Dante Studies. This article proposes a conversation with the scholar on various aspects of his work and personal experience in the American Dante studies between the 1980s and recent years

“It’s Not Rape-y Enough”: How The Master Sexual Assault Narrative Restricts The Stories Writers Can Tell

We all need stories to survive. Stories of the past and present, stories of ourselves and others. Stories shape all we know and all we are; narrative renders human existence meaningful. In essence, stories form our identities. Trauma interrupts these stories. Perhaps that is why it is so jarring for people to experience it. Furthermore, research has shown that writing can be a tool that fosters a victim’s recovery from trauma, for writing allows a victim to take control of the narration of a senseless and horrifying experience. For this and other reasons, the discourse surrounding the trauma of sexual assault is multifaceted and layered. There exists a master sexual assault narrative in Western culture –a set of conditions that is repeated over and over again to form the dominant cultural belief about the reality of sexual assault and the conditions that surround it. This master narrative, however, does not represent reality in its totality, but a small sliver of the endless possibilities. Despite this, it is powerful; the master narrative is so embedded in our minds that it silences victims by making them believe that their sexual assault experiences outside the limits of the master narrative are invalid. In this thesis, I dismantle the cultural master narrative of sexual assault that silences survivors and examine the connections between it, life writing, and the ability for a survivor to begin to heal from a traumatic experience with the help of storytelling