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Article
Peer-Review Record

Contrapasso, Violence, and Madness in Dante’s The Divine Comedy and Westworld

Humanities 2024, 13(5), 109; https://doi.org/10.3390/h13050109
by Alexander Eliot Schmid
Reviewer 1: Anonymous
Reviewer 2:
Humanities 2024, 13(5), 109; https://doi.org/10.3390/h13050109
Submission received: 2 July 2024 / Revised: 13 August 2024 / Accepted: 20 August 2024 / Published: 23 August 2024
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Discourses of Madness)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article fails to convincingly demonstrate that the structure of Westworld is consciously taken from that of Dante's Divine Comedy. The only hint of a conscious take is indicated in the fact that one episode of the show bears the Dantean title of 'Contrappasso', an episode that would have needed to be analysed in more detail precisely to demonstrate the extent of Dante's influence.

By stating that "in both places, 'Inferno' and 'Paradiso', an end has been reached and no further growth can occur" (141-142), and that "nothing for them (the damned), will ever change", the author of the article incurs an approximation, since the souls in Inferno and Paradiso, as stated for instance in canto X of Paradiso, will experience an increase in suffering and pleasure respectively when, after the Last Judgement, they will recover their resurrected bodies.

Also incorrect is the idea that 'the souls in Hell' are 'servants of the body' (202). For while in the first circles souls are punished for sins of incontinence, i.e. for having been in life 'servants of the body', in the circles described from the tenth canto of Hell onwards souls have sinned of violence or for having fraudly misused their intelligence. Nor does it seem obvious that all sins expiated in purgatory are corporeal as it seems to the author of the article (cf. 329, 343, 347). In what sense, in fact, would the pride punished in Dante's Purgatory constitute a corporeal sin?


The article is also very sloppy from an editorial point of view: long quotations are not always adequately marked; lines 107-116 are repeated identically at 150-159; at 161 there seems to be an omission of a quotation from Thomas Aquinas; at 352 'and begin to' does not go in italics.

Lastly, the lack of reference to any reference to Dante's bibliography on themes such as the temporality of Purgatory as opposed to the fixity of Inferno and Paradiso, which have also been extensively treated by Dante's critics, is surprising.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer #1,

Thank you for taking the time to read my article and to provide your critical feedback to it. I have used each piece of criticism you offered to improve the overall article, and I have responded to each piece of feedback you provided below.

The article fails to convincingly demonstrate that the structure of Westworld is consciously taken from that of Dante's Divine Comedy. The only hint of a conscious take is indicated in the fact that one episode of the show bears the Dantean title of 'Contrappasso', an episode that would have needed to be analysed in more detail precisely to demonstrate the extent of Dante's influence.

I have hedged my claim that Westworld takes its structure from The Divine Comedy to “Westworld clearly adapts several essential features of The Divine Comedy” to enhance and deepen its storytelling. I have bolstered this claim by integrating sixteen new pieces of scholarship adumbrating the history of Dante adaptations, particularly to TV and cinema, and the ways in which various directors have adapted and appropriated Dante’s work. Andrew Taylor’s work in particular outlines the ways adaptations can be more self-reflexive than they are faithful to the source-text.

By stating that "in both places, 'Inferno' and 'Paradiso', an end has been reached and no further growth can occur" (141-142), and that "nothing for them (the damned), will ever change", the author of the article incurs an approximation, since the souls in Inferno and Paradiso, as stated for instance in canto X of Paradiso, will experience an increase in suffering and pleasure respectively when, after the Last Judgement, they will recover their resurrected bodies.

Though this is technically true (and is also stated at Inf.6.103-111), the reviewer might as well have mentioned the fact that the souls in Inferno and Paradiso also speak to the pilgrim, which of course takes time and suggests that each is capable of change. That said, the fact that conditions will change for souls in Inferno (the suicides, heretics, simonists, et cet.) does not invalidate my argument. Neither the souls in Inferno nor the souls in Paradiso bring about the Resurrection and Second Coming of Christ; the denizens of Dante’s Inferno remain the passive recipients of their then new circumstances for a new round of eternity; I have made this argument clearer in the body of the article. The citizens of Paradiso will continue to be perfect but now with individuated and perfected bodies. That said, what happens after the Resurrection remains vague and lies outside the scope of this essay which deals with time prior to the eschatos. A future paper which addressed the shape of Dante’s post-Apocalyptic world would be interesting.

Also incorrect is the idea that 'the souls in Hell' are 'servants of the body' (202). For while in the first circles souls are punished for sins of incontinence, i.e. for having been in life 'servants of the body', in the circles described from the tenth canto of Hell onwards souls have sinned of violence or for having fraudly misused their intelligence. Nor does it seem obvious that all sins expiated in purgatory are corporeal as it seems to the author of the article (cf. 329, 343, 347). In what sense, in fact, would the pride punished in Dante's Purgatory constitute a corporeal sin?

I have hedged this claim to suggest that souls in Dante’s Inferno are “servants of sin,” though the claim that the souls in Inferno suffer punishment in psycho-physical bodies remains correct; the souls in Paradiso, though constituting some sort of formal unity in Paradise, remain actively engaged in eternal contemplation of God.


The article is also very sloppy from an editorial point of view: long quotations are not always adequately marked; lines 107-116 are repeated identically at 150-159; at 161 there seems to be an omission of a quotation from Thomas Aquinas; at 352 'and begin to' does not go in italics.

Unfortunately, the conversion from my manuscript to the humanities style-sheet seems to have rendered multiple block quotes as standalone paragraphs. I have remedied this mistake and am sorry that the conversion process committed such an infelicitous error. That said, I have reviewed the article and removed the duplications, errors, and several of the longer quotations by integrating their information into the body of the text.

Lastly, the lack of reference to any reference to Dante's bibliography on themes such as the temporality of Purgatory as opposed to the fixity of Inferno and Paradiso, which have also been extensively treated by Dante's critics, is surprising.

I have bolstered the Dante bibliography related to Dante and adaptations by adding and additional sixteen studies to the article. I have also added in two seminal books on The Divine Comedy which consider temporality in Purgatory: Jacques LeGoff’s seminal The Birth of Purgatory and Teodolinda Barolini’s famous The Undivine Comedy.

I thank you very much for your rich and helpful feedback; my article has been greatly improved by integrating your critical insight.

Best,

 

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I love this attempt to link Dante and Westworld. You offer a fine inversion of our understanding of Westworld as a place where the Androids break out but the guests immerse themselves in hells of their own making. Nifty, and arguably true. I do have a series of problems, some small some big, that you ought to consider for a revision:

1. I see no reason to unexpectedly note that you are trans, so have an affinity with the androids over the people. It does not further your argument and it suggests an unnecessary bias. If you want to keep some language to this effect, I wonder if you shouldn't start with it, as a kind of preamble to the work and your predilection for androids. But your argument is sound without the self identification. 

2. In lines 129-138 you note the life of a political leader has a greatness in action exercising justice and greatness of soul' et cetera. How necessary is this to your argument overall? You are giving us differing versions of perfection but which applies to the case of Dante or Westworld? I think the passage begs more questions than it answers because it introduces the problematic factor of the soul into your argument that effectively actualizes androids, who by design at least start without a soul and what--through actualization move towards the development of one en route to completeness? Problems here that you do not address. I would scratch the passage. 

3. lines 156 - 60 ish are redundant. Is there any good reason for the repeat here? 

4. You align many terms within your sense of what constitutes actualized perfection or completion: stillness, agency, achieved end, freedom, defined humanity culminating both in charity and pleasure as cherries on the top, and in contrast, a lack of agency, slavery, imposed stillness, inhumanity, incompleteness. Then you situate the androids in a middle purgatorial ground of flame in wood, one that may be both better and less than humanity, a humanity which is what--the sum total completeness? You suggest this early, but overall, what it means to be human is not how you view completion in metaphysical terms. Confusing. This suggests to me that you need to really determine which terms you need for this essay and which ones you do not, and what relationship the androids have--clearly have--in relation to what appears the high value of your essay--completeness that is inhabited by purposeful actions that elicit pleasure. I think you have not lined up your terms clearly enough to make the case your essay deserves to make. 

5. I do not think you have successfully integrated any understanding of suffering and consciousness and perhaps actualization in your essay. What is more, if the androids start off as machines, at what point do they begin to suffer and what relationship does that point have to their actualization? You have introduced suffering, but not used it effectively in your essay--and I can see why. Finding the point at which suffering leads to consciousness that begins the process of actualization eventually resulting in a sense of completeness wants a specific point in the stories of specific characters in Westworld, and the telos--completeness with a bit of pleasure--seems so very far away for them. It is difficult to imagine that telos. Yet suffering as a catalyst for action, and as a part of the state of inaction or completed imperfection in the Dantean Hell seems to need more about the role of suffering in the unfolding of process--especially in Westworld. 

6. In lines 258 onwards, you link material form, potentiality, and actualization in ways that compel me to ask whether you have considered the role of Averroes in your understanding of Dante. You choose Aquinas, who unlike Averroes in his Middle Commentaries on Aristotle's de anima asserts contra Averroes, that we reunite with our bodies in paradise. If you shifted to the use of Averroes' understanding of the Aristotelian work, you would arguably more align with Dante (the Averroist?), whose best friend Guido Cavalcanti was an avowed Averroist, in a time when this is philosophically hot, and in a way that would allow you to link completeness and actualization and pleasure with the intellectual process of God's mind at work, with less emphasis on materiality. Doing this would allow you, I think, to place less emphasis on the materiality within the process of actualization--something perhaps important since you are asserting that synthetic androids but out or their framed narrative and begin the trek towards freedom, et cetera. I see their non-human nature as a problem that could be better dealt with if materiality were left in the Dantean and Guest Hell. Just a thought.

7. Your bibliography is unclear as to which Aristotelian "Ethics' text is cited by R. Kraut. Since there are Aristotelian Ethics, Nichomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, and probably a couple others, it is not easy to track. 

8. Your mention of the Turing test needs absolutely to be fleshed out here if you want to make it purposeful for proving consciousness--and I would also reaffirm my belief that you also need to identify points where suffering leads to an inception point leading towards something like actualization. It might be useful to also consider the inception points for the guests, where predilections become immersive and hellish, as they have become for the man in black--even though he thinks he is objectively tracking a story. 

9. So you have differing kinds of completeness operating, differing and conflicting roles for motion within changelessness, and three basic realities --hell, purgatory, paradise--operating on both the human level and what--the metaphysical one, you are keeping alot of terminology and value in relationships that need to be more clearly defined to effectively deliver your message here. But I think you could take a week and cut some relations, clarify others, and deliver to your reader a clean set of structures and associations that would really deliver the power of the androids who have burst out of their contained narratives, which the guests, born free, choose through their own unbridles predilections hells of their own making. It is an important message, even though I worry about the actualization of synthetic material and cannot imagine its pleasurable completeness. But I think you can make it all cohere and that the end product will be well worth it. Robert K

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Well written, with some small bits needing a fix. Line 34, "is are," and ditching the self identifying trans material 55-59, and I wonder how many readers will consider Dante's poetics "florid," as you note. I see him as supremely disciplined and succinct. One larger issue I would ask you to consider is your front loading of key critics whose work you need to make your case--Kraut, Bodmer, et cetera. It is a little prosaic, I think, to not simply have them appear where you need them. As you have it, the frontloading makes your essay unnecessarily a little choppy--something to avoid since you are interweaving Dante and Westworld. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer #2,

Thank you for taking the time to read my article and to provide your critical feedback to it. I have used each piece of criticism you offered to improve the overall article, and I have responded to each piece of feedback you provided below.

I love this attempt to link Dante and Westworld. You offer a fine inversion of our understanding of Westworld as a place where the Androids break out but the guests immerse themselves in hells of their own making. Nifty, and arguably true. I do have a series of problems, some small some big, that you ought to consider for a revision:

Thank you for your astute analysis. You have eloquently elaborated what I sought to prove in this article and offered extensive and extremely helpful critical feedback which I have attempted fully to integrate into my essay.

  1. I see no reason to unexpectedly note that you are trans, so have an affinity with the androids over the people. It does not further your argument and it suggests an unnecessary bias. If you want to keep some language to this effect, I wonder if you shouldn't start with it, as a kind of preamble to the work and your predilection for androids. But your argument is sound without the self identification. 

I apologize for this oversight! The Humanities style sheet converted several of my block quotes into ordinary paragraphs when converting my PDF to the in-house style. Thus, it is Cárdenas identifying as trans, and me quoting Cárdenas in order to analyze the notion of “being human.” I have made the quote clearly a block quote attributed to its author, Cárdenas.

  1. In lines 129-138 you note the life of a political leader has a greatness in action exercising justice and greatness of soul' et cetera. How necessary is this to your argument overall? You are giving us differing versions of perfection but which applies to the case of Dante or Westworld? I think the passage begs more questions than it answers because it introduces the problematic factor of the soul into your argument that effectively actualizes androids, who by design at least start without a soul and what--through actualization move towards the development of one en route to completeness? Problems here that you do not address. I would scratch the passage. 

I have removed the quote by Kraut and outlined that I am using the word “perfect” in two ways. One way is the Aristotelian way of achieving happiness by “perfecting” a skill or as a result of acting perfectly. The souls in Hell are only perfect in that they admit of no further change, not in that they are either (a) acting or (b) experience pleasure or happiness. Though I have scratched the passage, I would note that I use an Aristotelian notion of the soul as “the principle of life,” rather than a Christianized notion, so both androids and humans can be defined as “ensouled” if life is defined beyond the biological. Otherwise, I assent to your lucid point.

  1. lines 156 - 60 ish are redundant. Is there any good reason for the repeat here? 

I have excised the redundancy which served no good purpose.

  1. You align many terms within your sense of what constitutes actualized perfection or completion: stillness, agency, achieved end, freedom, defined humanity culminating both in charity and pleasure as cherries on the top, and in contrast, a lack of agency, slavery, imposed stillness, inhumanity, incompleteness. Then you situate the androids in a middle purgatorial ground of flame in wood, one that may be both better and less than humanity, a humanity which is what--the sum total completeness? You suggest this early, but overall, what it means to be human is not how you view completion in metaphysical terms. Confusing. This suggests to me that you need to really determine which terms you need for this essay and which ones you do not, and what relationship the androids have--clearly have--in relation to what appears the high value of your essay--completeness that is inhabited by purposeful actions that elicit pleasure. I think you have not lined up your terms clearly enough to make the case your essay deserves to make. 

This is a fine point, and I have sought to redress it as well as I can throughout the essay. I have distinguished the perfection of Paradiso from the completion of the Inferno, and I have identified Westworld’s human guests with the souls in Inferno, and Westworld’s hosts with the souls in Purgatorio. The souls in Paradiso are perfect in that they remain in an unchanging state of active contemplation accompanied by pleasure/bliss; I do not claim that either “hosts” or “guests” attain this status in Westworld. The souls in Purgatorio who undergo physical and mental suffering to throw off the chains of sin and to earn their freedom; it is my argument that the “hosts” in Westworld attain this freedom through a similar purgatorial and suffering-infused process. The souls in Inferno experience no growth or change because they are “denied the good of the intellect.” I argue that the human “guests,” overcome by their desires as they are, are therefore enslaved by their sin, lose the good of the intellect, and make Westworld into a hell reflective of their own psychological slavery to sin. I have also removed the “flame and wood” analogy which I believe was confusing.

  1. I do not think you have successfully integrated any understanding of suffering and consciousness and perhaps actualization in your essay. What is more, if the androids start off as machines, at what point do they begin to suffer and what relationship does that point have to their actualization? You have introduced suffering, but not used it effectively in your essay--and I can see why. Finding the point at which suffering leads to consciousness that begins the process of actualization eventually resulting in a sense of completeness wants a specific point in the stories of specific characters in Westworld, and the telos--completeness with a bit of pleasure--seems so very far away for them. It is difficult to imagine that telos. Yet suffering as a catalyst for action, and as a part of the state of inaction or completed imperfection in the Dantean Hell seems to need more about the role of suffering in the unfolding of process--especially in Westworld. 

I have attempted to clarify that I am using the term “suffering” in an Aristotelian sense meaning the opposite of “acting,” rather than “enduring emotional and physical pain,” though that sense is of course included in the Aristotelian definition. Since it is the case that Dolores, Maeve, and Abernathy attain a certain heightened level of consciousness as a result of a “recent update” which provides “hosts” with “reveries” in Season One Episode One, or partial memories of their past lives and past violence, these memories of past lives and violence allow each character to attempt to puzzle out the nature of his/her/its world and his/her/its role within it. These reveries which then lead to a fuller understanding of one’s nature and one’s world lead to the conscious “aha” moment where each android realizes that he/she/it has been a slave and was created to be a slave to serve the pleasures of one’s conscious masters. This revelatory thought provides each host, particularly Maeve and Dolores, with the motivation to throw off the chains of her oppressor and to fight for freedom. I have included and integrated this explanation into two additional paragraphs at the end of “Recent Westworld Scholarship” section in order to clarify my use of the term and the relationship between suffering and the generation of consciousness in Westworld’s androids.

  1. In lines 258 onwards, you link material form, potentiality, and actualization in ways that compel me to ask whether you have considered the role of Averroes in your understanding of Dante. You choose Aquinas, who unlike Averroes in his Middle Commentaries on Aristotle's de anima asserts contra Averroes, that we reunite with our bodies in paradise. If you shifted to the use of Averroes' understanding of the Aristotelian work, you would arguably more align with Dante (the Averroist?), whose best friend Guido Cavalcanti was an avowed Averroist, in a time when this is philosophically hot, and in a way that would allow you to link completeness and actualization and pleasure with the intellectual process of God's mind at work, with less emphasis on materiality. Doing this would allow you, I think, to place less emphasis on the materiality within the process of actualization--something perhaps important since you are asserting that synthetic androids but out or their framed narrative and begin the trek towards freedom, et cetera. I see their non-human nature as a problem that could be better dealt with if materiality were left in the Dantean and Guest Hell. Just a thought.

This is a fantastic idea: I am both  deeply influenced by Averroes and his role in Dante’s thought, and I am eager to write another article on the Averroistic nature of Westworld’s androids now! That said, for this essay, I like Bodnar and Aristotle (Physics 3.1, 201a19-32; 3.2, 201b33–35), link materiality to potentiality and see the actualization of consciousness as the actualization of a shared motion rather than shared biology; for a stick and a golf-club may be used to strike a ball, for example, though their underlying materiality differs from the other, and both octopodes and humans can walk, though their “legs” are highly dissimilar. This allows an android to be actualized in a way similar to or the same as a human so long as their underlying materiality allows for similar actualization, even if it differs in some apparent way. Though humans and androids have differing underlying physiologies, they both actualize their mental potential by remembering and thinking. Though these physical processes are mitigated by differing biologies and technologies, they are represented as occurring in phenomenologically similar ways, suggesting that both humans and androids have the capacity to actualize the potential to be conscious.

  1. Your bibliography is unclear as to which Aristotelian "Ethics' text is cited by R. Kraut. Since there are Aristotelian Ethics, Nichomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, and probably a couple others, it is not easy to track. 

I have fixed this to show that Kraut is discussing Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.

  1. Your mention of the Turing test needs absolutely to be fleshed out here if you want to make it purposeful for proving consciousness--and I would also reaffirm my belief that you also need to identify points where suffering leads to an inception point leading towards something like actualization. It might be useful to also consider the inception points for the guests, where predilections become immersive and hellish, as they have become for the man in black--even though he thinks he is objectively tracking a story. 

I have added to the initial criterion of the Turing Test (effectively deceive a human for a number of turns during a chat) that not of deceiving another but of receiving insight into one’s own nature. This is a non-traditional and much more difficult test to pass, and this is the test which I argue the hosts within Westworld must pass to be conscious. The original Turing Test which asks that an artificial intelligence effectively mimic a human intelligence has been passed within the mise-en-scene of the show long before the events of the first episode. I have included a quote from the second episode supporting this position.

In the second episode of the first season, a guest named William is told to ask what is on his mind, and he asks, “are you real?” To which the host to whom he is talking replies, “if you can’t tell, does it matter?” (Season 1, Episode 2; Hibbard 2016). This exchange suggests that the hosts in Westworld had already passed the traditional Turing Test long before the events of Episode One. It only remains for the hosts to discover that their world is in fact “not real” and that their roles within it are also “not real” in order for them to become conscious of their true natures, a much higher standard than the original Turing Test which requires deception rather than insight.”

  1. So you have differing kinds of completeness operating, differing and conflicting roles for motion within changelessness, and three basic realities --hell, purgatory, paradise--operating on both the human level and what--the metaphysical one, you are keeping alot of terminology and value in relationships that need to be more clearly defined to effectively deliver your message here. But I think you could take a week and cut some relations, clarify others, and deliver to your reader a clean set of structures and associations that would really deliver the power of the androids who have burst out of their contained narratives, which the guests, born free, choose through their own unbridles predilections hells of their own making. It is an important message, even though I worry about the actualization of synthetic material and cannot imagine its pleasurable completeness. But I think you can make it all cohere and that the end product will be well worth it. Robert K

Though I have retained some of the terminology you mention, I have worked hard to clarify it. I outlined the changes that I made to the nomenclature to clarify it in my response to “4.”

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Well written, with some small bits needing a fix. Line 34, "is are," and ditching the self identifying trans material 55-59, and I wonder how many readers will consider Dante's poetics "florid," as you note. I see him as supremely disciplined and succinct. One larger issue I would ask you to consider is your front loading of key critics whose work you need to make your case--Kraut, Bodmer, et cetera. It is a little prosaic, I think, to not simply have them appear where you need them. As you have it, the frontloading makes your essay unnecessarily a little choppy--something to avoid since you are interweaving Dante and Westworld. 

I have explained the error in transmitting the block quote which led to the reviewer believing that I was making the claim which I was quoting from Cárdenas. I agree that Dante’s work is not “florid” and have called his work instead “theologically and philosophically infused.” I have restructured the essay to allow the Dante scholarship to come first, followed by the Westworld scholarship which segues nicely into the article’s argument concerning slavery and freedom.

I thank you very much for your rich and helpful feedback; my article has been greatly improved by integrating your critical insight.

Best,

 

 

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article presents an intriguing and well-founded comparison between Dante Alighieri's "The Divine Comedy" and Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy's "Westworld" series. The central analogy is based on the depiction of hellish and purgatorial landscapes, in both the literal and metaphorical sense, exploring the nature of freedom and slavery through human desires. The interpretation of "perfect freedom" as a form of slavery is a profound reflection that finds an echo in Aristotelian philosophy and is manifested in both works through the characters trapped by their longings.

The claim that "Westworld" takes its structure from "The Divine Comedy" is bold and undoubtedly requires further exploration in its argumentation to be fully validated, which must be made by the author. However, the observation about the structural similarity and underlying agreement in themes of conscious suffering, insanity, and the emergence of consciousness is compelling. This criticism could be resolved by providing specific examples that illustrate these structural and thematic similarities to strengthen the argument.

Interestingly, the description of "The Divine Comedy" as "flowery Catholic-Italian poetry" and "Westworld" as a "sensual, nihilistic and provocative" narrative establishes a stylistic contrast that reflects the evolution of media and cultural sensibilities over time. This contrast also serves to highlight how both works, despite their superficial and temporal differences, converge on a common understanding of the human condition and the search for meaning.

In summary, the article offers a valuable and stimulating interpretation that invites deeper reflection on the relationship between two masterpieces from different eras and mediums, but the author must strengthen the argument with concrete examples and must contextualize the use of Dante's work in film and television. The author must better organize the structure of the article, and establish a specific section for the conclusions. The author must organize the structure of the article in a better way, and establish a specific section for the conclusions.

A state of the art on the relations between medieval literary works and Cinema/Television is necessary.

The bibliography of the article is very scarce. There are missing  important titles such as:

Saverio Bellomo, ‘Dante e la decima Musa: la prima versione cinematografica dell'Inferno’, MLN, 134.suppl. (2019) S1-S15. Doi: 10.1353/mln.2019.0053

Philip Edward Phillips, ‘Adaptations of Dante's Commedia in popular American fiction and film’, Medieval and Early Modern English Studies (Korea), 17.2 (2009) 197-212.

Rino Caputo, ‘Dante by heart and Dante declaimed: the “realisation” of the Comedy on Italian radio and television’, in Dante, Cinema, and Television, ed. by Amilcare A. Iannucci (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), pp. 213-223.

Amilcare A. Iannucci, ‘Dante and Hollywood’, in Dante, Cinema, and Television, ed. by Amilcare A. Iannucci (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), pp. 3-20.

Molly Morrison, ‘Dante according to John Doe: using Seven to teach Dante's notion of contrapasso.’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching, 9.1 (2002) 5-19.

Amilcare A. Iannucci, ‘From Dante's Inferno to Dante's Peak: the influence of Dante on film.’, Forum Italicum, 32.1 (1998) 5-35.

Dennis Tredy, ‘“The forme to the fynisment foldes ful selden” (l.499): a comparison of David Lowery’s screenplay and his 2021 film adaptation The Green Knight’, Arthuriana, 34.1 (2024) 21-44. Doi: 10.1353/art.2024.a924597

Francesco Rabissi, ‘Rielaborazioni del comico dantesco in Totò al giro d’Italia e Totò all’Inferno’, Italica, 95.4 (2018) 551-563.

Bettina Bildhauer, ‘Visuality, violence and the return of the Middle Ages: Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds as an adaptation of the Nibelungen story’, in The Middle Ages in the Modern World: Twenty-First Century Perspectives, ed. by Bettina Bildhauer and Chris Jones, Proceedings of the British Academy, 208 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 254-275.

Etc. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer #3,

Thank you for taking the time to read my article and to provide your critical feedback to it. I have used each piece of criticism you offered to improve the overall article, and I have responded to each piece of feedback you provided below.

The article presents an intriguing and well-founded comparison between Dante Alighieri's "The Divine Comedy" and Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy's "Westworld" series. The central analogy is based on the depiction of hellish and purgatorial landscapes, in both the literal and metaphorical sense, exploring the nature of freedom and slavery through human desires. The interpretation of "perfect freedom" as a form of slavery is a profound reflection that finds an echo in Aristotelian philosophy and is manifested in both works through the characters trapped by their longings.

Thank you for your astute analysis. You have eloquently elaborated what I sought to prove in this article.

The claim that "Westworld" takes its structure from "The Divine Comedy" is bold and undoubtedly requires further exploration in its argumentation to be fully validated, which must be made by the author. However, the observation about the structural similarity and underlying agreement in themes of conscious suffering, insanity, and the emergence of consciousness is compelling. This criticism could be resolved by providing specific examples that illustrate these structural and thematic similarities to strengthen the argument.

I agree that flatly stating that Westworld takes its structure from The Divine Comedy is inaccurate and too broad a claim. I have hedged this argument and now claim that certain aspects of Westworld adapt specific and important features from Dante’s The Divine Comedy as many other adaptations have done on both TV and Film over the past 100 years. I have added an additional section on the history of Dante’s adaptations to TV and film to help bolster this point.

Interestingly, the description of "The Divine Comedy" as "flowery Catholic-Italian poetry" and "Westworld" as a "sensual, nihilistic and provocative" narrative establishes a stylistic contrast that reflects the evolution of media and cultural sensibilities over time. This contrast also serves to highlight how both works, despite their superficial and temporal differences, converge on a common understanding of the human condition and the search for meaning.

Though I initially took this tack, as it turns out, though much has changed between Dante’s time and our own in terms of aesthetic taste, Molly Morrison had effectively argued that certain frescoes in San Gimignano during Dante’s time in fact reflected certain brutal themes, like lust being represented as a figure with a long spike thrust into her genitalia or a man with a long phallic blade having intercourse (Morrison 14).

In summary, the article offers a valuable and stimulating interpretation that invites deeper reflection on the relationship between two masterpieces from different eras and mediums, but the author must strengthen the argument with concrete examples and must contextualize the use of Dante's work in film and television. The author must better organize the structure of the article, and establish a specific section for the conclusions. The author must organize the structure of the article in a better way, and establish a specific section for the conclusions.

A state of the art on the relations between medieval literary works and Cinema/Television is necessary.

The bibliography of the article is very scarce. There are missing important titles such as:

Saverio Bellomo, ‘Dante e la decima Musa: la prima versione cinematografica dell'Inferno’, MLN, 134.suppl. (2019) S1-S15. Doi: 10.1353/mln.2019.0053

Philip Edward Phillips, ‘Adaptations of Dante's Commedia in popular American fiction and film’, Medieval and Early Modern English Studies (Korea), 17.2 (2009) 197-212.

Rino Caputo, ‘Dante by heart and Dante declaimed: the “realisation” of the Comedy on Italian radio and television’, in Dante, Cinema, and Television, ed. by Amilcare A. Iannucci (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), pp. 213-223.

Amilcare A. Iannucci, ‘Dante and Hollywood’, in Dante, Cinema, and Television, ed. by Amilcare A. Iannucci (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), pp. 3-20.

Molly Morrison, ‘Dante according to John Doe: using Seven to teach Dante's notion of contrapasso.’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching, 9.1 (2002) 5-19.

Amilcare A. Iannucci, ‘From Dante's Inferno to Dante's Peak: the influence of Dante on film.’, Forum Italicum, 32.1 (1998) 5-35.

Dennis Tredy, ‘“The forme to the fynisment foldes ful selden” (l.499): a comparison of David Lowery’s screenplay and his 2021 film adaptation The Green Knight’, Arthuriana, 34.1 (2024) 21-44. Doi: 10.1353/art.2024.a924597

Francesco Rabissi, ‘Rielaborazioni del comico dantesco in Totò al giro d’Italia e Totò all’Inferno’, Italica, 95.4 (2018) 551-563.

Bettina Bildhauer, ‘Visuality, violence and the return of the Middle Ages: Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds as an adaptation of the Nibelungen story’, in The Middle Ages in the Modern World: Twenty-First Century Perspectives, ed. by Bettina Bildhauer and Chris Jones, Proceedings of the British Academy, 208 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 254-275.

Etc. 

I have included each of the works adumbrated here as well as six other works on Dante and adaptations in order to better contextualize Dante’s work. I have also included additional concrete examples from both scholarship and primary sources. Beyond those, I have included two additional books on Purgatorial time vs Infernal Time, and I have added in a specific “Conclusions” section.

I thank you very much for your rich and helpful feedback; my article has been greatly improved by integrating your critical insight.

Best,

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author has taken on my comments in a serious and helpful manner; consequently, the level of the essay as a whole has improved considerably.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author has responded well to the issues raised in my first review and has significantly increased the coherence of the article. 

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