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

The medieval epic poem, The Divine Comedy, and Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s prestige drama, Westworld, have more in common than at first meets the eye. Both represent hellish and purgatorial geographies, both physical and psychological. And both share the view that what is regularly considered “per...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inHumanities (Basel) Vol. 13; no. 5; p. 109
Main Author Schmid, Alexander Eliot
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.10.2024
Subjects
Comedies
Consciousness
Dante
Effigies
Heaven
Hell
Inferno
Motion pictures
Nolan, Jonathan
Paradise
Phillips, Edward
Popular culture
Television programs
Thomas Aquinas, Saint
Violence
Westworld
United Kingdom
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Summary:The medieval epic poem, The Divine Comedy, and Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s prestige drama, Westworld, have more in common than at first meets the eye. Both represent hellish and purgatorial geographies, both physical and psychological. And both share the view that what is regularly considered “perfect liberty”, or the liberty to indulge in any and every desire one wishes to with impunity, is in fact a form of slavery, as argued by Aristotle. Both the denizens in Dante’s Inferno and the guests in Westworld’s park, therefore, are ensnared by their own desires. This article will consider the structure of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy and Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s hit HBO show Westworld, which I will argue takes parts of its structure consciously from Dante’s The Divine Comedy. And though at the outset, the two works of art appear dissimilar, the theologically and philosophically infused medieval Catholic-Italian poetry of Dante and the sensuous, nihilistic, and provocative story-telling of Jonathan Nolan’s recent work on the generation and expression of consciousness, ultimately what they share is similarity in structure and an agreement on the connection between activity, suffering, madness, perfection, consciousness, and freedom of the will from sin.
ISSN:2076-0787
2076-0787
DOI:10.3390/h13050109