Divination and Revelation in the Term Paper

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Unlike Teiresias, she does not use divination or prophecy but only her memory of events on earth. Finally, Odysseus sees the shades of various prominent characters from the Iliad and learns from this the manner of their deaths.

Dante is led to the Inferno (described as a physical journey under the earth, but, by this late date, clearly the journey is metaphorical) by Virgil. He does not seek divination, but does encounter (Canto XX) diviners, who, in poetic justice, are forced to walk with their heads turned backwards because, while on earth, they could not see the future as they claimed. Like Odysseus, Dante sees the eschatological fate of many recently deceased contemporaries. But in this case, the theme is used by Dante to suggest that his and his family's political enemies (he was a White Guelph) were, literally, damnable.

In the Odyssey, the journey to the underworld takes place as a physical journey. Odysseus enacts in literal form the symbolic and ritual actions of Greek cult. He does so for the purposes of receiving divination about his specific and immediate problems (the usual reason divination is usually consulted).

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He incidentally learns about the death of people he knew in life. What these amount to are tropes from the Greek mythological tradition, such as a brief summary of the material later used as the basis of the Oresteia of Aeschylus. In the Inferno, where Dante is guided in his actions as well as physically by Virgil, there is no divination of this kind. In fact, divination is mocked and demonstrated to be false. Instead, the special knowledge gained by Dante is anagogical in nature. It reinforces and illustrates the scriptural eschatological message, which, in the Christian worldview, is the only category of special knowledge of the future (in eschatological rather than merely temporal terms) that matters. What he learns always has a moral and religious meaning supporting right action and salvation, so the Inferno is a representation of Biblical prophecy......

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