#hell unearthed

[hilarymcelwaine]

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Celebrating Dante 700 years

Starting with Inferno. Are you a Good Soul?

I am sharing stories about people from classical mythology, Dante’s medieval Italy and people you will recognise from the modern world. What do they have in common? They are being tormented in Hell for wrongdoings they have committed in life.

And they are not all bad people. Some of them are well known heroes who have done amazing things in life but nobody is perfect. and for imperfections that involve harming other people and offending God, they have to pay a price in the afterlife.

You are going to meet monsters from classical mythology, Popes and political leaders from Dante’s contemporary Italy and also criminals from our modern world which include gangsters, pop stars, sports stars, princes and princesses.

Read on!

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 Celebrating Dante 700 years

1. Let’s start at the very beginning

2. The book cover

3. Surprise! Find out what’s in me!

4. Are bad guys all bad and are our heroes all good?

5. A modern-day not-so-good hero

6. Greedy people

7. Ciacco and William Makepeace Thackeray

8. Paolo and Francesca

9. Christianity and Hell

10. Filippo Argenti and the angry souls

11. Money-grubbers and wasteful

12. Honour based violence and FGM 

Warning: some sexually graphic details

13. Layout of Hell

14. Comparing ethics of violence from 1300 to today

15. Modern day murderers

16. The rapists in Hell Unearthed

Warning: some sexually graphic details

17. The picture of fraud - Geryon

18. Ulysses (Odysseus) punished for lying to the Trojans

19. Ulysses’ last voyage

20. Cheats in Hell Unearthed

21. Stories of squanderers

22. Fortune tellers or diviners

23. Manto and the origin of Mantua

24. Farinata

25. Beasts in Hell

26. Thieves

27. Impersonators

28. The story behind the world’s languages

29. Corrupt Popes

30. Pimps and sex groomers

31. Humour in Hell

32. Counterfeiters

33. Women in Hell

34. Guelphs and Ghibellines

35. Hypocrites

36. Story of Cacus

37. Attila the Hun

38. Betraying your team

39. Hosts who betray their guests

40. Money launderers

41. Evil dictators

42. Thieves in literature

43. Female rapists

44. Friendship in Hell

45. Kidnappers

Warning: contains unsettling content

46. Evil dictators

47. Serial infidelity

48. Artists who have faked it

49. Stories of Pimps

50. Wasteful characters

51. King John family traitor

52. The Beaumont children kidnap

Warning: contains some unsettling content

53. Medusa and the Furies

54. Neptune, a rapist

55. Emperor Tiberius, a paedophile

56. Tybalt Capulet, angry soul

57. Tyler Durden is punished for GBH

58. William and Maud de Braose - how the innocent suffer

59. Count Ugolino, political traitor

60. The failure to rebuild Haiti

61. In the mouth of Lucifer: Brutus, Cassius and Judas

62. Guido da Montefeltro - punished for conspiring with an evil Pope

63. Archbishop Ruggieri - punished for political treachery

64. Suicides

65. Kidnap of John Paul Getty III

Warning: contains some unsettling content

66. The importance of unity

67. Staircase to Heaven

68. Surprise! Find out what’s inside.

69. Geryon the Back Cover of Hell Unearthed

[hilarymcelwaine]

Day 33 - women in Hell

Dante was very sparing of women in Inferno.  Possibly, he felt they were less inclined to violence and fraud. He certainly didn’t ignore women, however, as the most important character in the Divine Comedy is Beatrice and she is given the role of guiding Dante from Purgatory to Paradise and salvation.

Beatrice is the lady in white above

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Beatrice beseeches Virgil to rescue Dante from his bewilderment and terror in the dark woods.

She was born in 1266 and lived in Florence in Dante’s time. She was a member of the Portinari family and Dante tells us in his work the Vita Nuova - The New Life - that he fell in love with her when they were 8 and 9 respectively having met at a May Day party at her father’s house in Florence.

Dante then idolised her in his writing and she became a Muse or inspiration for him. She died when she was only 24 and Dante gives her blessed status through his writing.

In the Divine Comedy she is both a saint and a beautiful woman. She represents happiness, grace and virtue and acts as Man’s guide to redemption.

The other women, Dante meets in Hell are Francesca in the circle of the lustful for her unrestrained passion for Paolo when she was married to his ugly brother; Manto, the witch who founded Mantua; Myrrha who impersonated another woman in order to legitimise her incestuous relationship with her father.

In order to redress the balance in the sexes, I have found a number of women sinners - mainly pimps, serial cheats, excessive spenders, spies or double agents - read into that what you will. You can find out more by scanning here:

[hilarymcelwaine]

Day 17 - the picture of fraud, Geryon

As Dante and Virgil enter the 8th circle of Hell they will witness souls being punished for various acts of fraud. These sinners have used their intellect to deceive and betray people around them. They are liars, cheats, kidnappers, paedophiles, people smugglers, pimps, blackmailers.

At the edge of the circle of fraud, a monster, the picture of fraud comes swimming up through the thick air of the abyss and his role is to carry Dante and Virgil down from the 7th to the 8th circle of Hell.

His name is Geryon. He has the face of a charmer: a good-looking and friendly man. As he swims towards the travellers, he keeps the rest of his body hidden but Dante can see that he is rather unattractively hairy from the shoulders down and, only later, does he glimpse the reptilian tail with a poisonous fork at the tip.

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[lazyworksinprogress]

I'm at work over the weekend and there is a lot to do but no one will notice if I don't do it very well so I'm listening to Hell Unearthed - Hilary McElwaine

Hell Unearthed: A Modern Adaptation of Dante's Inferno

Hell Unearthed charts Dante’s journey, guided by his hero, Virgil, through the underworld. In this modern version of Inferno, the cast of si

[my thinking/unedited notes]

the author has a few moments of explaining her process and complimenting Dante's understanding of justice that jumped out to me and made me laugh because I do not hold Dante in particularly high regard when it comes to morals or ethics. Do I think Divine Comedy has an indelible historical and artistic influence? Yes. But I also think it's important to view "masterpieces" that form the bedrock of established moral justice with a healthy sense of contempt for the part those ideas have played in bringing the state of the world to *gestures to everything*.

Praising Dante by mentioning his influence on the construction of Western judicial legislation is an overtly political line to walk because those legal frameworks are not famous for being ethical, reasonable, and/or logical. I'd be happy to cop to the idea that Dante invented the first famous self-insert, RPF fanfic, set up a lot of great Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, and definitely helped Hozier with the structure of his last album but I refuse to allow the thought flourish that he is an unimpeachable moral authority.

uncritically repeating the Gandhi rhetoric claiming he was a spiritually elevated person when his history of sexism, anti-Blackness is a choice that really places this adaptation in a politicised place

david bowie being in limbo for publicly following different religions and not various allegations of sexual violence is also a decision to continue to perpetuate a certain public image of these figures that is not wholly based on their actions

the political commentary is superficial and pro-West without even the nuance of Dante's original work that criticised the imperial aspirations of Florence. The "kidnapper portion" that identifies individual criminal cases like the Lindbergh kidnapping but not ones like the atrocities of the settler colonial Residential Schools or of the ways that missionary work and schooling was used to erase Aboriginal culture and separate children from their families and culture in Australia - is just one of the moments that just made me feel completely alienated from this adaptation.

it feels like there is something not entirely right when trying to fit some of these sins into the structure of the Divine Comedy. the attempt to include specific crimes of gender-based violence like genital mutilation is not handled well - it actually feels like a dog whistle when attached to a cultural story including arranged marriage - as though forced/early marriage does not also happen in Christian traditions.

There's just too many places when the choice of sin illustrates how determined the author is to ignore glaring modern examples if the case criticises the hegemonic power structure.

it's a tough adaptation to try to blend modern examples with the conservative and contradictory framework because it illustrates a lot of the logical inconsistencies and the way sin is constructed by a specific type of person. it doesn't make sense and the absurdity of ignoring things like systemic violence is frequently jarring .

[hilarymcelwaine]

Geryon

Geryon is the picture of fraud and he features on the back cover of Hell Unearthed. Credit to Rob Page 

https://www.robpageillustration.com/

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Surprise! Find out what’s inside

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[hilarymcelwaine]

Day 65 - kidnap of John Paul Getty III

The kidnappers find themselves sliced apart by demons in the circle of fraud in Hell Unearthed.

John Paul Getty III gets his revenge since his own kidnapping involved his kidnappers slicing off his ear.

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John Paul Getty III was the grandson of the oil tycoon, J. Paul Getty. The grandfather was once the richest person in the world but he was also renowned for being a cheapskate.

Following his parents’ divorce in 1964, John Paul Getty III moved to Rome as a young teenager with his father. His stepmother died of a heroin overdose in 1971 and, although his father returned to England, he remained in the city by himself. 

In 1973, aged 16, John Paul Getty III was kidnapped by the ‘Ndrangheta, a mafia organisation based in Calabria. A ransom note was sent to his mother demanding $17 million.

The family doubted the verity of the kidnapping as not only was John Paul errant and rebellious, but he had previously joked that he would fake his own kidnapping in order to extract money from his rich grandfather.

His rich and penny-pinching grandfather refused to pay the ransom and the child’s kidnappers cut off an ear and a lock of hair, sending them in the post to a newspaper in Rome as proof of the demands. They also sent pictures of John Paul with his ear cut off. After five months, he was eventually released.

[hilarymcelwaine]

Day 58 - William and Maude de Braose - how the innocent suffer

William de Braose was a favourite at the court of King John. A favourite that is, until he fell out of favour with the king. Then things turned bad for his family.

The story of the imprisonment of Maud and her son, William until they starved to death is a poignant moment in Hell Unearthed. For all the sin and crime which is driven by selfish motives, let’s pause a moment to think of the innocent people who suffer along the way.

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William married Maud in 1166 when she was just 11 and they lived under the rules of the English kings Henry, Richard and John.

William earned the wrath of the Welsh when he committed the Abergavenny murders in 1175, tricking various Welsh princes and leaders to come to a conciliatory dinner and having them murdered by his men.

In 1199, William fought alongside Richard I at Châlus in France when the king was mortally wounded. He supported King John’s claim to the throne and became a court favourite. John gifted him with land and castles, and it is thought that he may have tasked William with the murder of his nephew, Arthur of Brittany.

However, he soon fell out of favour with the king who claimed he owed money from his estates to the Crown and he seized William’s estates across England and Wales.

Maud made no secret of the fact that she believed John had given instructions to murder Arthur and the pair of them were hunted down. William fled to Ireland and then to France disguised as a beggar to evade King John’s capture.

Maud, however, was not so lucky. She was imprisoned with their eldest son, William, in the dungeons at Corfe Castle in Dorset where they starved to death.

The speed of the de Braoses’s fall alarmed the barons, who considered it a sign of the king’s volatile temperament. Clause 39 of the Magna Carta, considered to be a precedent for trial by jury, was included in part due to the desire for protection against arbitrary decision-making like the punishments surrounding the de Braose family.