Essay on Morality in Dante’s Inferno, Hamlet, The Trial, and Joyce’s Th

Changing Morality in Dantes Inferno, Hamlet, The Trial, and Joyces The Dead Everyone remembers the nasty villains that terrorize the happy people in fairy tales. Indeed, many of these fairy tales are defined by their clearly defined good and bad archetypes, using clichd physical stereotypes. What is noteworthy is that these fairy tales are predominately each old themselves or based on stories of antiquity. Modern stories and epics do not offer these clear definitions they force the reader to continually redefine the definitions of morality to the sensation that is not fully good and the villain that is not so despicable. From Dantes Inferno, through the winding mental visions in Shakespeares Hamlet, spiraling through the snarl in Kafkas The Trial, and culminating in Joyces abstract realization of morality in The Dead, authors grapple with this development. In the literary progression to the modern world, the increasing generalization of evil from its classic archetype to a fore ign, supernatural entity without bounds or cure is strongly suggestive of the pugnacious assault on individualism in the face of literatures dualistic, thematically oligopolistic heritage. In analyzing this gradient of morality, it is useful first to examine a work from early literature whose strong accolade of morality is unwavering for the purposes of this discussion, Dantes Inferno provides this model. It is fairly straightforward to discover Dantes dualistic construction of morality in his winding caverns of Hell each stern, finite circle of Hell is associated with a clear sin that is both definable and directly punishable. As Dante moves downwards in this moral machination, he notes that exchangeable lies with like in every h... ...akespearean Criticism. Ed. Laurie Lanzen Harris. Vol. 1. Detroit Gale Research Company, 1984. 234-7. Fort, Keith. The Function of Style in Franz Kafkas The Trial. Sewanee Review 72 (1964) 643-51. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed . Dennis Poupard and Paula Kepos. Vol. 29. Detroit Gale Research Company, 1988. 198-200. Joyce, James. Dubliners. Ed. Robert Scholes. untested York, Penguin/Viking, 1996. Kafka, Franz. The Trial. Trans. Willa and Edwin Muir. New York Schocken Books, 1992. Ruskin, John. Grotesque Renaissance. The Stones of Venice The Fall. 1853. New York Garland Publishing, 1979. 112-65. Rpt. in Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism. Ed. Jelena O. Krstovic. Vol. 2. Detroit Gale Research Company, 1989. 21-2. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. T. J. B. Spencer. New York Penguin, 1996.