Home Of Souls-On The Cosmology In Divine Comedy By Dante

Dante(1265-1321)was an Italian national poet and the most representative writer during the transition period from Mediaeval Times and Renaissance.Divine Comedy(1307-1321)is a culture encyclopaedia of European Middle Ages and also an epic classic work involving confluence of two spiritual sources-Ancient Greek and Roman humanistic spirit and Christian theology.For all the ages,humans never stop exploring the universe,stars,life and afterlife.Just like the Homer’s Epic,Divine Comedy also reflects all the cultural cosmology theories in those ages.The "a microcosmic poetics" of Dante directly influenced the poetics cosmology during the Renaissance and exerted profound impacts on European culture in later ages.The paper comprehensively takes fundamentals of comparative literature,fundamentals of narratology and theories of space narratology as the theoretical reference,mainly uses Zoran theory in contemporary space narratology as the frame basis and organizes the article with the frame system composed of time,space and soul outlooks.The paper conducts research with three approaches,involving index method,graphic method and comparative analysis method.Divided in three parts,the paper analyzes cosmology and universe system in the Divine Comedy and quotes origins and text symbolic connotation of their cultural or religious doctrines.The specific structure is designed as follows:Chapter 1 discusses expression modes of time outlook and time in the Divine Comedy as well as respective cultural connotations and text symbolic significances.This chapter is divided into two sections and the appendix part.The first section analyzes the narrative time,namely clock of traveler Dante.Meanwhile,it can be divided into 4 types.The first three types include day-night dichotomous clock,zodiacal 12-constellation chronometry and north-south hemisphere time zone contrast method of the Middle Ages.These three expression methods of time involve knowledge such as Ancient Greek and Roman myths and epics,biblical literature,folk customs,religious doctrines,astronomy and astrology,representing harmony and uniformity in rhythms of human body and universe.The fourth type is the scheduled "time table" of traveler Dante,which particularly highlights the time outlook that Christianism never wastes any second.The second section discusses text historical time,namely time juxtaposition rules.The rules are embodied from three levels.Firstly,the week system of Christianism highlights that martyrdom and resurgence of Christ could save humans’ soul.The second level is the Book of Life of God.The Divine Comedy,stores all the historical time of human souls at eternal current moments,and Kingdom of Heav en,hell and purgatory share the same feelings and coexist with humans’ world.At last,the section analyzes the denying of linear flow time outlook in Christian culture against the soul circulation and metempsychosis theory which was popularized since Ancient Greece.Chapter 2 analyzes cosmology in the Divine Comedy.This chapter is divided into preface,three sections and the appendix part.The preface summarizes that Divine Comedy contains a stage and four worlds.The first section analyzes and summarizes historical sources and background knowledge of Christian theology formed by three realms in the Divine Comedy.The second and third sections are major and crucial parts of the paper.The second section analyzes systems and orders of three realms on the other shore and detailedly quotes and teases their origins of Christian theology doctrines,mainly including the theory about "virtue,evil practice and guilt" in the Summa Theologiae of Aquinas.This part is corresponding to the contrast relation between time-space complex and text connotation in Zoran theories.It is roughly divided into two system types.The first type takes "7 virtues"as the basis system,namely orders and system of the Kingdom of Heaven.Types and grades of the "virtues" form the order system of Kingdom of Heaven.Moral laws in humans’ heart are the orders.The second type involves the penalty place which takes "guilt" and "crime"as the basis.The system of hell and purgatory indicates that "guilt" and "punishment" are integrated.Guilt of the mind is the afterlife home of soul,namely a human creates himself.The third section analyzes the living environment of world on the other shore and conducts analysis and quoting mainly based on the Christianized universe "four elements" of Ptolemy.This part is corresponding to the "geomorphology" space level in Zoran’s spatial model theory.It is mainly manifested in the geological environment of hell valley,climatic characteristics of the purgatory mountain.and the celestial body symphony team-forming mode of the God.Terrains of the three realms are especially set as the home of souls.The natural environment is called out by "soul images".Souls create natural landscape of the three realms.Chapter 3 concludes that characters in the cosmology of Divine Comedy are "role"actors and extras on a "comedy" stage.Residents in the Divine Comedy are phantoms of people,which can be called as "consciousness of mind" in Buddhism terminology.In this...