History of a trope: From Homer to Milton

Abstract

Journeys to the afterlife occur often throughout literary history. This includes literature ranging from the Ancient Greek and Roman to medieval or Renaissance texts where the reader follows characters to either an underworld (as in Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid) or Hell (as in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy). These characters both converse with and attempt to embrace the dead; however, these embraces always remain unsuccessful. A gap between life and death informs the encounter, and it remains over time as a significant experience in literary texts that this project examines: Why does it begin? How does it evolve? And, through repetition over time, does the trope navigate new ways of understanding an essential human inquiry of whether living human beings can communicate with the dead? Additionally, this project reviews what the encounters mean for both non-Christian and Christian individuals, finishing by contemplating how, despite advancements by science allowing us further understanding of death, we continue to revisit this question today.