Dante , the Gothic , the Abject , and the Grotesque in Mathieu Missoffe ’ s Thriller-Crime Drama Black Spot
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ii . My conclusion that the monster in Black Spot is a Wendigo , a demonic spirit with a craving for human flesh , has two bases . The first is Missoffe ’ s two comic-book set titled The Curse of the Wendigo . The second is that Missoffe ’ s Wendigo bears an uncanny resemblance to the Wendigo of NBC ’ s recent adaptation of Richard Harris ’ Hannibal series .
iii . In his The Open Work , Umberto Eco argues that the form of a given literary work , or of a particular kind of literary work , generally reflects the prevailing world view of the culture in which the work was written . “ In ever century , the way that artistic forms are structured reflects the way in which science or contemporary culture views reality . The closed , single conception in a work by a medieval artist reflected the conception of the cosmos as a hierarchy of fixed , pre-ordained orders ”( 13 ).
iv . Several reviewers have commented on the fact that Lauren Weiss rarely , if ever , smiles . If we use Dante ’ s Divine Comedy as a subtext for Black Spot , we learn from Paradiso that smiles reflect the transforming power by the love and light of God . Those condemned to the Inferno , on the other hand , like those who never leave Villefranche , are forever separated from God , their grim expressions revealing this fact . As grotesques , those condemned to the Inferno�as well as those who dwell in Villefranch�are incapable of changing .
WORKS CITED
Alighieri , Dante . The Divine Comedy . Trans . Allen Mandelbaum . Everyman ’ s Library . New York : Alfred A . Knopf , 1908 , repr . 1991 .
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