Talk:Divine Comedy

Theories on islam

I was under the impression we were in the business of providing facts without bias. This section on theories of Islam is ludicrous. 600 years after Dante wrote this book a man claimed that he had an Islamic influence. that is fantastic I don't care and neither does anyone else who comes here looking for the facts. the impressions of someone about a book written 600 years before that person wrote their impressions do not matter and should not be present here. The entire section needs to be deleted Sickboy254698 (talk) 22:27, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

• Sickboy254698, this comment is so ridiculous that I barely know where to start--so I'll just say two things. First, this is how scholarship works--not by way of "impression", incidentally; that's for high school students. Second, please look at this list and tell us what you consider to be a decent cut-off date after which you will not accept any scholarly studies. Thank you, Drmies (talk) 15:57, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Scientific themes

In the scientific themes section, it could be relevant to cite the thesis according to which the Devine Comedy contains a description of a 3-sphere. The thesis is contained in Mark A. Peterson, “Dante and the 3-sphere,” American Journal of Physics, 1979, and more recently supported by the theoretical phisicists Carlo Rovelli, as described in this article https://pointatinfinityblog.wordpress.com/2017/02/23/dante-einstein-and-the-shape-of-the-world/ (and in many other sources). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Heraultdesechelles (talk • contribs) 20:49, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

"Ref unnecessary here"?

@Deor: I'm confused by your reversion here. The caption mentions a date and artist for that painting that don't seem to be mentioned anywhere else. Why would we not reference that, per usual WP:V conventions? I added the cite because this info is to appear on the main page as part of POTD next week, and obviously all content there needs to be cited. Note also that the image opposite, "Rodin's The Kiss represents Paolo and Francesca from the Inferno" already had a citation on it. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 16:20, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

@Amakuru: By clicking on the image itself, a reader will be taken to a page that includes multiple references (including the Musée d'Orsay page you referenced) establishing the name of the artist, the date of the painting, and its subject. We don't usually include references in captions of artworks to back up information that's available in the image files. I assume that the ref in the other caption was included to back up the info that the sculpture "represents Paolo and Francesca", not that it's by Rodin. Deor (talk) 16:48, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

File:Dante Domenico di Michelino.jpg

is a retouched file, with colors of one editors taste, which we should not use here and which is rarely used on wp-projects. I'd prefer the authentic file from the museum https://twitter.com/museofirenze/status/1075345296048181248
= duomo.firenze.it, base of the retouched file used now. The increased pixels do not show any quality but the quantity of color changing, so please revert Oursana (talk) 16:23, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Fanfiction

I believe that the divine comedy is by definition a fanfiction but the other editors disagree, so I'm looking for arguments on why it isn't ~2026-87478-5 (talk) 21:00, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

Fanfiction is written by an amateur, is associated with a fandom, and typically in a copyright-based environment. Dante was not an amateur poet, Catholicism is not a fandom, and the Bible is not copyrighted. Many works in the pre-20th-century environment were written based on other works, including the various stories of King Arthur, several of Shakespeare's plays, the Aeneid, and virtually all myths. To reduce this all to the label of 'fanfiction' flattens the historical context by implying that these are fundamentally the same as a story published on AO3, and likewise stretches the definition of fanfic so far as to render it almost meaningless. radioactOlive_(she/it)(talk) 23:07, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

For me, the question of motivation is paramount. A writer of fanfiction is usually a devotee of a particular work or franchise and its characters and tries to create a new story within the work's or franchise's "world". What Dante was doing is completely different. Sure, he used some characters from the Bible and from classical mythology, but he also introduced many historical characters, and he wasn't using any of these primarily because he was personally a fan of them or their world(s). He probably recognized that some of the mythological figures, at least, were fictions, but he was telling a story of our world, not the characters'. Deor (talk) 14:57, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

If you believe that the Comedy is fanfiction, that's alright. The issue is whether reliable scholars have issued such an assessment (and whether it's anything more than a fringe view without much support).

If you can find credible sources saying that the Comedy is fanfic, then you can add them to the page. If you think you have a really compelling argument for why the Comedy is fanfic, then consider writing it out and submitting it to a literary publication and seeing if you can convince some people. But per WP:NOR, it doesn't matter whether your argument is convincing or poor: it matters whether it's contained in a credible source. Pkoroly (talk) 15:51, 16 July 2026 (UTC)