December 7, 2011
Dante’s Inferno
Hunt Emerson is well on his way to finishing his Dante’s Inferno graphic novel. With script assistance and an introduction by the extraordinary Kevin Jackson. To be published in September 2012.
HUNT EMERSON TURNS THE COMMEDIA INTO A COMEDY!!
Written in the early fourteenth century, Dante’s Divine Comedy has long since been acknowledged as the greatest single poem of the last 2,000 years. It is a three-part epic, which tells the story of how a lost soul – the poet himself – is led by a spirit guide through Hell and Purgatory and finally to the highest realms of Heaven, where he is re-united with his lost love, the beautiful Beatrice. The best-known and best-loved section of the poem is the Inferno, an astonishingly rich gallery of horrors, torments and monstrosities, populated both by hideous demons and by the pathetic souls of the dead, each one being punished in a bizarre way that matches his or her particular sin. Intensely visual in its portrayal of agony and bliss alike, the poem has influenced countless writers, musicians and above all artists – from Botticelli to William Blake, from the Pre-Raphaelites to Tom Phillips.
It has just one obvious weakness: Not enough good jokes. Now, after more than half a millennium, one comic artist has finally come forward to put matters right. Hunt Emerson, the dazzlingly talented cartoonist who has previously brought new and richly humorous life to the works of Coleridge, Casanova, D.H. Lawrence and John Ruskin, has gone for the biggest literary name of them all. May we modestly present his new masterpiece: HUNT EMERSON’S INFERNO!!!! While remaining wholly faithful to the narrative, the characters and even (usually) the philosophy of Dante’s original, Hunt Emerson has dreamed up a brilliantly inventive series of comic variations on the poem. All of the deathless characters are here: Paolo and Francesca, the doomed lovers; Bertrand de Born, who carries his decapitated head around like a giant pudding; Ugolino, who eats his own children… each one gloriously re-imagined in the universal language of the modern comic strip. HUNT EMERSON’S INFERNO delights on many levels: as an ingenious translation of classic verse into knockabout farce; as an effortlessly readable introduction to the poem for those too busy or too intimidated to tackle it without a guide; as a delicious crib for anxious Dante students with an essay crisis heaving into view; and as a warm tribute from the master of one art form to the grand master of another. Hunt’s cartoon is followed by Kevin Jackson’s essay on Dante, which explains how the comic has been developed from the original, points out some of the more complicated jokes, and invites readers to go back to tackle Dante for themselves.
Already acclaimed by Dante scholars in both the UK and USA as a wildly clever and witty, but essentially reverent treatment of the poem, HUNT EMERSON’S INFERNO is a wonderful treat for anyone who already loves Dante, or thinks they might learn to love Dante… or simply wants to ache with laughter.
HUNT EMERSON’S INFERNO: ONE HELL OF A COMIC…..