A Postmodern Reproduction of Dante Alighieri’s Exile

Abstract

THE NOSTALGIA OF HANNIBAL LECTER: A POSTMODERN REPRODUCTION OF DANTE ALIGHIERI’S EXILE AbstractIn this paper I shall argue that, in Ridley Scott's film Hannibal, Dr. Lecter's hiding could be interpreted as a self-enforced exile which epitomises postmodern nostalgia in his attempt to re-create the medieval past into the present. By specifically analysing the "conference" scene of Scott's film, I shall demonstrate that Dr. Lecter's study of the figures of Judas and Pier della Vigna as well as of Dante's Inferno melancholically reflects upon his own exile from America. Specifically, I shall argue that Dr. Lecter's presence in the town of Florence is a reproduction and simultaneously an inversion of Dante's exile. Indeed, by referring to the recent critical works on the practice and experience of exile in the Middle Ages (in particular, during the Italian Renaissance), I shall establish a parallel between the medieval manifestations of exile and...