Should We Make Profiles For The Divine Comedy?

[Ultima_Reality]

This is not a tiering-related thread, and the title is self-explanatory, really. As you can see:

The Divine Comedy

The Divine Comedy is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative vision of...

vsbattles.fandom.com

We already kind of index the Divine Comedy on-site, even if poorly. That said, from what I can gather, this has pretty much gone under the radar for quite a while, so I figured that it would be good to bring attention to it so that we can come to a formal agreement. Especially given that, as I recall, people have expressed uncertainties on whether this is fine to do, in the past. So, I'd rather get this out of the way, lest I waste time making profiles that would just be rejected anyway.

That said, I did potentially waste time making one profile. God. And this one, I think, summarizes all the potential woes that people might have with indexing the Comedy. Since, as you can see, it's.... well, pretty damn close to actual Christian theology. But on the other hand: The Divine Comedy is just a fantasy novel, even if one that's exceptionally faithful to its inspirations. So, yeah.

Discuss.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Oh, yeah, a relevant data point: We index Journey To The West, another work of classical literature that's very faithful to its religious inspirations. That probably gives us further precedent to say this is fine.

 

[Gasper]

I personally think it should be fine. Christians don't take Divine Comedy as serious religious text.

Besides, Journey to the west has it's roots way earlier than 16th century.
There are cave paintings of earlier versions of the story that date back to 12th-13th century CE.

"The Story of How Tripitaka of the Great Tang Procures the Scriptures" is an earlier version of Journey to the west written in 13th century. It's proto-journey to the west story that evolved orally over centuries.

 

[Armorchompy]

Italian here, confirming that even in the country in which it was written (and where we study it in schools) nobody considers the Divine Comedy a religious text (save for like, ignorant people I suppose). Fine to index

 

[Lukewoesal007]

Regardless of how closely a religiously-inspired or even derived work conforms to or aligns with the original beliefs, so long as it is not considered canonical to most major branches and/or constituents of said religion, it should be acceptable to index. I know the Divine Comedy is often assigned in otherwise secular or non-affiliated schools, as a means to educate students of all beliefs in the subjects of literary analysis and Western history. Most Christians are fine with the work being used in such ways, and how we would handle it on the wiki (i.e. analyzing a work closely tied to a religion under a clinical lens) is not, fundamentally, very different.

 

[Yasuda_144]

Oh, yeah, a relevant data point: We index Journey To The West, another work of classical literature that's very faithful to its religious inspirations. That probably gives us further precedent to say this is fine.

I would say that indexing JTTW is actually kinda iffy itself. The reason being that most of what's justifying the rating is taken directly from actual religious philosophy with next to no embellishment or artistic license taken. It's about as close as you can get to tiering the real-world concepts as you can get without doing it outright.

But if it's already considered fine, I guess The Divine Comedy is fine for the same reasons (although I have no clue why someone would want to powerscale centuries old works of high art in the first place).

 

[Gasper]

I would say that indexing JTTW is actually kinda iffy itself. The reason being that most of what's justifying the rating is taken directly from actual religious philosophy with next to no embellishment or artistic license taken. It's about as close as you can get to tiering the real-world concepts as you can get without doing it outright.

But if it's already considered fine, I guess The Divine Comedy is fine for the same reasons (although I have no clue why someone would want to powerscale centuries old works of high art in the first place).

What are you on about? That's just not true at all.
Everything on Sun Wukong's profile is taken specifically from JTTW novel.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

(although I have no clue why someone would want to powerscale centuries old works of high art in the first place).

Bored.

 

[Yasuda_144]

What are you on about? That's just not true at all.
Everything on Sun Wukong's profile is taken specifically from JTTW novel.

What I mean is that the cosmology and metaphysics of the novel itself are extremely faithful to actual Buddhism, to the point that indexing them is only one step removed from indexing actual Buddhist theology.

 

[Gasper]

What I mean is that the cosmology and metaphysics of the novel itself are extremely faithful to actual Buddhism, to the point that indexing them is only one step removed from indexing actual Buddhist theology.

Yeah, so? World of Darkness (a board game) is also very faithful to Buddhism, Hinduism etc as are many fictional works of literature.

 

[Robo432343]

What I mean is that the cosmology and metaphysics of the novel itself are extremely faithful to actual Buddhism, to the point that indexing them is only one step removed from indexing actual Buddhist theology.

so should we remove the presence from DC vertigo comics

 

[Yasuda_144]

I'm not arguing that JTTW should definitely be removed or anything, I just consider it a kind of gray area in terms of the standards surrounding real religions.

The Presence is also not the best example since there's a lot about the character that isn't based on Christian theology in any way. He's very much a fictionalized version of the Biblical God as opposed to a fictional depiction that has accuracy as a central concern.

 

[Gasper]

so should we remove the presence from DC vertigo comics

Yeah that's not the best example.

 

[Yasuda_144]

Yeah, so? World of Darkness (a board game) is also very faithful to Buddhism, Hinduism etc as are many fictional works of literature.

I mean, I guess that makes sense. There's things that could be said about how the context in which the ideas are used differs from a story like Journey to the West, but ultimately there's a lot of fiction out there that translates the author's spiritual or metaphysical views onto the page in a fairly direct way. There's really no telling where you could draw the line and say that the contents are too similar to the source faiths to be considered separate from them.

 

[Sir_Ovens]

although I have no clue why someone would want to powerscale centuries old works of high art in the first place

Because some of us like seeing a monkey slap anime pretty boys.

 

[Armorchompy]

(although I have no clue why someone would want to powerscale centuries old works of high art in the first place).

it's funny