Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Music
- Part II Film
- Chapter 5 “Speak of the Devil”: The Portrayal of Satan in the Christ Film
- Chapter 6 Celluloid Vampires, Scientization, and the Decline of Religion
- Chapter 7 A Man of Wealth and Taste: The Strange Career of Hannibal Lecter
- Chapter 8 Demons of the New Polytheism
- Chapter 9 Scriptural Dimensions of Evil: Biblical Text as Timepiece, Talisman, and Tatoo
- Part III Literature
- Bibliography
- Index of Subjects
- Index of Names
Chapter 7 - A Man of Wealth and Taste: The Strange Career of Hannibal Lecter
from Part II - Film
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Music
- Part II Film
- Chapter 5 “Speak of the Devil”: The Portrayal of Satan in the Christ Film
- Chapter 6 Celluloid Vampires, Scientization, and the Decline of Religion
- Chapter 7 A Man of Wealth and Taste: The Strange Career of Hannibal Lecter
- Chapter 8 Demons of the New Polytheism
- Chapter 9 Scriptural Dimensions of Evil: Biblical Text as Timepiece, Talisman, and Tatoo
- Part III Literature
- Bibliography
- Index of Subjects
- Index of Names
Summary
In Thomas Harris' Hannibal (1999), the eponymous serial killer relocates to Florence. Having disposed of the librarian of the “fabled Capponi library,” Lecter, posing as one “Dr Fell,” proceeds to give a lecture on Dante and Judas Iscariot to the Studiolo, “the most renowned medieval and Renaissance scholars in the world” (Harris, 2000: 934), in order to secure his nomination for the now-vacated position. Lecter proceeds to give a slide show involving death by hanging of avaricious betrayers, of which Judas is the archetype and the policeman who pursues Lecter/Fell, Commendatore Pazzi, is the modern analogue. Pazzi is also a member of the audience for the lecture. Lecter/Fell proceeds to read (literally, in a flawless Tuscan “without accent”) Canto XIII of Dante's Inferno, which narrates Dante and Virgil's encounter with the seventh circle of Hell, the violent. Dante comes across a wood in the Second Round, filled with trees full of “poisonous thorns” (Dante, 1961: 167). Dante hears voices but presumes they come from people hidden behind the trees; but when he reaches out his hand to unthinkingly pluck “a twig from a great thorn” (Dante, 1961: 169), the tree trunk itself cries out: “ ‘Why dost thou tear me?’”: “from the broken splinter came forth words and blood together” (Dante, 1961: 169). These are men turned into trees, men that had committed violence against themselves. This is the circle of Hell for the suicides.
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- The Lure of the Dark SideSatan and Western Demonology in Popular Culture, pp. 122 - 134Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2009