Literary historian, critic and author Giulio Ferroni called the comments "another frenzy of political correctness, combined with an utter lack of historical sense", and said that the Divine Comedy needed to be read in its historical context. "The benefits to be gained from reading and studying the Divine Comedy are so many that statements of this kind are just ridiculous," the poet and literary critic Maurizio Cucchi told the news agency. "Art cannot be above criticism."īut Italy's cultural scene has been quick to come to the defence of one the country's most famous works. "We do not advocate censorship or burning but we would like it acknowledged, clearly and unambiguously, that in the Divine Comedy there is racist, Islamophobic and antisemitic content," said Valentina Sereni, president of Gherush92, to the Adnkronos news agency. The work, it says, slanders the Jewish people, depicts Islam as a heresy and is homophobic. Gherush92 singled out some particular cantos from Dante's masterwork for criticism: Inferno's 34th, which tells of Judas, endlessly chewed in the teeth of Lucifer, and 28th, in which Mohammed is depicted torn "from the chin down to the part that gives out the foulest sound", as well as Purgatorio's 26th, which shows homosexuals under a rain of fire in purgatory.
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