There are very few accounts of the afterlife across the
period from Homer to Dante. Most traditional studies approach the
classical afterlife from the point of view of its "evolution" towards
the Christian afterlife. This book tries to do something different: to
explore afterlife narratives in spatial terms and to situate this
tradition within the ambit of a fundamental need in human psychology for
the synthesis of soul (or "self") and universe.
Drawing on the
works of Homer, Plato, Cicero, Virgil, and Dante, among others, as well
as on modern works on psychology, cartography, and music theory, Mapping the Afterlife
argues that the topography of the afterlife in the Greek and Roman
tradition, and in Dante, reflects the state of "scientific" knowledge at
the time of the various contexts in which we find it. The book posits
that there is a dominant spatial idiom in afterlife landscapes, a
"journey-vision paradigm"--the horizontal journey of the soul across the
afterlife landscape, and a synoptic vision of the universe. Many
scholars have argued that the vision of the universe is out of place in
the underworld landscape. However, looking across the entire tradition,
we find that afterlife landscapes, almost without exception, contain
these two kinds of space in one form or another. This double vision of
space brings the underworld, as the landscape of the soul, into contact
with the "scientific" universe; and brings humanity into line with the
cosmos.
