Four katabatic journeys. (c2013)

Abstract

The descent into hell (or katabasis) has been a powerful theme in literature anywhere, anytime. What is “hell,” in the first place? Who goes there, and why? What does it look like? And especially, who comes back from “hell” and then feels the need to narrate this descent into the unnamable? Often, the struggle to return (anabasis) and to speak/write about it is more difficult than the descent itself. This thesis contributes to an understanding of the shift in the depiction of the theme of katabasis from medieval literature (Abū al-‘Ala’ al-Ma‘arrī’s Risālat al-Ghufrān and Dante’s Inferno to its modern form (Ted Hughes’s Birthday Letters and George Masrū‘a’s Daḥiyatān. This shift demonstrates how psychology rather than theology has come to determine the authors’ concept of “hell.”