Just try to count the references to damnation (all the things the prisoners have done with and to each other), redemption, and sin. If Beatrice is Beatrice, does that make Cordelia the Virgin Mary? C'mon, you can't argue that that's pretty much Cordelia's place in the Vorkosigan cosmology.ħ. (Term paper folks still with me? Okay, here's your paper topic: why does the Virgil figure go up in Bujold's version, while the Beatrice figure falls? Aaaa. Yes, that's my biggest piece of evidence. Yes, I know that sounds more like the Purgatorio than the Inferno, but, you know, it's still Dante.Ħ. There is even someone running in circles. Miles has a literary (okay, at least literature-obsessed) guide. There are circles within the circles (see the women's section of the camp).Ĥ. But, folks, it's the paragraph, and it sets the tone for the rest of the story. The Borders of Infinity opens with Miles Vorkosigan thinking, "How could I have died and gone to hell without noticing the transition?" Hell. Here is my theory - and if anyone besides me has noticed this, I haven't read about it, so it's just begging for a English term paper to be written on it - I think that Lois McMaster Bujold's novella The Borders of Infinity is (among other things) a riff on Dante's Inferno.
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