RS Gwynn: One small point
is worth noting: Dante's "shades" can foresee the future but have no knowledge
of the present. To say that Aunt Maud could not send a warning, however
garbled given her late-life aphasia, about a possible future event would be
against the grain of a lot of literary and mythic "shadedom." I am trying
to think of other writers (Homer, Vergil, and Shakespeare, of course) who employ
prophetic ghosts. Pushkin? Gogol? What is the "ghost
tradition" in Russian literature?
Jansy Mello: Among those
writers (Homer, Vergil,Shakespeare) who employ prophetic ghosts, one may also
consider the Portuguese Camões, in his epic poem "The
Lusiads."
It would not be of interest to the
VN-L readers, were it not for "Ada, or Ardor" and its artful "Mascodagama."
The poem describes and praises the
feats of the Portuguese navigators, Vasco da Gama's voyages and
his King. Its action takes place a hundred years before the time Camões was
setting it in verse so, to be able to flatter his present Royalty,
Vasco da Gama had to be able to see into the future (Camões's present). This was
achieved by having the goddess Venus intervene and give Vasco da
Gama a "Time Machine." (btw:I'm describing the process in a very loose
way)