reader from the start that much is at stake in their tales, matters of life and death and the after-life, of heroism and terror and the very meaning of existence.
The points of view of the works are important in the development of the authors' styles. Dante takes the first-person perspective, lending his work an immediacy and an accessibility, as if the reader were with the poet and his guide Virgil as he journeys down through the circles of Hell. Homer, on the other hand, is more the conductor of an orchestra of different characters, usually letting those characters speak for themselves, and not even attempting to suggest that the reader or listener is accompanying the storyteller, as is the case in Dante. Homer's narrative accounts of battles are an important element of both his works, especially The Odyssey, althoug
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