{"id":133276,"date":"2023-01-19T09:54:24","date_gmt":"2023-01-19T14:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/?p=133276"},"modified":"2025-04-15T14:47:24","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T18:47:24","slug":"ucf-medievalist-receives-fellowship-from-the-national-endowment-for-the-humanities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/ucf-medievalist-receives-fellowship-from-the-national-endowment-for-the-humanities\/","title":{"rendered":"UCF Medievalist Receives Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities"},"content":{"rendered":"
A archtype about the Middle Ages is that medieval people were obsessed with hell: manuscript images are full of demons torturing naked souls, and visions, like Dante’s Inferno<\/em> from the Divine Comedy<\/em>, remain enduringly popular to this day. Why were medieval people so fixated on hell?<\/p>\n
Stephen Hopkins, assistant professor of English, argues that it’s because hell was a laboratory of the imagination, a space where people could imagine the limits of salvation and could rewrite the rules of who fit in and who did not.<\/p>\n