INTRODUCTIONIt is commonly accepted that John Milton knew Dante Alighieri who had a great influence on Milton's epic Paradise Lost. The importance of The Divine Comedy for Milton lies above all in Dante's Inferno and Purgatory. Scholars1 have cited many echoes of Dante in Milton's works and have compared these two great poets for centuries. In the 19th century, Mary Shelley used a set of images and ideas from Milton's Paradise Lost (particularly from book ten) in Frankenstein - the work that established Mary's fame - to forge her novelistic world of desire, of deterioration and despair. Consequently, this novel has been studied many times for its Miltonic echoes and influences. In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley defines the relationship between man and nature resulting from scientific and technological progress with an epic theme of man's lust, limitations, and punishment. Overall, the motif of this novel is an archetypal journey driven by the forbidden fire of man's desire. Since Dante has such a great influence on Milton whose work Mary borrows and uses as a source of reference, there should be a connection between Dante and Mary. When Victor first sees the monster alive, he describes that no mortal could bear the horror of that face. A mummy still animatedly endured could not be as hideous as this wretch. I had looked at it when it was unfinished; it was ugly at the time, but when these muscles and joints were made capable of movement, it became something that even Dante could not have conceived.2 (51) Here is Dante's first direct reference in this fiction. This ugliness also explains why the creature's fire of love is forbidden and impossible. In addition...... middle of paper ......id, Dante's Commedia and Milton's Paradise Lost. Studies in Comparative Literature 43.1 (2006): 134-152. Internet. July 23, 2009 Hustis, Harriet. “Responsible creativity and modernity of Mary Shelley’s Prometheus.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 43.4 (2003): 845-858. Internet. JSTOR. May 15. 2009 Lamb, John B. “Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Milton's Monstrous Myth.” Nineteenth Century Literature 47.3 (1992): 303-319. Internet. JSTOR. December 29, 2013Punday, Daniel. “Narrative Performance in Contemporary Monster History.” The Modern Language Review 97.4 (2002): 803-820. Internet. JSTOR. December 29, 2013 Sharp, Michele Turner. “If It’s the Birth of a Monster: Reading and Literary Ownership in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” South Atlantic Review 66.4 (2001): 70-93. Print.Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus. London: Everyman's Library, 1992. Print.