It took us four episodes, but I feel like we are finally a legitimate member of the Christian Humanist Network now that we have a Dante reference. And to think we could have had it back during Pinocchio if I’d only asked Michial the right question: do characters like Jiminy Cricket and Timothy Mouse, the kind guides and advocates who help our hero along, have a history in literature – or are they an invention of Walt Disney’s story team? (You may recall that the use of Jiminy was how Disney cracked the story of Pinocchio. Pinocchio is so unsympathetic in the novel that translating the book to screen was a challenge. Jiminy then became the prototype of a kind of character that we see throughout the Disney canon – including Timothy Mouse.) Michial sees a lineage all the way back to Virgil in Dante.
“The difference is Dante respects Virgil”