The Inferno

1
The Inferno

• Dante Alighieri

2
The Inferno

• Author Dante Alighieri
• Culture Italian
• Genre commedia (a poetic form with both high and
  low registers)
• supreme representation of the medieval mind in
  European imaginative or visionary lit.

3
Historical Context

• The city-state of Florence, Italy, had 2
  political groups, the Blacks and the Whites
  (Dantes group).
• 1302 The Blacks seized power, exiling the
  Whites. Dante was banished from Florence on pain
  of death.
• Convicted in absentia on the trumped up charge
  that he had misused funds when he held office
  (the sin of graft, see Circle 8, Bolga 5).

4
Reaction to Changed Circumstances

• Dante wrote his Divine Comedy in exile, finishing
  it shortly before his death in 1321.
• His first love (courtly), Beatrice Portinari
  (1266-1290), appears in the DC as a heavenly
  guide whose name signifies blessedness or
  salvation. She stands for Divine Love.

5
Structure

• Highly wrought. Three main divisions,
  corresponding to the Trinity (3 is a sacred
  number)
• Hell (shows us those who put something before
  God)
• Purgatory (shows us those seeking to be good)
• Paradise (shows us those enjoying the good)
• All these are identical in length.
• Opening canto (prologue to entire work), then 33
  cantos for each division, totaling 100, the
  square of 10, a perfect number.

6
Another Structural Pattern

• Each division (Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise) ends
  with the same word, stelle (stars) - which are
  the visible signs of Gods oversight.
• Inferno 9 circles contain 3 types of sinners.
• Purgatory Ante-Purgatory, 7 terraces, then
  Earthly Paradise (9 total).
• Paradise 9 embedded spheres beyond which lies
  the Trinity.

7
The Inferno (Hell)

• Lost souls are in 3 main groups and occupy 9
  circles (see p.1076).
• The idea of eternal punishment follows Christian
  doctrine of the time.
• Dantes journey takes him down the 9 concentric
  circles, from the least sins to the greatest
  types of evil.

8
Ante-Hell

• The abode of those who refused to choose between
  right and wrong moral neutrals.
• For this relatively small sin, they are punished
  by small annoyances (insects and such).

9
Inferno Organization

• Boundary river between the Ante-Hell and Limbo
  (circle of virtuous pagans who did not know
  Christ) is Acheron (a classical reference a
  river in Hades, the Greek underworld).

10
The Three Great Sins

• Circles of those guilty of Self-Indulgence
  (illicit lovers, gluttons, hoarders and
  spendthrifts, those of violent or sullen
  dispositions)
• Circles of those guilty of Violence
• Circles of those guilty of Fraud (treachery,
  treason)
• Bottom Lucifer/Satan.

11
Punishment

• The punishment fits the crime - in fact, it IS
  the crime.
• Sinners are doomed to the endless act of sinning.

12
Roman History and Literature

• To Dante, a Medieval Italian, the Roman empire
  had been divinely ordained Christ first came in
  the reign of Augustus.
• He wants to recreate the empire (a united Italy)
  for the second coming.
• Caesars assassins disobeyed divine will, and so
  earned their place in Satans mouths.
• Dante works with both the classical and Christian
  traditions.

13
Canto 1

• Unlike epic poetry, the Commedia begins with
  action, not a proem. Explanations occur as we go
  along.
• Main character and narrator Dante, a wandering
  hero and a pilgrim. A hero going to the
  underworld is a staple of Greco-Roman epic
  (Odysseus, Aeneas) as well as of Christian
  theology (Christ harrowing Hell).

14

• The Inferno is an account of the effect of a
  journey on the man who takes it - a record of
  moral and spiritual experience of illumination,
  regeneration, beatitude (in this, it is a bit
  like Augustines works).
• The narrative is both literal and allegorical
  (full of symbols).

15
The Dark Wood of Error

• Canto 1 the narrator tells us that he was 35
  years old, he became lost in a wood,
  threatened by three beasts - the She-Wolf
  (self-indulgence), the Lion (violence), and the
  Leopard (Fraud).