The Inferno, Part I

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The Inferno, Part I

• CNE/ENG 120
• 11/10/04

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The Inferno

• Author Dante Alighieri
• Culture Italian
• Time early 14th c. CE
• Genre commedia (a poetic form with both high and
  low registers)
• supreme representation of the medieval mind in
  European imaginative lit.
• Names to know Paolo Francesca

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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).

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Dantes House in Florence
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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.

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3 Medieval World Views

• Anthropocentric (Genesis)
• Mechanistic (universe is a machine, hence the
  numerology)
• Teleological (everything is Gods plan)
• All 3 are systematically challenged in the
  Enlightenment.

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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.

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Terza Rima

• Dante created this poetic structure, in which the
  lines rhyme as follows
• aba bcb cdc
• This forms a group of 3 lines interlocked by a
  repeated rhyme word. This is his verbal
  equivalent of the 3-in-1 Trinity.
• Each line contains 11 syllables so the 3 lines
  33 syllables, the same as the cantos in each
  main narrative division.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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).

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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.

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Punishment

• As befits a mechanistic worldview, the punishment
  fits the crime - in fact, it IS the crime.
• Sinners are doomed to the endless act of sinning.

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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.

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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).

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• 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).

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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).

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Significant Dates

• The action of the poem takes place over Easter
  weekend of 1300 CE.
• Entry into the Dark Wood night of Maundy
  Thursday
• Descent to Hell Good Friday
• Purgatory Sunrise of Easter Sunday
• The Timeline is just like that of Jesuss
  experience.

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Guide

• Whereas Augustine presented Cicero as his guide
  towards God, Dante has the Roman poet Vergil
  offer to be his guide, sent at Beatrices
  request.
• Hell is full not just of bad people, but full
  also of the charming, noble, great - they are all
  there because they preferred something else to
  God.

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Inscription on Hells Gate (Canto 3)

• Through me the way into the suffering city,
• Through me the way to the eternal pain,
• Through me the way that runs among the lost,
• Justice urged on my high artificer
• My maker was divine authority,
• The highest wisdom, and the primal love.
• Before me nothing but eternal things were made,
• And I endure eternally.
• Abandon every hope, who enter here.

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Cantos 2-5

• Canto 5 Circle 2, the Carnal. People who loved
  not wisely but too well other people, food,
  material goods, their own aggressive impulses
  (anger, etc.). These harmed themselves, not
  others.

• Canto 2 Dante and Vergil descend into the
  Inferno.
• Canto 3 The Vestibule of Hell the Opportunists.
• Canto 4 Limbo (pagans not punished, just
  hopeless)

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Dante Meets Homer Other Great Classical Poets
(Canto 4)
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Canto 5 Paolo Francesca
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Paolo Francesca

• These are the best-known figures in the Divine
  Comedy. They represent sinful love were
  corrupted by reading Arthurian tales. Francescas
  husband, the brother of Paolo, killed them.
• Their example shows how a noble emotion, if
  contrary to Gods Law, can bring 2 good people to
  ruin. Paolo Francesca have their love, but they
  have lost God.

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Amos Cassioli
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Gustave Dore
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Anselm Fuerbach
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Ingres
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Ary Scheffer
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Cantos 6-10

• Canto 6 Circle 3, the Gluttons.
• Canto 7 Circle 4, the Hoarders Wasters Circle
  5, the Wrathful Sullen
• Canto 8 Circle 5, Styx, the Wrathful, Phlegyas,
  Circle 6 Dis, the Fallen Angels.

• Canto 9 Circle 6, the Heretics.
• Canto 10 Circle 6, within the walled city of
  Dis. This circle is a kind of border between the
  upper Hell (Incontinence) lower
  (Violence/Fraud).

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Cantos 11-14

• Canto 11 Circle 6, Heretics, continued.
• Canto 12 Circle 7, round 1 the violent against
  neighbors.
• Canto 13 Circle 7, round 2 Wood of the Suicides.

• Sinner Pier delle Vigne (a man who had every
  reason to want to end his life). This is one of
  the great examples of landscape adapted to theme.
• Canto 14 Circle 7, round 3 the violent against
  God, Nature, Art.

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Botticelli Wood of the Suicides
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Dore Harpies the Suicides
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Canto 15 Violent Against Nature

• Brunetto Latini grabs his friend Dante they
  talk. He had been Dantes teacher and advisor.
  His sin homosexuality.

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Cantos 16-18

• Canto 16 Circle 7, round 3, the violent against
  nature and art.
• Canto 17 Circle 7, round 3 the violent against
  art.
• The travelers are carried on Geryons back down
  the deep drop to the 8th Circle.

• Geryon symbolizes Fraud.
• 8th Circle Malebolge, which is subdivided into
  10 trenches.
• Canto 18 Circle 8. The fraudulent malicious.
  Bolgia 1 panderers seducers.

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Botticelli Panderers Seducers
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Cantos 18-23

• Bolgia 2 the flatterers.
• Canto 19 Circle 8, Bolgia 3 the Simoniacs
  (sellers of church offices favors).
• Canto 20 Circle 8, Bolgia 4 the fortune tellers
  diviners.

• Cantos 21-22 Circle 8, Bolgia 5, probably has
  biographical relevance to Dante - the grafters.
• Canto 23 Circle 8, Bolgia 6, the hypocrites.

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Botticelli Canto 19
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Botticelli Canto 23