Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy

Read & Annotate these three passages

Annotation Purpose:

-Decide which of the three worlds of the dead is being described:

  • Inferno, Purgatory, or Paradise

-Make annotations that show CONNOTATIONS of key words and the TONE created to describe each world.

Passage 1: ______

“O grace abounding and allowing me to dare
to fix my gaze on the Eternal Light,
so deep my vision was consumed in it!
I saw how it contains within its depths
all things bound in a single book by love
of which creation is the scattered leaves.”

Passage 2: ______

“This mountain is so formed that it is always wearisome when one begins the ascent, but becomes easier the higher one climbs.”

Passage 3: ______

A lion came, against me as it appeared,
With his head held aloft and hunger-mad,
That even the air was fear-struck. A she-wolf
Was at his heels, who in her leanness seemed
Full of all wants, and many a land hath made
Disconsolate ere now. She with such fear
Overwhelmed me, at the sight of her appalled,
That of the height all hope I lost. As one,
Who, with his gain elated, sees the time
When all unawares is gone, he inwardly
Mourns with heart-griping anguish; such was I,
Haunted by that fell beast, never at peace,
Who coming o’er against me, by degrees
Impelled me where the sun in silence rests.

INFERNO—The writer, having lost his way in a gloomy forest, and being hindered by certain wild beasts from ascending a mountain, is met by Virgil, who promises to show him the punishments of Hell, and afterward of Purgatory; and that he shall then be conducted by Beatrice into Paradise. He follows the Roman poet and starts to learn about the punishments of Hell.

PURGATORY—The Poet describes the delight he experienced at issuing a little before dawn from the infernal regions, into the pure air that surrounds the isle of Purgatory;, in Purgatory, people have to pay for their sins before they are allowed to proceed to paradise (heaven). Here, there are ideas of undergoing punishments for your sins committed on earth. People have to climb a mountain and endure hard labor as punishments to cleanse themselves.

PARADISE—The Poet ascends with Beatrice toward the first heaven; here, Dante sees the light and better understands man’s relationship with God.