Introduction: The Divine Comedy

Dante Alighieri: Dante’s Inferno

Facts

•Written between 1308-1321, by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri

•Tells of an imaginary journey Dante takes through , , .

•The journey is symbolic of the spiritual quest for .

•This work provides a portrait of almost every aspect of medieval human life.

•Dante is the first “Christian Humanist”

The Quest

• (journey through Hell, or the Inferno)

• (Purgatory)

•Achieving (seeing the light of God in Paradise)

Allegory

•Defined as: a work in which the characters and events are to be understood as representing other things and symbolically expressing a .

  • The symbolic expression of a deeper meaning through a story or scene acted out by human, animal, or mythical characters

•Dante’s Divine Comedy is based on an allegorical journey.

WARNING!!!! THIS IS VITALLY IMPORTANT INFO

• The work assumes two levels of meaning:

.

•Dante’s extensive literary treatment of death and afterlife aims to both comfort and warn; he envisions rewards for the righteous and doom for the unrepentant.

The Characters

  • - Dante’s guide through the depths of Hell.
  • : One of the blessed in Heaven, Beatrice aids Dante’s journey by asking an angel to find Virgil and bid him guide Dante through Hell. Dante’s imaginary journey throughout the afterlife aims, in part, to find Beatrice, whom he has lost on Earth because of her early death. Critics view Beatrice as an allegorical representation of spiritual love.

Ancient Rome (Virgil would also fall under this category)

  • - A pair of lovers condemned to the Second Circle of Hell for an adulterous love affair that they began after reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere.

Characters from classical Greek mythology

  • - A figure that Dante appropriates from Greek mythology, Charon is an old man who ferries souls across the river Acheron to Hell.
  • - The king of Crete in Greek mythology, Minos is portrayed by Dante as a giant beast who stands at the Second Circle of Hell, deciding where the souls of sinners shall be sent for torment.
  • - The Centaur (half man and half horse) who carries Dante through the First Ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell.
  • Homer, Cleopatra, Helen, and Achilles

Political enemies from his own era

  • Pope Boniface VIII- A notoriously corrupt pope who reigned from 1294 to 1303, Boniface made a concerted attempt to increase the political might of the Catholic Church and was thus a political enemy of Dante, who advocated a separation of church and state.
  • - Italian nobleman, politician and naval commander. He was frequently accused of treason. Found in 9th and lowest circle of Hell.
  • – Betrayed his partner Ugolino. Trapped in 9th circle while getting his head chewed on by Ugolino.

The Number 3

•The poem is divided into 3 parts:

  • 1st-, focuses on the power of God, the Father. Evidenced by the damned.
  • 2nd - , focuses on the wisdom of Christ, the Son, and the hope for salvation that he offers to those awaiting final judgment.
  • 3rd- ,focuses on the love of the Holy Spirit.

Time

•The journey takes place over

•Begins in Hell on , the day of Christ’s crucifixion, and ending symbolically in Paradise on .

Form

•A stanza is one of the divisions of a poem, composed of two or more lines, usually characterized by a common patter of meter, rhyme, and number of lines.

•The Divine Comedies are composed in , three-line stanzas, and uses a rhyme scheme called terzarima.

  • The middle of one tercet rhymes with the first and third lines of the next tercet, giving the poem a strong sense of unity.

Role of Virgil

•Dante’s guide for most of the journey is Virgil, the Roman poet who died 19 years before the birth of Christ.

•He explains and instructs

•The clarity of Virgil’s mind is contrasted with Dante’s confusion.

  • “my true master and first author”
  • “the sole maker from who I drew breath”

•Virgil is consigned to the first circle of Hell because he is along with the other virtuous pagans from Classical Greek and Rome.