1. The Inferno By Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy
The Inferno
By Dante Alighieri

2. Works Cited
Mazzotta, Giuseppe, edit, A Norton Critical Edition: Inferno, “ The Contrapasso and the relation between poetic details and structure”, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008

3. Dante’s life Born 1265-1321 in Florence
Family was of a lesser nobility
Joined the military in 1289
Took part in politics
1300 he was 1 of 6 priors in charge of government issues
1302 sent from Florence on a diplomatic mission to Rome. When he returned an opposing faction was in power
Pope Boniface VIII supported the new power
Dante was sentenced to death if he ever returned to Florence

4. Background (cont.) …so he lived his life as a wanderer.
Buried in Ravenna
Married Gemma Donati
2 sons maybe 2 daughters
One of the most learned men of the Middle Ages

5. Dante Alighieri

6. The issue of Beatrice Dante wrote poetry in his youth
He fused courtly love with chivalric love with philosophical love, with spiritual and divine love
He devoted his writing to Bice Portinari, a real woman his symbol of divine beauty and wisdom
Beatrice means “bringer of blessings”

7. Beatrice (cont) Dante met Beatrice at age 9 and fell in love
He met her again nine years later (probably at her own marriage). It is said that she laughed at his adoration, causing him embarrassment
This crisis becomes the catalyst for Vita Nuova, which is his account, fiction and truth of his love for Beatrice
He completes this at age 27
Beatrice becomes his ideal. He places his joy into something that can never fail him.
She marries banker Simone de Bardi and dies in 1290
He writes the book from

8. The Divine Comedy Dante is fascinated by political issues
Conflicts between the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire
Conflicts that led to his exile
The Divine Comedy is an allegory
It is a journey through the future world
It is the first important composition in Italian

9. The Apostles’ Creed What Catholics believed
I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:
And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord
Who was conceived by the Holy ghost, born of the Virgin Mary:
Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried: He descended into Hell;
The third day and he rose again from the dead:
He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almightly:
From thence he shall come and judge the quick and the dead:
I believe in the Holy Ghost:
I believe in the holy catholic church: the communion of saints:
The forgiveness of sins:
The resurrection of the body:
And the life everlasting.
Amen

10. Characters All can have double or triple meetings Dante is Mankind
Virgil is Dante’s guide. He is Reason, Philosophy, or/and the Roman Empire. In the poem he is pagan (denied salvation b/c he is born before the coming of Jesus as the Christ
Beatrice is Revelation, theology, the Church
Cato is free will
Punishments are all symbolic
2 journeys: escape the dark woods, descent into Hell
The way up is down
You must ascent to the truth by accepting humility
Characters are presented as if they are at odds with one another
Dante takes sides, condemns, judges

11. The classical poets that Dante admired
Homer – intimate knowledge of the Greeks
Horace – a satirist, a moralist
Ovid – the most widely read Roman poet, a keen source for mythology
Lucan – expert on Roman civil wars
Virgil – the greatest influence on Dante, master of classical verse, legends of Rome
St. Augustine: great Roman philosopher; obected to the imperial ideology of Rome

12. The architectural structure of the poem
Relationship of three to one
Trinity to Unity
Medieval writers loved numbers and symmetry
Numbers 10 and 100
100 Cantos
3 places
3 line stanzas (terzine) tercets
Rhyme scheme: terza rima: aba/bcb/cdc
First and third lines rhyme, second line rhymes with first and second lines of next stanza

13. Sin
Failing as a person
Dante believed people have free agency to commit sin
There are sins of incontinence(human nature)
And sins of malice (failure of human intellect)

14. Contrapasso No individual punishment matters Justice matters
sins were chosen
Justice demands the damned be punished because they are beyond change
If they were capable of change/repentance then they would not be punished eternally

15. Examples? The lustful are driven by a whirlwind
The violent are surrounded by boiling water
Traitors are set in ice

16. 100 Cantos
34 Inferno ….Here there are 9 circles of Hell plus the vestibule(Limbo)
Upper Hell (incontinence), circles I-V
Lower Hell (malice, violence and fraud) circles VI-IX
33 Purgatory…9 divisions plus the Garden of Eden
33 Paradise…9 revolving heavens plus Empyrean (absolute heaven)
Dante followed the Ptolemaic system
Satan: frozen to above his waist in ice with vast batlike wings that create blasts of evil

17. Most political Cantos VI X
XIII
XV Why?
XVI
XXXIII

18. Our Story
….starts with Dante lost in a world of worldliness and sin. Dante spends a night in this wooded area and tries to climb unaided the Mountain of Righteousness. He has the shade of Virgil as his guide.
Hell shows the consequences of our sin. We must “see” what that looks like.
Dante enters Hell on Good Friday, emerges at Purgatory just before sunrise on Easter Sunday

19. Comedy Comos-oda A rustic song A happy ending
The language of a comedy is humble not lofty