1. Dante’s Inferno

2. Introduction
Dante travels through Hell, Purgatory, then Heaven (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso)
Virgil (author of Aeneid) his guide

3. Entrance & “Lobby” Enters Hell
Gate inscription: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”
“the Uncommitted”
People who did NEITHER right nor wrong

4. Entrance & “Lobby” Pontius Pilate
Punishment: pursued/stung by wasps/hornets, other insects drink blood/tears
Contrapasso
Symbolic instance of “poetic justice”

5. Crossing into Hell Acheron (river) Ferried across by Charon
Does not want to take Dante (still alive)

6. Circle One: Limbo Unbaptized & virtuous pagans
Similar to Fields of Asphodel (Hades)
Neutral (neither punishment nor reward)
Green fields, castle (“wisest men of antiquity”)

7. Circle One: Limbo
Beyond this, all circles are punishments for “active, deliberately willed sin”
Divided into groups of “wantonness, violence, and fraud”
Descending in level, increasing in severity (lower = worse)

8. Circle Two: Lust
Minos – “judge of the dead” (determines which “circle” each soul is “sentenced” to here)
Punishment: souls “blown back & forth by terrible winds of violent storm”
Contrapasso – mirrors the power of lust to “blow about” one’s desires aimlessly

9. Circle Three: Gluttony
Guarded by Cerberus
3-headed guardian dog
Punishment: souls forced to lie in a “vile slush” created by equally foul, icy rain
Contrapasso – gluttons lie sightless, heedless of others, mirroring the empty, cold, selfish nature of their sin

10. Circle Four: Greed Avaricious or miserly (hoarded possessions)
Prodigal (squandered possessions)
Punishment: souls forced to “joust” using great weights pushed with their chests
Contrapasso – “so absorbed in their activity (i.e. focused on wealth) they have lost their sense of self”

11. Circle Five: Anger Punishment Sullen – lie beneath the water
Wrathful – fight on the surface of the river Styx (marshlands/swamp)
Sullen – lie beneath the water
Contrapasso: Eternally “at war” with each other
Souls in Hell are eternally fixed in the state in which they arrive
No redemption/salvation possible at this point

12. Circle Six: Heresy But first… Active, not passive, sins here
“lower parts of Hell” lie within Dis (city)
Protected by walls/fallen angels, surrounded by Stygian marsh
Active, not passive, sins here
Dante, at first, refused entry
Poem begins to deal with sins “philosophy and humanism cannot understand”

13. Circle Six: Heresy Heretics Punishment: trapped in flaming tombs
Contrapasso: heretics denied the immortality of the soul, and are punished with eternal pain (burning)

14. Circle Seven: Violence
“Lower Hell” begins here
Violent / malicious sins punished here

15. Circle Seven: Violence
Guarded by the Minotaur
½ man, ½ bull
Divided into three rings
Outer ring
Violent against people/property
Punishment: immersed in Phlegethon (river of boiling blood & fire) to a “level commensurate with their sins”
Contrapasso: greater the sin, deeper the immersion
Centaurs patrol the ring, fire arrows at any who attempt to rise higher than allowed

16. Circle Seven: Violence
Middle Ring
Suicides
Punishment: transformed into thorny bushes, fed upon by Harpies
Contrapasso: can only “speak” if broken (twig broken from branch)
Broken, in part, by profligates (uncaring)

17. Circle Seven: Violence
Middle Ring
Profligates (wastefully extravagant)
Punishment: pursued & mauled by dogs
Contrapasso: “threw away” wastefully their lives, in part they “throw away” lives of suicides (pursuit by dogs, destruction of suicide bushes)

18. Circle Seven: Violence
Inner Ring
Violent against God (blasphemers)
Violent against nature (usurers)
Punishment: desert of flaming sand, fiery snakes rain from the sky
Blasphemers lie on the sand, usurers sit, others wander about in groups
Contrapasso: the culture of the day saw these sins as “unnatural and sterile,” like the fire rain/fire sands

19. Circle Eight: Fraud Frauds (deliberate, knowing evil) Malbolge
10 “Bolgie” (ditches of stone)

20. Circle Eight: Fraud Bolgia 1: Panderers and seducers
Punishment: march in separate lines in opposite directions, whipped by demons
Contrapasso: used passions of others to drive them to do bidding, now driven by whip-wielding demons

21. Circle Eight: Fraud Bolgia 2: Flatterers
Punishment: engulfed in human excrement
Contrapasso: excrement symbolic of the words used to flatter

22. Circle Eight: Fraud Bolgia 3: simony Selling of church offices
Punishment: placed head-first into holes in rock, flames burning soles of feet
Contrapasso: holes symbolize baptismal fonts

23. Circle Eight: Fraud Bolgia 4: sorcerers, astrologers, false prophets
Punishment: heads twisted around backwards
Contrapasso: response to attempts to “see into the future”

24. Circle Eight: Fraud Bolgia 5: corrupt politicians
Punishment: immersed in a lake of boiling pitch
Contrapasso: represents the sticky, black nature of corrupt deals/actions

25. Circle Eight: Fraud Bolgia 6: hypocrites
Punishment: walk wearing gilded lead cloaks
Contrapasso: cloaks represent the falsity of actions, which also weighs them down & makes spiritual progress impossible

26. Circle Eight: Fraud Bolgia 7: Thieves
Punishment: bitten by snakes/lizards
Bites cause transformation, loss of identity
Contrapasso: as they stole in life, their identity is “stolen”

27. Circle Eight: Fraud Bolgia 8: fraudulent advisers / evil counsellors
Punishment: concealed w/in flames
Contrapasso: “hidden” within the flames, as their true motives were “hidden”

28. Circle Eight: Fraud Bolgia 9: sowers of discord
Punishment: demon hacks their bodies apart with a sword
Contrapasso: as they divided others, their bodies are divided

29. Circle Eight: Fraud Bolgia 10: falsifiers
Alchemists, counterfeiters, perjurers, impostors
Punishment: disease affliction
Contrapasso: they are themselves a “sickness” on society

30. Circle Nine: Treachery
Ringed by “classical & Biblical giants”
4 “rounds”
Frozen in ice at progressively greater depths

31. Circle Nine: Treachery
Round 1(Caina)
Family (chins)
Round 2 (Antenora)
Community (same as Caina)
Round 3 (Ptolomaea)
Guests (lying in ice, only faces uncovered)
Round 4 (Judecca)
Liege lords / benefactors
Completely encased, distorted positions

32. Circle Nine: Treachery
Satan
Waist-deep
Three faces
Six wings (create icy winds of Hell)
Each face chews a traitor
Brutus
Cassius
Judas Iscariot