Comparison Of Inferno By Dante Alighieri And Paradise Lost By John Milton

Literature is drawn from society or built on an aspect of society, whether secular or religious. An original text, such as a poem, may therefore either perpetuate an existing idea or challenge it. This can be done majorly in two ways, by either building on the idea and re-creating it afresh, with new characters, storylines or animation of previously passive characters. The other way would be by making a different and unique creation of the narrative so as to provide a different alternative to the existing story. Such is usually done depending on the writer’s background, for example, need for different historical perspective, cultural influences and sometimes just little creative explorations. What is undeniable is that some of these works of

The poems Inferno, by Dante Alighieri and Paradise Lost by John Milton are focused on the relation of man and sin and how the absence or absence of sin affects the stability and well-being of the human being. In Dante’s text, Sin is presented the same way as constitutionally defined offences are defined and treated. In a legal context, different laws are categorized under different labels (civil, criminal, etc.), and each has specific penalties imposed once one is convicted by a court of law. Dante similarly creates imagery that depicts different sins being punished in unique ways under divine law. For example, those found to be gluttonous (a sin under divine law) are made to consume excrement and those who perpetuate anger are forced to attack each other (Dante 17). The idea here perpetuates the idea of an offence begets legal punishment as well as a sin begets divine justice which is explained in the poem that Hell (equivalent to federal prisons) is a creation that God made necessitated by the presence of sin. An almost scientific matching of sin and punishment is presented in the poem, which echoes some familiar proclamations of sin in the Bible where sins and punishment are directly proportional. A serious sin, therefore, begets a serious punishment while a lesser sin begets a lesser