Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Dante's inferno symbolism
Dante's Inferno Dante's encounter with the monsters of hell
Dante enter hell
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Dante's inferno symbolism
Analysis of the Inferno of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri is considered by many as the first great
poem in the Italian language and perhaps the greatest poem written in Medieval
Europe. The poem is so famous that one of the minor characters, Capaneus the
great blasphemer, has his name on a mesa on one of Jupiter's moon Io (Blue, 1).
Also, the poem is divided into three canticles, or sections, "Inferno,"
"Purgatorio,' and "Paradisio." For the purposes of this paper, only "Inferno"
will be discussed.
In "Inferno," Dante the Pilgrim is lost. In his wanderings he encounters three
specters, the leopard, the lion, and the she-wolf. Dante runs away from these
three foes and is stopped by Virgil, a Roman era poet. Virgil promises to show
Dante hell, purgatory, and then Beatrice, a dead friend of Dante's will show him
heaven. Dante agrees and they embark. Dante and Virgil see many scary and
terrifying sites in hell. He first sees the indecisionists who in life could not
make up there mind who in death are forced to run after a flag. They visit
Limbo, where those who were not baptized but lived a virtuous life stay. They
see various sinners of the lesser circles, Paolo and Francesca, the adulterous
lovers and the sinners who committed anger, greed, avarice, and gluttony. They
enter the City of Dis and see the heretics in their coffins. They travel down a
river of blood where the murderers are kept. As they travel farther down into
hell, they see worse sins and even worse punishments for those sins. Finally
they see Lucifer. Then, they climb a rock cliff and escape hell....
... middle of paper ...
...
understand these levels, literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical, one must
first understand Dante's symbolism.
Works Cited
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Trans. Henry F. Cary.
New York: P.F. Collier & Son Corp., 1960.
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Trans. John Carlyle. New York: Vintage Books, 1959.
Blue, Jennifer. "Io Nomenclature Mensa." Io Nomenclature. http://wwwflag.wr.usgs.gov/USGSFlag/Space/nomen/jupiter/ioTOC.html > (30
December 1999).
Forman, Roberts, J. "Dante Alighieri." Magill's Survey of World Literature. Vol. 2. New York: Marshall Cavendish Corp., 1993. 500-503.
Kashdan, Joanne G. "The Divine Comedy." Masterplots. 1727-1731.
Pirandello, Luigi. "The Poetry of Dante." Dante. Ed. John Freccero. Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965.
Everyone knows what war is. It's a nation taking all of its men, resources, weapons and most of its money and bearing all malignantly towards another nation. War is about death, destruction, disease, loss, pain, suffering and hate. I often think to myself why grown and intelligent individuals cannot resolve matters any better than to take up arms and crawl around, wrestle and fight like animals. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque puts all of these aspects of war into a vivid story which tells the horrors of World War 1 through a soldier's eyes. The idea that he conveys most throughout this book is the idea of destruction, the destruction of bodies, minds and innocence.
Alghieri, Dante. "The Divine Comedy: Inferno." The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces: Expanded Edition In One Volume. Gen. Ed. Maynard Mack. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997. 1032-1036.
The narrator is trying to get better from her illness but her husband “He laughs at me so about this wallpaper” (515). He puts her down and her insecurities do not make it any better. She is treated like a child. John says to his wife “What is it little girl” (518)? Since he is taking care of her she must obey him “There comes John, and I must put this away, he hates to have me write a word”. The narrator thinks John is the reason why she cannot get better because he wants her to stay in a room instead of communicating with the world and working outside the house.
World War I had a great effect on the lives of Paul Baumer and the young men of his generation. These boys’ lives were dramatically changed by the war, and “even though they may have escaped its shells, [they] were destroyed by the war” (preface). In Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer and the rest of his generation feel separated from the other men, lose their innocence, and experience comradeship as a result of the war.
While soldiers are often perceived as glorious heroes in romantic literature, this is not always true as the trauma of fighting in war has many detrimental side effects. In Erich Maria Remarque 's All Quiet On The Western Front, the story of a young German soldier is told as he adapts to the harsh life of a World War I soldier. Fighting along the Western Front, nineteen year old Paul Baumer and his comrades begin to experience some of the hardest things that war has to offer. Paul’s old self gradually begins to deteriorate as he is awakened to the harsh reality of World War 1, depriving him from his childhood, numbing all normal human emotions and distancing future, reducing the quality of his life.
In the gruesome novel, All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque, tells a story of a young boy named Paul Bäumer that fights in World War I as a German soldier. Paul is the protagonist and the narrator for most of the novel. The reader can see, through Paul, the horrors of war. Critics agree that the novel is believable. “Paul's story is the realization of the horror of war…” (Tighe 60). The setting of the novel is in the trenches of the Western Front in France and in Germany. There are numerous cultural aspects going on within this anti-war novel. Remarque accurately portrays the culture aspects of, male roles, family relations, the economy, and historical references to life during World War I in Germany and France for the soldiers on the Western front during the last two years of Word War I between 1916 and 1918.
Hell, it isn 't a place where anyone really wants to end up, well permanently that is. Dante Alighieri however really enjoys taking a “trip” to hell to teach us and enlighten us on the ins and outs and where exactly all the sinners end up. Alighieri tackles this daunting task of making all of hell fit into a small pocket-able, yet very enjoyable story by using a variety of literary styles and devices. However, let’s take a look at one specifically, symbolism. This is one of the most prevalent and obvious device, but it is the most important because it not only makes the story easier for the reader to understand, as well as make the book as enjoyable as it was.
“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.” This maxim applies to the poet Dante Alighieri, writer of The Inferno in the 1300s, because it asserts the need to establish oneself as a contributor to society. Indeed, Dante’s work contributes much to Renaissance Italy as his work is the first of its scope and size to be written in the vernacular. Due to its readability and availability, The Inferno is a nationalistic symbol. With this widespread availability also comes a certain social responsibility; even though Dante’s audience would have been familiar with the religious dogma, he assumes the didactic role of illustrating his own version of Christian justice and emphasizes the need for a personal understanding of divine wisdom and contrapasso, the idea of the perfect punishment for the crime. Dante acts as both author and narrator, completing a physical and spiritual journey into the underworld with Virgil as his guide and mentor. The journey from darkness into light is an allegory full of symbolism, much like that of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which shows a philosopher’s journey towards truth. Therefore, Dante would also agree with the maxim, “Wise men learn by others’ harms; fools scarcely by their own,” because on the road to gaining knowledge and spiritual enlightenment, characters who learn valuable lessons from the misfortunes of others strengthen their own paradigms. Nonetheless, the only true way to gain knowledge is to experience it first hand. Dante’s character finds truth by way of his own personal quest.
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno. Trans. Allen Mandelbaum. Notes Allen Mandelbaum and Gabriel Marruzzo. New York: Bantam Books, 1980
War can be as damaging to the human body as it is to the mind. In Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, this idea that war causes psychological disorders is represented throughout the book through the main character, Paul Baumer. This book follows the lives of young soldiers in World War I. Together, these men create powerful bonds. They go through terrifying experiences that continue to strengthen their bonds, but also destroy their mental state. Through Paul’s eyes, Remarque shows the devastation that war has on the mind.
Dante’s work Inferno is a vivid walkthrough the depths of hell and invokes much imagery, contemplation and feeling. Dante’s work beautifully constructs a full sensory depiction of hell and the souls he encounters along the journey. In many instances within the work the reader arrives at a crossroads for interpretation and discussion. Canto XI offers one such crux in which Dante asks the question of why there is a separation between the upper levels of hell and the lower levels of hell. By discussing the text, examining its implications and interpretations, conclusions can be drawn about why there is delineation between the upper and lower levels and the rationale behind the separation.
Wetherbee, Winthrop. "Dante Alighieri." Stanford University. Stanford University, 29 Jan. 2001. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.
Dante’s The Divine Comedy illustrates one man’s quest for the knowledge of how to avoid the repercussions of his actions in life so that he may seek salvation in the afterlife. The Divine Comedy establishes a set of moral principles that one must live by in order to reach paradiso. Dante presents these principles in Inferno where each level of Hell has people suffering for the sins they committed during their life. As Dante gets deeper into Hell the degrees of sin get progressively worse as do the severity of punishment. With that in mind, one can look at Inferno as a handbook on what not to do during a lifetime in order to avoid Hell. In the book, Dante creates a moral lifestyle that one must follow in order to live a morally good, Catholic
David Lummus. Dante’s Inferno: Critical reception and Influence. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.stanford.edu/dept/DLCL/cgi-bin/web/files/lummus-inferno-influence.pdf. [Last Accessed e.g. 10 December 13].
In conclusion, “Inferno” by Dante Alighieri is an allegorical epic poem that had a great impact on the Renaissance view of Hell and Christianity in general. This metaphorical narrative filled with symbolism and political commentary. This poem had an enormous impact on religion during the Renaissance as well as the way people thought in general.