The Middle Ages was a time of instability and corruption, which was when Dante Alighieri lived. Dante wrote about the horrible era because he wanted to show his hatred towards the current leaders. In the Inferno, he illustrates the unethical community vividly by the use of influential figures that disobey the laws. Additionally, Dante uses imagery in Hell that shows the connection between the Earthly sins and gruesome punishments that portray a vivid image emotionally attached to the church. Furthermore, Dante’s orthodoxy expresses mockery because the church did not always have a clear interpretation for the placement of a multiple sinner, thus exposing the inconsistent church. Likewise, Dante’s character development shifts in a negative manner due to evil pressures around him and his exposure to the true earthly sins. In summation, Dante uses the Inferno to express his animosity toward the church and the corrupt environment to expound how people that follow the church would be contaminated, just like the pilgrim.
Political figures in Hell explicitly depict their strong connection to the Christian values that govern this era. The many popular figures in Hell, especially the Popes, ended up there for their grievous and shocking misconducts. In Canto 19, the pilgrim talks to Pope Nicholas III, who tells him that he is in Hell for simony (Alighieri 455, 456). Simony is when someone pays to receive sacraments, which happened during the period of Dante’s life; this shows how he perceives the political figures who have committed these scandals. He uses multiple Popes in the Inferno to illuminate how deeply corrupted the leaders of the church were. Dante exemplifies this by Pope Nicholas being scared that Pope Boniface VIII, who actuall...
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...onjointly, Dante’s strategically used imagery shows the horrors are merely the hidden sins committed on Earth and that caused them to be punished in Hell to their sins’ equal severity. The crowning jewel of Dante’s illustrative text was the pilgrim’s development from a pure human being to one filled with evil and hatred after seeing Hell’s truths and how he changed negatively from his exposure. These clues left by Dante display show the reader the precise reason why the Church is debauched and how it affected its misguided people.
Works Cited
Alighieri, Dante. “The Divine Comedy: Inferno”. The Norton Anthology: World Literature. Volume B. 3rd Edition. Ed. Martin Puchner, Suzanne Akbari, Wiebke Denecke, Vinay Dharwadker, Barbara Fuchs, Caroline Levine, Pericles Lewis, Emily Watson, and Mark Musa trans. New York City: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 392-511. Print.
Dante Alighieri presents a vivid and awakening view of the depths of Hell in the first book of his Divine Comedy, the Inferno. The reader is allowed to contemplate the state of his own soul as Dante "visits" and views the state of the souls of those eternally assigned to Hell's hallows. While any one of the cantos written in Inferno will offer an excellent description of the suffering and justice of hell, Canto V offers a poignant view of the assignment of punishment based on the committed sin. Through this close reading, we will examine three distinct areas of Dante's hell: the geography and punishment the sinner is restricted to, the character of the sinner, and the "fairness" or justice of the punishment in relation to the sin. Dante's Inferno is an ordered and descriptive journey that allows the reader the chance to see his own shortcomings in the sinners presented in the text.
In Dante’s Inferno, hell is divided into nine “circles” of hell; the higher the number, the more likely the sin and the pain you will endure. However, I do not completely agree with Dante’s version of hell, perhaps due to the difference in time periods. In this essay, I will be pointing out my concerns with Dante’s description of hell and how I would recreate hell if I were Dante. The first level of hell in the Inferno is for those unbaptized yet virtuous. Although some did not have a sinful life, if they did not accept Christ, they were sent to Limbo.
In the Inferno we follow the journey of Dante as he wanders off the path of moral truth and into Hell. The Virgin Mary and Santa Lucia ask Beatrice, Dante’s deceased love, to send some help. Thus, Virgil comes to the rescue and essentially guides Dante through Hell and back to the mortal world from which he came. However, things begin to seem kind of odd. When reading the Inferno one may begin to question the way Dante describes Hell and the things that occur within, or even the things we have always believed about Hell. Despite the way it is described and well known in western civilization, Hell is not at all how we expect it to be because of Dante's use of irony throughout this poetic masterpiece.
“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.
The purpose of the pilgrim's journey through hell is to show, first hand, the divine justice of God and how Christian morality dictates how, and to what degree, sinners are punished. Also, the journey shows the significance of God's grace and how it affects not only the living, but the deceased as well. During his trip through hell, the character of Dante witnesses the true perfection of God's justice in that every sinner is punished in the same nature as their sins. For instance, the wrathful are to attack each other for all eternity and the soothsayers are forever to walk around with their heads on backwards. Furthermore, Dante discovers that hell is comprised of nine different circles containing sinners guilty of one type of sin, and that these circles are in order based upon how great an opposition the sin is to Christian morality and the ultimate will of God. We see here how Christianity plays a major role in the structure of hell and the degree to which each sinner is punished. Lastly, we can look at the story and see the importance of the grace of God not only to Dante during his journey, but how it affects the souls in hell and purgatory as well.
The circle of greed filled with popes and cardinals, whose guards shouts “Pape Satan”, a phrase that suggests to an early commentator bishop calling his pope Satan. A Pope, as well as a There is probably an allegorical reference to the church in the Suicide Pier Della Vigna (Canto X111). Whose name “Peter of the vineyard”, suggests a perverted image of St.Peter, the first pope, a martyr for the vineyard contemporary popes are laying waste. Pier was at the court of the emperor Fredrick. Federico, whose name means “rich in faith”, though Dante places him among the heretics; members of that court called it the “ecclesia imperialism”, We need modern sources like film American History X, to gain insight into the feud’s and corruption that led to the writing of the poem Inferno.... ...
Everyone has a different perception of what really is heaven and hell and where people end up in the after life. Some people are not even religious and have their own personal thoughts about what is next after death. The Inferno or to be more precise “Hell” can be described and defined as a place where people end up after death in the natural world, when people have not followed God’s ways and laws of living. It is has been depicted throughout the years of time that suffering in hell is horrific, gruesome, and unimaginable. In Dante’s Inferno, Dante portrays the protagonist as he is guided by his ghostly friend Virgil the poet through the nine chambers of Hell. The transition from one circle to another is very shocking and graphic at what he witnesses through each circle. Dante uncovers where each sin will lead people to once the sinners souls face death. He faces many trials and tribulations through the beginning to end of the Inferno. Dante felt impelled to write the Inferno because he was going through his own personal struggles at the time. In a way he was extremely depressed because he was exiled out of Florence, and the love of his life Beatrice died. While Dante was in exile for so many years, it allowed him to write some of his most significant works of literature that people still read to this day.
Inferno, the first part of Divina Commedia, or the Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, is the story of a man's journey through Hell and the observance of punishments incurred as a result of the committance of sin. In all cases the severity of the punishment, and the punishment itself, has a direct correlation to the sin committed. The punishments are fitting in that they are symbolic of the actual sin; in other words, "They got what they wanted." (Literature of the Western World, p.1409) According to Dante, Hell has two divisions: Upper Hell, devoted to those who perpetrated sins of incontinence, and Lower Hell, devoted to those who perpetrated sins of malice. The divisions of Hell are likewise split into levels corresponding to sin. Each of the levels and the divisions within levels 7,8, and 9 have an analogous historical or mythological figure used to illustrate and exemplify the sin.
Inferno is the first and most famous of a three part series by Dante Alighieri known as the Divine Comedy that describes his journey to God through the levels of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise written in the early fourteenth century. Scholars spanning over nearly seven centuries have praised its beauty and complexity, unmatched by any other medieval poem. Patrick Hunt’s review, “On the Inferno,” states, “Dante’s extensive use of symbolism and prolific use of allegory— even in incredible anatomical detail—have been often plumbed as scholars have explored the gamut of his work’s classical, biblical, historical, and contemporary political significance” (9). In the story, each of the three main characters, Dante, Virgil, and Beatrice, represent
Dante Alighieri's The Inferno is a poem written in first person that tells a story of Dante’s journey through the nine circles of Hell after he strays from the rightful path. Each circle of Hell contains sinners who have committed different sins during their lifetime and are punished based on the severity of their sins. When taking into the beliefs and moral teachings of the Catholic Church into consideration, these punishments seem especially unfair and extreme.
Dante had access to these teachings and uses them to relate to the reader in a more straightforward way of why there is delineation. In this function Aristotle is not the agent of knowing, but rather a way to relay the reasoning and rationale behind God’s judgment; in this way God is not limited by Aristotle. Dante’s Inferno presents the reader with many questions and thought-provoking dialogue to interpret. These crossroads provide points of contemplation and thought. Dante’s graphic depiction of hell and its eternal punishment is filled with imagery and allegorical meanings.
Alighieri, Dante. "The Inferno." The Divine Comedy. Trans. John Ciardi. New York: First New American Library Printing, 2003.
Both authors each are conveying a different idea to the public. It is true that both authors are venting their frustration against society through their work, but the origin of their distress is different and in the end yields two different conclusions. For Dante, it includes the frauds in Florence and the Roman Catholic Church. The most iconic people like Filippo Argenti in Circle V who was a political enemy of Dante is targeted (65). “After Filippo Argenti! All cried together. The maddog Florentine wheeled at their cry and bit himself for rage. I saw them gather. And there we left him (62).” Dante is trying to humiliate a lifetime enemy in his book. Going lower into Dante’s hell, the people closest to Satan are simoniacs and those who betray. As Dante even included Popes like Boniface VIII and Clement V below murderers, he saw the Catholic Church as a huge threat to society. The purpose for Dante writing The Inferno was to take revenge on his enemies while also pointing out significant flaws he perceived permeated Florentine
... He could be placed in his own circle of the corrupt politics, for he was banished for choosing the side that lost the political struggle for Florence. He could be placed in his own circle of the false prophets, for he envisions the afterlife, without receiving God’s revelation. He could be placed in his own circle of the hypocrites, for placing people in hell, while he himself has committed their sins. Despite the obvious flaws of Dante himself, he does give a clear vision of how punishments will be taken forth in the afterlife.
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 paradise. 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.