Examples Of Corporeality In Dante's Inferno

Dante’s classification of the sinners in the Inferno as inhuman is a phenomenon oft commented upon-- rightly so, for it is a prominent theme within both his work and Catholic theology as a whole. The similarities between beast and sinner are easy to grasp within the context of the Inferno, as Dante compares them both directly through metaphor and allegorically through the many mythological creatures populating Hell who represent of sin. Dante continues the relationship between sin and humanity throughout the underpinnings of the work as well. By using the pilgrim’s corporeality as a stand-in for his humanity and through the recognition of this aspect of the pilgrim by those in Hell, Dante continues to craft an understanding of sin as an inherently

inhuman condition.
The pilgrim is widely accepted as an allegory to humankind as a whole. According to Robert Hollander, he is “a sort of ‘Everyman’” and represents “the ordinarily appetitive soul” (xxix). Most early commentators shared this view, as do most of their modern counterparts (Hollander xxix). It follows that if his entire character is representative of humankind, then individual characteristics attributed solely to the pilgrim would be representative of a similarly larger allegorical concept; corporeality is the obvious example. In the whole of the Inferno, the pilgrim is the only living character and as such the only corporeal one.
Corporeality in the Inferno is indisputably an allegorical representation of humanity.

It is a quality rather than a state of being, similar to humanity. Regardless of the pilgrim’s physical state, he remains the pilgrim, just as a human who is not humane remains a human. There exist many characteristics of the pilgrim that one could ostensibly compare to humanity, but corporeality was clearly intended to be the primary one, as a human who is not humane is almost certainly a sinner in the eyes of the fourteenth century Catholic church. This cements corporeality as representative of humanity in that corporeality is present only in the absence of sin; the inhumane human thus becomes the non-corporeal pilgrim within the bounds of Dante’s

Inferno.
Dante’s increasing emphasis on the pilgrim’s corporeality shows directly to the reader that the relationship between corporeality and sin is codependent. The pilgrim at the beginning of the inferno was “lost” in “a dark wood” (1.2-3), meaning that he had sinned and lost the way of God. Dante here emphasizes the pilgrim’s spirit and non-physical aspects, as opposed to the emphasis later placed on his physicality, to the effect of an association between pilgrim-as-sinner and immateriality. For example, the pilgrim is deeply troubled by the three beasts of the first canto representing incontinence, violence, and fraud. In each of their encounters, he is physically rebuffed by sin, i.e., “a leopard light and swift … refused to back away from me / but so impeded, barred the way, / that many times I turned to go back down” (1.32-36). However, in two out of the three encounters, the focus of his reaction towards this threatened physical harm is on the effects on his spirit and not his real bodily danger: “only to be struck by fear / when I beheld a lion in my way” (1.44-45), and, “a she-wolf … so weighed my spirits down with terror” (1.49,52). This inversion of expectations serves to reinforce the idea that the pilgrim is less-than-corporeal here, and that the reason for this is his weakness to sin and implied previous sinning.
As the descent into Hell begins, so does the pilgrim’s corporeality begin to be recognized.

There are three major zones of recognition: by guardians, by sinners, and by the pilgrim himself. The pilgrim is identified as alive, and thus corporeal, solely by guardians of Hell within the first sixteen cantos. For example, as Charon approaches the pilgrim and Virgil, “And you there, you living soul, / move aside from these now dead” (3.88-89), and upon the pair’s entrance to Dis, “Who is this, who is not dead, / yet passes through the kingdom of the dead?” (8.84-85). The most striking example is from canto twelve, from the centaurs who guard Phlegethon:“Have you observed / the one behind dislodges what he touches? / That is not what the feet of dead men do” (12.80-82). If one considers guardians as a part of the environment of Hell and not sinners themselves, representative of sin as they may be, then the lukewarm significance this holds for the pilgrim’s soul is clear-- an environment of sin in non-conducive to him, but another basic theme of the Inferno is that sin will flourish wherever souls have not accepted God, and so until the pilgrim separates himself from sin sin is possible regardless of

environment.
This begins to change with the recognition of the sinners around the pilgrim that he is fundamentally not one of them. The first time this occurs is in canto seventeen, during his interaction with the usurers: “Now go-- but wait, since you’re alive” (17.67). This moment is a crucial part of the pilgrim’s reform towards sin because he has been allowed by Virgil to speak with these sinners alone; Virgil feels that the pilgrim is stable enough, compared the beginning of the Inferno, to do this without giving in to pity for those Dante feels should not be extended that sympathy. This strongly reinforces corporeality as connected to resistance to sin. Dante continues to expound upon this idea throughout the next ten cantos; an example is the pilgrim’s interaction with the hypocrites in canto twenty-three: “The way his throat moves, this one must be alive. / And if they are dead, what gives them the right / to go uncovered by the heavy stole?” (23.88-90).
Beginning in canto twenty-three, the sinners shift from an outright recognition of the pilgrim’s physicality to a state of doubt; for example, “If you are only a short while fallen / into this blind world from that sweet land…” (27.25-26), and, “If I but thought that my response were made / to one returning to the world, / this tongue of flame would cease to flicker” (27.61-63). While at first read-through this appears to contradict the idea of the pilgrim’s corporeality wholesale, in reality the sinners doubt serves to further distance the pilgrim and the sinners. The reader is made plainly aware in the previous cantos that the pilgrim is corporeal, and as such the sinners who can no longer comprehend this stark reality are, in fact, enhancing the allegory in their disbelief. Once the reader understands that the pilgrim has humanity and is not a sinner, the opinions of the damned mean very little.
In the last three cantos the pilgrim himself finally recognizes his own corporeality and thus humanity, and in that takes the final step back from sin. This begins with him self-reporting very basic bodily complaints, such as, “… I was shivering in the eternal chill” (32.75), and, “Although the cold had made / all feeling leave my face / as though it were a callus, / I could feel a breath of wind” (32.100-103), and culminates with an essential denial of sin and the power that Hell has over him: “I did not die, nor did I stay alive. / Imagine, if you have the wit, / what I became, deprived of either state” (34.25-27). This final declaration of the pilgrim’s corporeality represents, “the penitential imitation of Christ in the descent into hell, symbolically the pilgrim’s death to sin, that is, the death of the ‘old man,’ leading to the reversal of direction from descent to ascent” (qtd. In Hollander 637-638). In that moment, the pilgrim’s sins die and he wholly accepts God, and as such becomes a fundamentally corporeal being in a way that the text has not previously allowed the reader to conceptualize him as. There is no longer any room for doubt.
The progression of the pilgrim’s corporeality is not only commented on by characters within the text, but also Dante himself. If one considers metaphor a way for the poet to communicate directly, as of course the pilgrim did not actually think in metaphor and as such metaphor is solely a convention of reflection, then the progression of the extended metaphor throughout the text strongly reinforces the concept of corporeality excluding sin. In the first two cantos, before the pilgrim’s descent into Hell and while his status as sinner is most in question, the similes used by Dante are entirely about the pilgrim’s mental state-- again, despite the threat of real bodily harm. An example is the comparison between the pilgrim and a gambler who, “when the time comes and he loses, / turns all his thought to sadness and lament” (1.56-58).
However, once the descent towards the center of Hell begins, nearly all of the similes that deal with the pilgrim at all concern his physical safety and wellbeing. The pilgrim feels great fear for himself, in opposition to his reactions in the beginning of the Inferno, when astride Geryon; Dante says, “Phaeton, I think, felt to greater fear / when he released the reins and the whole sky / was scorched” (17.106-108). Dante also touches on the pilgrim’s corporeality through metaphor in a simile actually about Virgil: “And like one who reckons as he works, / always planning for what comes next, / thus, while raising me to one boulder’s peak, / he searched for yet another crag / and said: ‘Take hold of that one next / but test it first to see if it will bear your weight’” (24.25-30). The last two lines are directly referencing the pilgrim’s physicality. Ultimately, Dante’s usage of metaphor further strengthens the reader’s conception of the pilgrim as a non-sinner and makes it even more clear that this is what Dante meant for them to take away from this aspect of the text.
If it is allowed that Dante represents humankind and corporeality represents the quality of being human, then it follows that the sinners are fundamentally inhuman, as Dante is the only character shown to be corporeal. This is so vital because, in the end, the goal of the Inferno was to convince the common people to reject sin and accept God, and by ensuring that the sinners are taken as inhuman it provides a strong motivation to do so. The Inferno undoubtedly accomplishes that end.