Similarities Between Aeneid And Dante's Inferno

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The afterlife has mystified society since its conception, and many theories have attempted to speculate on what the underworld may look like. Vergil’s Aeneid and Dante’s Inferno both document the afterlife in vivid detail, but provide very contrasting settings, although some common characters are confronted in each tale. Throughout each myth, the two heroes encounter many obstacles, and are forced to summon courage that they didn't know they had, due to the ghastly sights and sounds they endure. In the Aeneid, Aeneas first crosses through they Elysian fields() before reaching the underworld, but by the time Dante writes Inferno, Heaven and Hell exist as separate entities, so Dante doesn't encounter Heaven in the Inferno. In “Mismapping the Underworld” John Kleiner discusses the “deceptive” and “ambiguous” nature of the underworld described …show more content…

Christine Perkell’s “Irony in the Underworlds of Dante and Virgil: Readings of Francesca and Palinurus” (1-17), compares the underworlds from The Aeneid and The Inferno, focusing on the behaviour and rhetoric of the shades, and measuring Dante’s Christian irony to Virgil’s pagan irony (Pg. 1). Kleiner focuses on the geographical distribution of Hell, while Perkell focuses less on the landscape and more on the personal encounters the two heroes undergo with those that live in hell, and the underworld. Despite Hell and the underworld sharing some similar traits, the Inferno has a larger emphasis and focus on punishment.
Aeneas confronts four souls in the underworld, including his father Anchises (Perkell, P. 130), and each shade tells him how they ended up in the underworld. His meeting with his deceased father occurs in the Isles of the Blest, which is notable due to the fact that Aeneas has traveled through the underworld and ended up in a paradise, instead of having a dualistic approach like modern religions have. Dante confronts many different souls, who either give him

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