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…
in The Inferno (pg.1).
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
advice or compliment, or explain why they are in Hell. Perkell directs her attention to the meeting between Dante and the two forbidden lovers, Francesca and Paolo, who are brother and sister and commit extra-martial affairs. Although Dante feels sorrow for them, Perkell asserts it is paralleled by their heinous act, and that Francesca blames her sin on love, not on her own self (132). In Virgil’s underworld, Aeneas confronts a comrade of his named Palinarus near the River Styx, Palinarus remains unburied, which is needed in order to have peace in the afterlife. Perkell notes that Palinarus story of how he ended up dead and Virgils do not match, suggesting that either Vergil didn't have time to make the revision, or that they were intended to match due to Palinarus only seeing from his own point of view, and Vergil benefitting from an omnipresent view (Pg. 137). Parkell notes that Aeneas remains silent when confronted by Palinarus and his tale of how he died, suggesting a mistrust or a non-commitment to burying his former soldier. Aeneas additionally encounters Dido, his ex-lover and Queen of Carthage, yet she refuses to address him. Although Hell and the underworld are not the same, both heroes confront Charon, the ferryman who transports souls across the River Styx. Both heroes seem to be perturbed by the boatman’s manners, Dante compare him to the devil (Canto IV,109), while Aeneas notes that those who were unable to pay him had to wait a thousand years in order to cross Styx (). Kleiner attempts to map the underworld portrayed in Dante’s Inferno, and he notes that at the time of Dante, mapping the underworld was seen as a scientific endeavour, and there was nothing mythical or fantastical about presenting the underworld as a geographical location, with measurements of how vast the underworld is. Kleiner notes that the farther into Hell Dante travels, the more vivid the descriptions become (Pg. 9). The portrayal of hell by Dante vastly contrasts Aeneas, because the underworld Aeneas is traveling west in order to get there, while Dante is going directly underground into Hell. Kleiner cleverly notes that Aeneas descent out of the underworld is instantaneous, while Dante has to literally climb his way out of Hell (pg. 9). Kleiner notes that even though Dante presumably borrowed from Virgil’s Aeneid, he purposely opposes some of the descriptions of characters, such as Antaeus and Briareus (Pg.15, Para. 2). Although the settings of both tales are meant to be similar, the depictions and locations of Hell and the underworld clearly contradict each other. In comparing Aeneas’ Underworld with Dante’s Hell, it is clear that Dante borrowed bits and pieces of the Aeneid. Characters such as Chiron and Cerberus are depicted in each tale, as well as rivers like Styx and Acheron. The main difference lies in the descriptions of both, in Dante’s Inferno the Acheron River is personified as “sorrowful” and “wicked” (Canto IV, 78, 106), whereas in The Aeneid the river is obscure and deemed “insurmountable” (113). Evidently, Charon is described in The Aeneid as having eyes “like hollow furnaces on fire”, Dante describes Charon as simply “a man of years” (Canto IV, 83). Both Aeneas and Dante describe Charon as a man of years, owing to the fact that he has probably remained in the afterlife even after its assumed transition to Hell. Perkell’s article focuses on the dialogue and the treatment of the shades, whereas Kleiner examines the logicality and defining features of Hell. The underworld presented in the Aeneid shares some qualities as Dante’s Hell, such as the compartmentalization of those living in the underworld, but the fact that Christianity existed changes the landscape of the underworld because it is no longer titled Tartarus, or considered the realm of Hades, and it is not adjoined with Heaven as seen in the Aeneid. Dante references Vergil’s Aeneid countless times throughout Inferno, and it appears as if Dante is building on what Vergil started, with a Christian approach instead of a mythological approach. Aeneas’ passage through the Underworld gives him a prophecy about the future of Rome, whereas Dante’s traverse through Hell is a mission to find his wife, and correct his morals when it comes to sympathizing with the shades in Hell. State differences of Christian and Pagan beliefs specific to the topic
Does hell have its own history? For Dante, the structural and thematic history of ‘hell’ in the Inferno begins with the Roman epic tradition and its champion poet, Virgil. By drawing heavily from the characteristics of hell in Book VI of The Aeneid, Dante carries the epic tradition into the medieval world and affirms his indebtedness to Virgil’s poetry. Moreover, Virgil becomes a central character in the Inferno as he guides Dante, the pilgrim, who has no knowledge of hell, through his own historical model. Similarly, the protagonist of The Aeneid, Aeneas, lacks the foresight necessary to make the journey through hell on his own and thus places his trust in the mythological prophet, the Sybil. Because the Sybil and Virgil already have knowledge of the underworld, their characters in The Aeneid and the Inferno are associated with history, both literally through Virgil’s poetry and metaphorically through their enduring wisdom in eyes of the pilgrim and Aeneas. For Aeneas and the pilgrim, however, religious history evolves from an ancient world of paganism to medieval Christianity and these values are transposed onto hell itself--showing that its history changes over time. Furthermore, the living realities that the pilgrim and Aeneas take into the underworld prove unstable when juxtaposed with hell’s slippery and ever-changing ambience. In Book VI of The Aeneid, Aeneas enters an underworld filled with triple-hybrid beasts, sinners, heroes, and a transparent physical reality that foils his warriorlike instincts for conflict and resolution. Likewise, in Dante’s Inferno, the journeying pilgrim witnesses a horrific blurring of life and death, which in this case nega...
In circle three of Inferno, Dante conjures a despairing tone by use of vivid imagery and extensive detail to display the harrowing effects of gluttony. This is best exemplified through the weather patterns and general landscape of this circle, the Poets’ encounter with Cerberus, and Dante’s conversation with Ciacco, the Hog. These devices also allow for the conveying of ideas embedded within the text.
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.
Characters in literature who exhibit pride or live as a voice of reason, often share certain characteristics between each other. Prideful characters often allow their pride to influence their actions, while voices of reason advise the lead character, hoping that the lead character will listen to them. Dante’s Inferno and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex share similarities through their lead characters, Dante (the pilgrim) from Dante’s Inferno and Oedipus from Oedipus Rex, as well as through their voices of reason, Virgil from Dante’s Inferno and Creon from Oedipus Rex
In analyzing this gradient of morality, it is useful first to examine a work from early literature whose strong purity of morality is unwavering; for the purposes of this discussion, Dante’s Inferno provides this model. It is fairly straightforward to discover Dante’s dualistic construction of morality in his winding caverns of Hell; each stern, finite circle of Hell is associated with a clear sin that is both definable and directly punishable. As Dante moves downwards in this moral machination, he notes that
Odysseus’ journey is one that features much emotional pain. Pain for being away from his home, wife and son, but in Aeneas’ journey he is a warrior, and he goes through physical pain. Unlike Odysseus, Aeneas begins his journey after the Greeks have burned his home to the ground. He does not have the pleasure of long comfortable “holdups” Odysseus has and he also has to deal with his father dying—the ultimate blow.
... All of these differences between the two authors contributed to the different visions of the underworld in The Odyssey and Dante’s Inferno. There is no doubt that the two different descriptions of the underworld share many traits, nevertheless, the differences outweigh the similarities. Hell primarily focuses on punishing sinners; the House of Death does not. In fact, Odysseus meets many more people who are not being punished, than those who are.
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 ancient Greeks portrayed the underworld as a place for all the dead and clearly visualized it in their myths and legends. The underworld in Greek mythology was not a lively place, for it was where all the dead souls went. When a person dies, the soul is sent to Hades, a more formal name for the underworld. The dead would go to Hades because there was no annihilation in the Greek mythology. The dead are dead because they have a flavorless and unhappy existence".
When “Dante” speaks to “Virgil” near the beginning of Inferno, he understands that he is not yet like Aeneas and Paul (Dante 1.2.32). He says that, unlike these two voyagers, his travels cannot profit others because of his soul's state of habitual sin. “Dante” briefly explains his reluctance to begin his odyssey, saying, “if I consent to start this journey, / I fear my venture will be wild and empty” (Dante 1.2.34-35). In this section, Dante uses Virgil's characterization of Aeneas to provide a strong contrast to the character “Dante” of Inferno. According to Dante, Aeneas completes a heaven-sent mission in founding his city, because Rome eventually becomes the home of the Papacy and the Church. In direct opposition to the mindset, at the start of the Commedia, “Dante” perceives himself as a man astray from the True Path; he does not believe that his voyage can ever ultimately lead to salvation in the way that Aeneas's did.
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. Examining one of these cruxes of why there is a rift in the pits of hell, can lead the reader to interpret why Dante used the language he did to relate the Idea of a Just and perfect punishment by God.
Book IV of the Aeneid can stand alone as Vergil's highest literary achievement, but centered in the epic, it provides a base for the entire work. The book describes Aeneas's trip through the underworld, where after passing through the depths of hell, he reaches his father Anchises in the land of Elysium. Elysium is where the "Soul[s] to which Fate owes Another flesh" lie (115). Here Anchises delivers the prophecy of Rome to Aeneis. He is shown the great souls that will one day occupy the bodies of Rome's leaders. Before the prophecy of Rome is delivered, Aeneis's journey through the underworld provides a definite ranking of souls according to their past lives on Earth. The Aeneid does not encompass a heaven, but the Underworld provides a punishment place where souls are purged of their evils and after one thousand years, regenerated to Earth. The ranking of souls in the Underworld warns of punishment for sin, and provides a moral framework for Roman life.
In conclusion, a great deal of tension and contrast between “dark” and “light” in The Inferno helps us to explore Dante’s self portrait—he fears dangerous desires and sinful darkness, but shows much courage and hope towards life since he nevertheless follows his guide Virgil to dive into horrible Hell. As shown in Canto I, such emotional reaction to dark and light symbols lays a great foundation for developing Dante’s broad and universal traits as his journey progresses.
Dante experiences a vision, at the age of 35, after experiencing traumatic events in his hometown of Florence. The events that are occurring in Florence at the time are associated with papal corruption and cause Dante to be forced into exile. Following the vision, which confirms to Dante that he has strayed from the right path in life, Dante begins his travel through the three realms, which contain the possible consequences following a person’s death. Dante’s journey begins on Good Friday, when he is escorted to the gates of Hell, moves to Purgatory and ends in Heaven. However, an escort accompanies him for duration of his journey. Virgil, who Dante has long admired, escorts Dante through Hell and...