Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy is an epic poem that begins with the Inferno. The Inferno is an extremely influential part of European literature. The structure of story is for many people a piece of the vision of Hell. Religiously, this poem has had great prevalence. Dante paints a picture of the Hell that is both unsettling and justifiable. A whole world is created through his poem. The levels and intensity of sin is pondered. Crime is put to a level of small to large scale. Those that are intentional and calculated are deemed more heinous than those that are out of passion. There are many reasons why this piece of literature make me think and develops my own ideas of what lies beyond this world. Dante’s Inferno causes religious thought and makes a person question their own action.
Dante has invoked me to search deeper into my beliefs of life and death. This poem has a great magnitude of contemplation. “Alhough I dated a new era in my life from Walden I did not straight away build a cabin and live in it…Walden’s effect on me was internal, not material. I discovered my love for wise and stirring voices, authors who could cast spells and teach truths” (Bonin 83). This quote from “The Education of the Soul: The Forsaken Ideal of Literary Study” by Michael Richard Bonin is one that I find compelling. Although my experience with this piece of literature will not contribute to my profession, it still has managed to move me as a person. Dante has caused me to contemplate the way I look upon my religious beliefs and what will become of me when I die.
Religion is obviously involved when you look at this epic poem. As a Christian, Hell is looked upon in fear. The Inferno falls to the sinner’s nature. It makes those w...
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...t continues to thrive in today’s society because it presents a question of one’s actions and faith. The description of this work is both beautiful, in terms of wording, and grotesque, in punishment. Dante makes his audience contemplate their reason for being. The severity of sin and their horrid punishment made me ponder the way I live my everyday life because I feel that Hell is both real and a place for punishment. The action of doing the right thing presents a person with Paradise and thievery will award you with snake bites.
Work Cited
Alighieri, Dante. “The Divine Comedy: Inferno.”‖ The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. 8th ed. Ed. Sarah Lawall. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. 1465-1576. Print.
Bonin, Michael Richard. ―The Education of the Soul: The Forsaken Ideal of Literary Study.‖ Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature 53 (1999): 83-89.
The power of fame and glory is nowhere more powerful than among the souls of Inferno. The importance of earthly fame is particularly apparent in the figures of the several shades who have asked Dante to recall their names and stories on Earth. In fact, it is this promise of fame that induces most of the souls to ...
In Dante’s Inferno hell is divided into nine “circles” of hell; the higher the number correlates to the grimmer 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.
Dante’s Inferno, Indiana Critical Edition. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1995. Williams, Charles. A. A. The Figure of Beatrice: A Study in Dante.
One of the most remarkable of the works by Dante is the Divine Comedy that contains several different theme stories. The Inferno
“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.
Moreover, Dante, the narrator of the Inferno, has succeeded in not only telling the frightening story of the Inferno, but also pointing out the importance of the relationship between human’s sins and God’s retribution, using the monsters as the symbols for each kind of sin and its punishment throughout the progress of the story, which teaches his readers to be well aware of their sins through the literature – a part of humanities; the disciplines that teach a man to be a human.
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.
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.
Seeing as this work was written by Dante, and the journey is taken by Dante, he has a unique opportunity to judge his fellow man and decide how they will be punished. He also gets to place his enemies in hell, forever besmirching their names for generations to remember. Perhaps unknowing to Dante, that is worse than any of the punishments that he placed his enemies in. The reality of The Inferno is unlikely and therefore these punishments are nothing but a fictiona...
Lawall, Sarah N. "Dante Alighieri." The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. 1458. Print.
In Dante’s Inferno, the relationship between Dante the Pilgrim and Virgil the Guide is an ever-evolving one. By analyzing the transformation of this relationship as the two sojourn through the circles of hell, one is able to learn more about the mindset of Dante the Poet. At the outset, Dante is clearly subservient to Virgil, whom he holds in high esteem for his literary genius. However, as the work progresses, Virgil facilitates Dante’s spiritual enlightenment, so that by the end, Dante has ascended to Virgil’s spiritual level and has in many respects surpassed him. In Dante’s journey with respect to Virgil, one can see man’s spiritual journey towards understanding God. While God loves man regardless of his faults, His greatest desire is to see man attain greater spirituality, in that man, already created in God’s image, may truly become divine, and in doing so, attain eternality.
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’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.
... Moreover, such belief in human reason signifies Dante's hope towards a bright society and the pursuit of God’s love as the other part of self-reflection. 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.
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy, Inferno. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009. Print.