Canto 1 Of Purgatory Analysis

The Inferno is a tale of cautionary advice. In each circle, Dante the pilgrim speaks to one of the shades that reside there and the readers learn how and why the damned have become the damned. As Dante learns from the mistakes of the damned, so do the readers. And as Dante feels the impacts of human suffering, so do the readers. Virgil constantly encourages Dante the pilgrim to learn why the shades are in Hell and what were their transgressions while on Earth. This work’s purpose is to educate the reader. The work’s assertions on the nature of human suffering are mostly admonition, with each shade teaching Dante the pilgrim and by extension the reader not to make the same mistakes. Dante views his journey through hell as a learning experience and that is why he made it out alive.

Dante Alighieri, on the other hand, takes separating the supernatural world from the physical world to great lengths. Simply the setting of the book in a place which does not physically exist anywhere on earth, but solely in a metaphysical plane, makes the reader aware that purgatory has nothing to do with earth. This differs greatly from the viewpoint of the Greeks and consequently the Romans where the gods resided in actual places the can be seen such as the `Milky Way' (Ovid, 6) or Olympus (Ovid, 7). Dante stresses that he and Virgil are `pilgrims' in Purgatory - their being in

“Midway along the journey of our life/ I woke to find myself in a dark wood, / for I had wandered off from the straight path” (1600). With these words, Dante opens the narrative and brings the reader in to see the point of view that he is lost. Dante is trying to connect with the reader that it is not just his life but the reader’s life himself that has gotten off the “straight path” and need to rediscover their own goal. He uses this connection time and time again within the narrative as he travels into the underworld and into the realms of the afterlife. He writes so the reader will have this connection to him and the feelings he is experiencing within this painful yet joyful journey.

In the Divine Comedy, Dante is lost in the dark woods at the bottom of mount Delectable. This place fills him with great fear so he looks for a way out. In an attempt to leave this fearsome place Dante tries to climb the mountain but because he is unworthy he is blocked by a leopard, lion, and a she wolf. The mountain represents heaven and he is block by three animals that represent deferent sins, a leopard which stands for fraud, a lion that stand for violence, and a she wolf that stands for lust. Then he runs into Virgil who was sent by Beatrice, the women he loved that died years earlier. Beatrice sent Virgil to help guide Dante to heaven to see her and to become worthy of God and Heaven. Dante had the option to either go see Beatrice and become worthy but would have to go through hell to do so, or he can stay in the woods without Beatrice and be unworthy of heaven.

Love and Pride as Recurrent Themes That Reinforce the Didactic and Biographic Dimension of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno and Purgatorio The first three lines of Inferno encapsulate the essence of Dante’s journey to Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso: “When I had journeyed half of our life’s way / I found myself within a shadowed forest / for I had lost the path that does not stray” (Inf. I, 1-3). Dante, in his mid-life, finds himself in the dark woods. He beholds light from afar and tries to ascend his way to that place.

After the terrace of the wrathful, Dante and Virgil lose all the strength in their limbs, and the pair have to rest. Ironically this terrace is filled with the souls of the slothful and lazy, who always lay dormant and still. They are forced to run continuously, and never rest. The next terrace Dante goes to is for the avaricious or the greedy. They are flat on their faces, their gaze fixed on Earth, and their backs to heaven. This represents the way they acted in life, turning their attention toward Earthly goods, subsequently turning their back to God. On the next terrace, there is a huge tree with sweet smelling fruit. They starved souls of the gluttonous have to resist the temptation to eat the fruit, a temptation they could not overcome on Earth. Also, similar to the slothful, the gluttonous have to run around forever. The last terrace contains the souls of the lustful. The terrace is surrounded by a wall of fire, that the souls must continuously run through. These flames represent the misdirected sexual desire these souls had in life. All the souls in Purgatory have a penance that represents what they lacked or a desire what they could not

In each canto, Dante combines his mastery of language with his sensitivity to the sights and sounds of nature to set the stage. He then reinforces the image with examples that call upon his endless collection of knowledge, and subsequently draws a parallel that describes the experience in a further,

In The Divine Comedy Volume1: Dante’s Inferno, opens with a terrified Dante alone, and lost in a dark wood, he tries to climb a hill towards sunlight but a three-headed animal runs interference causing Dante much despair (67-71). As Dante sinks low into a depressive state of fear, and hopelessness so Beatrice sends Virgil to help him. Virgil’s appearance in the story validates how the author’s characters serve symbolic and dynamic purposes within his poem. For example, Virgil was esteemed as a literary legend-a great poet of his time (44;100). Before Dante can begin climbing that mountain called Purgatory he must go through Hell-literally. Dante’s Inferno comprises 34 Cantos, and nine levels of Hell, although, the first level is the calmest

space to create the facial expressions and areas to show scarification, hairstyle, jewelry, and other culturally specific areas that where important for displaying greater details.

Inferno CANTO I ANALYSIS In Canto I of the Inferno, which was one of three parts of Dante Alighieri’s famous epic poem The Divine Comedy, the Canto starts off with an argument, a common way to begin a work in Dante’s time, intended to summarize the Canto. It says that the writer was lost in a dark woods, looking out upon a mountain on which monsters were keeping him from ascending. Then a Roman poet by the name of Virgil met him and told him that he would guide him through the two parts of the afterlife, Hell and Purgatory, and that Beatrice would guide him through Paradise. The writer decided to follow him.

Doré’s interpretation of Virgil and Dante observing the frozen lake holding Lucifer and his vision of Dante and Virgil in the Forest of the Suicides and Profligates will be analyzed for evidence showing Dante’s purpose in this paragraph. Dante’s purpose once again was to single out the people who had wronged him during the time of his exile as a politician for the White Guelph’s. Since the situation he was in was very dark and gloomy and filled with anger, the illustrations bringing this somewhat evil story to life should contain the same attributes. This is why Doré’s artwork fits the bill perfectly, his artwork based on the Inferno is in all black and white with sharp frightening images shown in the picture. Doré’s art is quite disturbing and frightening as were the concepts described in Dante’s Inferno.

Botticelli’s adaptation of Canto 1 of the Purgatorio stays much truer to the literal description as originally depicted by Dante. Botticelli stays faithful to the text; he illustrates Mount Purgatory as cone-shaped showcasing its tectonic structure. The artists employs his graphic, thin linear style to illustrate the different terraces etched into the mountain, building up to peak of the mountain where a tree stands in place for Earthly Paradise. The artist is minimal in the use of detailing, capturing only what is needed and allowing the rest to fill with blank space. Botticelli depicts the island as the focal point of the image, allowing the rest of the illustration to be blank except for the people in the image minor details such as grass,

In Dante's inferno, Dante first begins describing himself in a dark forest and in the distance on top of a mountain sees paradise where his love, Beatrice, resides. He then begins making his way to the mountain when he sees 3 creatures, a lion, a leopard and a she-wolf. He then meets the spirit of Virgil, who was a roman poet. Virgil guides Dante through the 9 rings of hell in order for Dante to reach Beatrice.

In the book titled “Dante the Divine Commedy-1 Hell” it describes Dante’s journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven. He talks about the soul’s literal journey through all of these places, eventually finishing in the presence of God. This paper will focus on the second book in Dante’s work titled “Canto II Dark Wood-Invocation: Papal and Imperial.” This specific section in the book will allow the reader to understand the relation of Dante’s writing in connection with the courses theme of redemption.

Wilson Knight, a similar image of Purgatorio is painted. When I went through the poem, I noticed that at the beginning of Dante’s journey through Purgatory, the setting was very dark and dismal, with an overall bleak atmosphere. As he ascends, however, the setting becomes brighter and a bit more hopeful, ending with the appearance of the sun. Wilson had noticed this as well, stating that “Purgatorio grows in brightness as the progress ascends,” and that “light and darkness [are always] alternating,” (Wilson Knight 1). Once more, I agree with the view of this critical essay. There are several clues and symbols that reflect Wilson’s views. There is the presence of light itself, for one, that grows greater and greater as the poem proceeds. The position of the sun is discussed frequently throughout the passage, until Dante finally sees it when the fog that blankets Purgatorio clears. This represents Dante’s spiritual readiness to move on to heaven, and further supports the idea that the appearance of light correlates with Dante’s spiritual progress. Symbolism tucked throughout Purgatorio also grows less bleak as Dante gets closer to heaven. When Dante begins traveling through the terraces, he encounters souls who have their eyes sewn shut, a strong representation of darkness. Near the end, however, Dante encounters much more lighthearted material. From a “falcon [that] symbolizes aspiration,” to the bright