Dante 's The Divine Comedy

Dante and Virgil have just left limbo, the first circle of hell, and are now on their way into the second circle of hell, where hell really begins. It is here that Dante first witnesses the punishment brought upon the sinners. They encounter Minos, the beast-judge who blocks the way into the second circle. He examines each soul as they pass through and determines which circle of hell they must go to by winding his tail around himself. Minos warns Dante of passing through but Virgil silences him. Dante encounters a dark place completely sucked of any light and filled with noises more horrible than a tempest and sees the souls being whirled around in a

Dante’s The Inferno is his own interpretation of the circles of hell. The people that Dante places in hell tried to validate their offenses and have never seen the injustice of their crime or crimes. They were each placed in a specific circle in Hell, Dante has nine circles in his hell. Each circle holds those accountable for that specific crime. Each circle has its own unique and fitting punishment for the crime committed. There are three different main types of offenses; they are incontinence, violence, and fraud. These offenses are divided into Dante’s nine rings of Hell. Each of these rings has a progressively worse punishment, starting with crimes of passion and

Virgil and Dante proceed down into Hell; in Hell Dante sins in every circle, committing the sin that represents each circle. After Dante sins in each circle he begins to learn and grow as a person realizing his mistakes but Dante is still his proud, careless self. In the circle of the wrathful, containing the sinners full of anger, Dante scolds one man saying “may you weep and wail to all eternity, for I know you hell-dog”. Dante is becoming angry just like the

Dante is a poet who wrote an epic poem called The Divine Comedy. This epic poem is about Dante’s journey as he goes through 3 levels, which he calls Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise. In the Inferno, he meets Virgil, his guide throughout his voyage. They both pass through the nine circles of Hell, where they witness many different punishments for those who have done awful things in their past. Good versus evil is a major theme that occurred throughout Hell. In the Inferno, there are times where Dante sees good and evil and also represents it himself.

Circle one of Hell is reserved for those whose only crime is living before Christianity and therefore not worshipping God as is deemed proper by God. These shades are the unbaptised infants and virtuous pagans who came before Christ. Virgil explains the sin in lines 34-39:

In round one of the seventh circle, the sinners spend eternity boiling in blood. “At the base of the precipice, they see a river of boiling blood, which contains those who have conflicted violence upon others.” (Dante 429) Justice is being served to those sinners. Dante is going through these different circles to be able to see what hell can be like if you are a

The Divine Comedy: Infernoby Dante Alighieri Dante’s journey through the 7 circles of hell are a metaphor of all the Sins of Christianity and philosophies of Aristotle. intertwined with greek legend and medieval historical figures the reader is told a cautionary tale of the dangers and fate of the sinful. Each punishment for a sin, divided into circles and sub circles according to what offends and incurs the wrath of God the most, is also a form of poetic justice with many meanings and euphemisms detailed in every conversation Dante has with a condemned soul on his journey through the Inferno. examples of this poetic justice will be expanded upon later. Dante’s Inferno is a masterpiece work of collected prose and poems by Dante’ Alighieri. Inferno

In Dante’s Inferno, Dante awakens in a dark forest where he finds three vicious beast. These beast scared Dante but the she-wolf he feared most of all saying that, “This last beast brought my spirit down so low with fear that seized me at the sight of her” (53). In order to return to the light and escape the beast, Dante must face the nine stages of hell that are filled with different types of sinners. Dante fears going through hell, but with the help of an old love, Beatrice, and the voice of reason, Virgil, Dante passes through the stages of hell. During his journey Dante realizes he recognizes certain people there and finds out that he will spend much of his own afterlife in purgatory.

Dante begins his journey about halfway through his earthly life, during a moment of religious despair. This is represented as Dante being lost in a dark wood, just outside of Jerusalem, the city considered to be the center of humanity. Dante then embarks on an exceptionally long traverse through hell (L’inferno), past Satan at the center of the earth, up to the base of purgatory on the other side of the earth. Hell consists of nine circles, with a contrapasso , or “suffer the opposite” punishment for each sin. The sins range from simply being pre-Christian/unbaptised to traitors.

Then a guide named Virgil is sent Dante’s way to lead him through the darks of the underworld. Virgil leads Dante through the different levels of Hell. The different levels of Hell are broke up into different categories of sinners. Sinners are places into a category based on the sins that they commit. The sinners get punished the same way based on the sins they commit.

Dante's Inferno shows a vast variety of different religious implications within the story. Showing as the most obvious is Christianity. Dante is a major Italian poet, hence the idea that Inferno is Italian for hell, and this epic poem is one that tells the journey of Dante through hell. While on his journey he is being guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. Dante Alighieri’s epic poem the Divine comedy was written in the 14th century. Specifically, he completed the epic in 1308, and during this time period roman Catholicism was at its peak of popularity in Rome. Dante is known as a strong believer in Catholicism, however he believed that the pope at the time, Pope Boniface VIII, was an arrogant and power crazed ruler. (Thompsett) Dante’s personal views of church was that it was too involved in government and political affairs. He believed in the separation of church and state. This meaning that the state should not be dictated by the church, and the church should not be dictated by the state. And Boniface's ruling as Pope did not quite follow Dante's beliefs. Christianity was the overlooking religion of the epic poem as that was Dante's religion, but many other religions played their own parts. Some being Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Jainism and Zoroastrianism. (Burky)

Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante. The epic is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. In Inferno, Virgil (the Roman poet) guides Dante through Hell. There are nine circles of Hell followed by Lucifer’s level at the bottom. Level one is Limbo. Charon takes you across the River Acheron to Limbo, which is a place of sorrow without torment. Level two is Lust. It is a place of no light and bellowing seas. Here the lustful spend eternity. Level three is gluttony. There is eternal rain, curses, and cold. Gluttons are punished by lying in a filthy mixture of shadows and of rotten water. Cerebus, a canine monster with three heads, dwells here. Level four is Greed. The greedy share eternal damnation with others who

Dante's `Divine Comedy', the account of his journey through hell, purgatory and heaven is one of the worlds great poems, and a prime example of a most splendidly realized integration of life with art. More than being merely great poetry, or a chronicle of contemporary events, which it also is, the `Comedy' is a study of human nature by a man quite experienced with it. The main argument I will make in this essay is that Dante's `Comedy' is chiefly a work of historical significance because in it lies the essence of human life across all boundaries of time and place. I feel that such a reading is justified, nay invited, by Dante himself when he says;

The Divine Comedy is considered the greatest work of Dante. The author worked on it for many years and inserted all his internal and external experience in it. He called this poem a comedy meaning its middle style and a happy ending. The Divine Comedy is written in the genre of vision which was highly popular in medieval literature. In this genre, authors described people walking through torments. Dante modified greatly this genre, adding the whole universe to the abyss of Hell. Moreover, he goes personally through all the circles of the otherworldly place where he to his surprise comprehends such entities as truth, love, and beauty. The Divine Comedy is infused with the theme of love, which is especially noticeable when Dante enters Heaven and meets his beloved.