Dante's Inferno Figurative Language

Dante Alighieri, exiled in Italy during the times of political and corrupted wrote an epic poem to reflect his upon his Catholic beliefs called The Inferno. In the story, Alighieri creates a protagonist named Dante, which character is named after himself. Yet, in the story Dante travels through Hell and is accompanied by his guide, Virgil, and meets various sinners. However, in the poem, Dante every so often would exhibit compassion or hostility using imagery, or diction, or both to different sinners, such as Ciacco the Hog, Bocca, and Count Ugolino.

As stated by Dante, from the words of Virgil, Hell has two completely different sections: Upper Hell of Incontinence, going from Vestibule through Circles 1-5, and Lower Hell of Violence and Fraud, stretching from Circle 6-9 and into the depths of Hell where Lucifer is kept. As said before the sections of Hell are split by levels corresponding to the degree of sin, as the level of sin increases gradually, parallel to the Circles of Hell reaching the end, within Circles 7,8, and 9 have an akin historical or mythological figure used to illustrate and exemplify the degree of sin. Most figures are

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.

Homeric Similes: Dante’s use of epic, or homeric similes are much more common among his written work in the Inferno. Since he likes to add lots of details that elongate his sentences, they aren’t hard to find in the book. "As chanting cranes will form a line in the air, so I saw souls come uttering cries" (V.39). This simile juxtaposes the souls of Hell crying in agony to chanting cranes, as they are both protesting something in their own way.

Dante's character in The Inferno has come across many terrifying sights and creatures on his journey through Hell. Hell is filled with an abundance of sinners who have done wrong towards God, others, and natures cycle. The lost souls of Hell have no way of escaping their fate of being doomed to treacherous conditions for the rest of eternity. Once a person is sent inside the gates of Hell there is no escaping. The sins that are committed are matched up with a specific punishment that mirrors their wrong doing.

Vladimir Zhdanov Mrs. Nickel Honors Freshman Literature and Composition 29 January 2013 Compassion into Indifference “The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self and mind”. This quote by Albert Einstein demonstrates the emotional struggle of Dante as he traversed through hell. The Inferno, as a story, has metamorphosised the way people envision compassion. Dante showed his readers that compassion is repugnant in order to develop into a more spiritually enlightened individual. The Inferno, by Dante Alighieri, presents that Dante’s reaction to sinners from compassion and pity to indifference reflects his journey from naïveté to spiritual enlightenment, through the empathy of Dante,

I began reading classical books my freshman year because I wanted to “get” a joke. My world history teacher, when mentioning the death of Caesar, made a quick, casual joke about how Dante had put Caesar’s assassins in the lowest spot of hell in Inferno. Here was another reference, another allusion that I did not understand. At that moment, I wanted to read enough classical literature to pick up on all references that I otherwise might miss. It seemed to me at the time, that this book, Inferno, was something that everyone had read except me.

Allegories are meant to be make us think and question everything that we have. They are symbols for different characters or events and they help symbolize trials in a way that less intelligent people can understand. The Inferno, by Dante, uses allegorical characters and punishments to describe the insanity and terror of Hell. Just as Susan E. Blow explains all of the punishments for the sinners in Hell are allegories for the sins that were committed, “Throughout the Inferno the varying punishments are simply the external symbols of varying phases of sinful consciousness” (Blow). While there are some extremely drastic punishments in the Hell that Dante describes. The three most significant punishments in Hell as described in Virgils, Inferno, are being in Limbo, walking with their head backwards, and the attacking of other souls on the river Stynx.

In Dante’s Inferno sinners are in Hell because they committed a grave crime and

Dante’s Inferno is very specifically structured. The Hell he creates is constructed of different circles, each of which correlates to a specific sin, a specific punishment, and specific imagery. Each individual circle is illustrated with a particular metaphor, and every word chosen to characterize the different regions of Hell is very purposeful. Although it is grounded in a religious topic, The Inferno has nothing to do with religion whatsoever. The story is brimming with underlying analogies, connections, and themes that are disguised as a simple story of a pilgrim journeying through the body of Hell and encountering the sinners who reside within.

But some metaphors from his Divine Comedy may answer these questions. Even today, Dante is inspiring artists with his writings and

Dante’s Alighieri’s Inferno is an epic poem that describes the journey of a man known to be Dante and his journey through hell. As he is on this journey he meets and encounters different people, some that he met and some that he has never seen before. As he travels with a poet that he studied, Virgil, he takes Dante through nine circles of hell. Each circle of hell is a realm for the souls of people who have already died and sinned. The worst the sin, further down into hell that the sinner will go, and in each circle, there is a certain punishment that each sinner’s soul must suffer through for the rest of eternity.

The Inferno by Dante Alighieri was a crucial component to the evolution of European literature. By writing the epic style poem in the vernacular, he allowed most people of general literacy with the ability to read his divine comedy. This was a milestone in history because people of the past had usually written in Latin, excluding the general public to many great pieces of literature. That being said, there is the question of if The Inferno did what it was intended to do. According to Daniel Terkla the poem did not serve its purpose.

The Divine Comedy represents the journey towards God which humanity must take, and thusly the Inferno describes the conscious refusal of sin. Dante’s Inferno is based on morals relative to his own religion and time period, moreover, those punished and their punishments are affected by moral relativism. Hell (Inferno) is about divine retribution, a supernatural punishment of a person or group of people by a deity in response to some action, exemplified by quote about things over gate. Yet, Dante’s version of hell and those placed in it is different from those of other cultures due to moral relativism.

What happens to language in hell? In Dante’s Inferno, the journeying pilgrim explores language’s variations and nuances as he attempts to communicate with hell’s pitiable and sordid inhabitants, despite multiple language barriers and relentless cacophonies. Dante thematically unifies language’s inconsistencies in hell; that is, he associates the pilgrim’s abortive attempts to communicate with particular shades, and the incomprehensible languages and sounds that beleaguer him, with a symbol from Christian mythology: the Tower of Babel. Dante juxtaposes this Christian myth with Virgil’s symbolic association with elevated speech in the Inferno. Virgil functions as the pilgrim’s guide and poetic inspiration,