Dante's Inferno and the Garden of Earthly Delights

In Dante’s Inferno, part of The Divine Comedy, Canto V introduces the torments of Hell in the Second Circle. Here Minos tells the damned where they will spend eternity by wrapping his tail around himself. The Second Circle of Hell holds the lustful; those who sinned with the flesh. They are punished in the darkness by an unending tempest, which batters them with winds and rain. Hell is not only a geographical place, but also a representation of the potential for sin and evil within every individual human soul. As Dante travels through Hell, he sees sinners in increasingly more hideous and disgusting situations. For Dante, each situation is an image of the quality of any soul that is determined to sin in

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.

In Dante’s Inferno, the author Dante Alighieri described the journey of his fictionalized self going through Hell. Dante describes all nine circles as grisly and grave. Gustave Doré’s paintings relate the most to Dante’s descriptions. Doré’s paintings of the Inferno are dark and mysterious, which is how Dante explains Hell in his story. Doré does not use color in his paintings; all of his painting of the Inferno are black, white, and in some shade of grey. His paintings reflect the mood that Dante was trying to interpret in his story. This is why Dante would choose Gustave Doré to illustrate Inferno.

Every soul will be judged and the good will go to heaven and the damned will go to hell. The sculpture vividly expresses the emotional intensity of what the afterlife will look like. On the left-side the sculpture shows “heaven” the figures show that they are at peace because they know their souls have been saved. The children are laughing and the angels are blowing their trumpets with joy in anticipation of Christs’ return. As for the right-side it tells of what “Hell” maybe like, demons are weighing the souls and claiming them. It shows people suffering, crying and realizing that they’re going to hell for

While every person has a different depiction of Hell, Dante provides fascinating imagery of his portrayal, so the reader can truly experience the

The story of “Dante’s Inferno”, by Dante Alighieri is a dark story which depicts nine circles of Hell. The one circle of Hell that we will be discussing is that of greed which happens to be the fourth circle. In the Fourth Circle of Hell, Dante and Virgil see the souls of people who are punished for greed. They are divided into two groups (The Prodigal and the Miserly), those who hoarded possessions and those who lavishly spent it. They use great weights as a torture mechanism where they are pushing them with their chests. This symbolizes their selfish drive for fortune during their lifetime. As they make their way further down, they come across a swamp filled with naked people with their faces scared by rage. One other form of greed is that of anger, which overcame these terrorized souls. The two groups are guarded by a character called Pluto which also happens to be the God of Wealth from the Underworld. The fourth circle (Greed), is one of the iniquities that most incurs Dante's scornful wrath, thus is of great importance to understanding the text.

I think Dante’s description of Hell is a wonderful work of literature. Dante uses numerous literary techniques to describe his vision of Hell to the reader. In my opinion, one of the most affective techniques used by Dante is symbolism. It would be a very difficult task to compile a brief list of significant symbols from the Cantos that we read in class. Dante utilized many symbols throughout each canto. Some of the symbols that Dante used in Inferno are well defined and easy to interpret, while other symbols are much more difficult to recognize and understand. For this paper, I will be analyzing multiple symbols from Dante’s Inferno. Some of the symbols came from the Canto’s that were included in class

We see Dante’s first step is to acknowledge his inferiority to Virgil; it is to him he owes his modest authorial prowess. This sentiment is understandable indeed. It is only natural for Dante to have nothing but the utmost respect for the great poet who, having preceded him by thirteen hundred years, merits such treatment.

The two main characters in the painting display elegant mannered poses and all the figures appear arranged in rather unnatural poses. There is a small scene at the foot of the Saint Catherine and Christ figures. This is thought to be the Christ child with the Virgin Mary and grandmother, Saint Anne. Below these two scenes are three smaller bordered scenes. The central one depicts two enemies reconciled by an archangel and the outer ones show Saints Michael and Margaret fighting demons. All these images show the triumph of good over evil, with the middle characters shedding their weapons and embracing. All these small pictures support that the painting was commissioned by Arigoi di Nero Arighetti to celebrate the end of a feud.

   In The Inferno, Dante explores the ideas of Good and Evil. He expands on the possibilities of life and death, and he makes clear that consequences follow actions. Like a small generator moving a small wheel, Dante uses a single character to move through the entire of Hell's eternity. Yet, like a clock, that small wheel is pivotal in turning many, many others. This single character, Dante himself, reveals the most important abstract meaning in himself: A message to man; a warning about mankind's destiny. Through his adventures, Dante is able to reveal many global concepts of good and evil in humanity.

The lines are fierce so the teeth seem fierce. The way the monsters stick is held in the air looks as if he is about to hit the Saint on the head, so that maybe the victory of taking the saint is less of a hassle. The demon to its right has wings that expand all the way out into the peaceful blue sky. The harsh green color of its wings against the light blue of the background portray the intensity of this particular monster. The face on this demons face is very unclear, and somewhat distorted. This is proof that Michelangelo used a lot of his imagination to depict this painting. Although the face is a bit distorted, you can still with your own perspective draw out what the demons face should look like. Each monster has a different compositional shape, which allows for the painting to be more interesting. Each wing, tail, arm and pair of legs are all different. He uses many of the same techniques with his lines and cross-hatching, yet the demons are all specifically diverse.

Due to the emphasis Dante puts on the severe punishments inflicted in Hell, the dark, eerie illustrations created by Gustave Dore, would have been preferred. In The Inferno, Dante creates a dark, harrowing depiction of Hell, filled with the tormented souls of sinners. In opposition to Gustave Dore’s appropriately dark imagery, Blake’s is colorful, and his characters cherubin, thus diminishing the harsh nature of Hell.

The inferno by Dante is a story of faith, religious and moral beliefs with various elements, symbols and themes. Through this journey Dante is guided through hell and back by Virgil a symbolism of his teacher and a comrade philosopher like him. The three elements through out this story that seemed to stand out the most are the perfection of God's justice, evil as a contradiction to God's will, and the style of language.

In the story Dante’s Inferno we as readers get to experience hell in a whole light. Throughout the narrative we find out that hell is not only what we know of it from the Christian bible. According to Dante Hell is a complex situation that is nothing like anything we have read earlier.

This fresco depicts one of the most gruesome and explicit hell scenes in Tuscany. The center of the fresco contains an animalistic devil figure with human limbs coming out of its mouth. To its sides are seven different compartments holding the seven capital sins being punished. The compartmentalization seems related to Dante’s Inferno, but the fresco lacks the nine different rings organized in a concentric way. More particular vices critical to Dante’s poems, such as the blasphemers and the fraudulent, are not included in the Pisan Hell. Dante, therefore cannot be cited as the soul influence for this depiction, but is still relevant for comparison. The style demonstrates the movement towards more violent and graphic hell scenes that are organized by punishment, rather than merely