How does Dante use his life and
his times in the Inferno?
What do you already know about
The Inferno?
 Game
trailer
 The woman in the game is not Dante’s
wife. She is Beatrice, the love of his life.
 Virgil guides Dante during the game
 Video game preview clip
 http://www.youtube.com/movie?v=SuZU
prDiGEc&ob=av5n&feature=mv_sr
 Born
in 1265 in Florence,
Italy
 Died in 1321 in exile
from Florence
 Beatrice Portinari was
the love of his life, but he
married and had
children with a different
woman
 Wrote many poems
about love, religion, and
philosophy
 Dante
was part of political group that
wanted more freedom from Rome and the
Pope
 Felt that the Pope was corrupt – accepting
money for forgiveness from sins and for
important positions (Simony)
 Dante’s group started out in power, but Pope
Boniface VIII sent his army to take over
Florence
 Dante later writes about Boniface in Inferno
– he portrays him as burning in one of the
bottom layers of Hell
Paying
clergy for forgiveness, a
pardon or for a church office.
Also means paying for a church
relic/artifact
 What
 After
does exile mean?
Dante’s party lost power, he was
sentenced to two years of exile and had to
pay a fine
 Dante refused to pay the fine, so he was
sentenced to burn at the stake if he
returned to Florence
 Exiled in 1302 and never returned
 The
Divine Comedy is Dante’s most
famous work
 A Comedy, in the literary sense, does not
have to be funny and can be serious.
• A Comedy is a literary work with a happy ending
• Vs. a Tragedy, which does not have a happy
ending
 Composed of three separate books:
• The Inferno (we read from this part)
• The Purgatorio
• The Paradiso
• Each book consists of several Cantos, or sections
 Inferno
means Hell
 The first book of the Divine Comedy
 We will read parts of this book
 Cantos 1, 3, 5, 33, 34
 Dante travels through Hell and sees Sin
for what it is
 The most famous and widely-read of the
three books because of the interesting
Sin and Damnation
 Sections, like
chapters in a book
 Purgatorio
or Purgatory
 What does purgatory mean?
 The second book of the Divine Comedy
 We don’t read this
 Dante travels through Purgatory and
learns what he must do to live a life free
of sin
 Describes the Earth as being round
 Paradise
or Heaven
 The final book of the Divine Comedy
 We don’t read this
 Dante travels through Heaven, repents his
past sins, and believes that he will now
live a life free of sin
 Speaks with several saints and sees God
A
long poem about a significant
event, battle, or journey
Examples: The Iliad and Beowulf
Contains an Epic Hero – a person on
whom the fate of a culture hangs in
the balance
 Dante
was the first author to cast himself as
the Epic Hero
 Most Epic Heroes fight in famous, dramatic
battles
 Dante’s character determines his own fate
instead of a culture’s fate
 Scholars call the Divine Comedy Dante’s
“Midlife Crisis” because he was writing
about his own journey to find meaning in his
life
 This is called an Allegory – a story that
symbolizes something else (Animal Farm,
Avatar)
 Two
levels
• On the surface, this is a poem about a
man’s journey through Hell, Purgatory,
and Heaven (what do we call someone
traveling for religious reasons?)
• On a deeper level, this is an allegory
about society’s/Dante’s journey to God
 Dante
himself is the main character in the
Divine Comedy. He must travel through
Hell, Heaven, and Purgatory.
 The poet Virgil guides Dante through
Hell and Purgatory, but cannot enter
heaven because he lived before Jesus
died, enabling humans to enter Heaven.
 Dante’s love, Beatrice, guides him
through Heaven.
 Virgil
is the Roman poet who wrote the
Epic The Aeneid about the founding of
Rome
 Dante believed Virgil to be the greatest
poet who ever lived
 He admired and respected Virgil above
all people, and chose him to guide
Dante’s character through Hell (Inferno)
and Purgatory.


They were in the “friend zone”
Friends clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=4pnMWvbFpS8
 Dante
met Beatrice when
he was nine-years-old, and
fell in love at first sight
 Dante had a very
significant crush on
Beatrice for the rest of his
life, but never had a
relationship with her
 He believed that she was
his Muse, and frequently
wrote about her in his
poetry
 When
Dante was 25, Beatrice died
 Dante believed that Beatrice was his
reason for writing poetry and living, so
he took her death badly
 Beatrice is Dante’s idea of idealized
love…but he never really knew her
 In his later poems, Beatrice became a
figure who guided and watched over
Dante
• In the Divine Comedy, Beatrice guides Dante
through Heaven (Paradiso)
 Dante
was a Roman Catholic, living in
Italy, in the Middle Ages
 Dante is the author AND protagonist of
the Divine Comedy, so the entire story is
told through the lens of his beliefs
 What is a protagonist?
 We can identify the lens, and look
through the lens, but Dante’s beliefs are
not necessarily yours or mine –
 This a work of fiction, and not a religious
text
 Dante’s
ideas about Hell (and Heaven)
were shaped by the Catholic Church as
well as the philosophers of his time
 Dante’s Hell (Inferno) has many layers,
each for a different type of Sin
• The further you descend, the worse the sins (and
the punishments) get
 The
deeper you go into Hell, the deeper
you go into the center of the Earth.
 Satan lives at the bottom of Hell – but he is
being punished too.
 Heaven
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo9141453-pearly-gates.php