Great Books The Inferno
Notes
Dante is the main character.
It is story about depression (a sin).
The Inferno is about the way souls injure themselves.
The dark wood of error at the beginning represents sin and corruption.
Virgil (the great Roman poet) is Dante's guide.
Dante is on a journey. His soul is on a voyage. His pen is his sword.
Dante was a poet and politician from Florence. He was exiled for corruption and sentenced to
burn at the stake.
At the entrance to the Inferno there is a sign: Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here
Hope was central to belief in the Middle Ages. They hoped for eternal life to overcome their
grim existence on Earth.
The Divine Comedy is a trilogy about three places in the afterlife
Hell>>>Purgatory>>>Heaven
Your geography is determined by the choices you make in life: geography of choice.
Limbo-the first circle of Hell was for unbaptized souls who spent an eternity without God.
Virgil resides here.
Dante has permanently affixed our vision of Hell.
Michaelangelo's Last Judgement was inspired by The Inferno.
Dante took ideas from the Bible and used his imagination to enhance the concept of Hell and
Heaven.
Exodus from Hebrew scripture features a journey from slavery to freedom. The Inferno is about
a pilgrim on a journey from sin to redemption.
Gehenna (the fiery garbage dump outside of Jerusalem in the Bible) became an inspiration for
the Inferno
The prophets said this is what the afterlife would be like for those who did not improve their
lives.
It was the place "where the worm never dies."
Dante was a devout Catholic, but the moral structure of The Inferno is universal.
Psychological journey--deeper and deeper he goes the harder it is to realize _______
Holding a mirror up to nature and to Dante himself
Journey to self-knowledge
5th Circle (wrathful) Dante is no longer an observer but becomes a participant when he
encounters a political enemy
cross the river Styx/marks the beginning of Dante's transformation where he must free himself
from vengeance.
Sin is a choice, according to Dante.
Upper circles are sins of weakness. Lower circles are sins of malice.
Absolute evil=Satan
9th circle is an icy abyss where Dis/Satan resides
He is frozen in ice at the waist. He is a three-headed figure (parody of the trinity), crying,
incessantly beating wings
cold-absence of heat energy
darkness-absence of light energy
sin-absence of moral energy
Ice is symbolic of the place farthest from God
Christian symbolism God=fire/light
God= power, wisdome, love
Satan=impotence, ignorance, hate
This circle is reserved for those who betrayed someone they loved.
3 sinners: Judas, Brutus, Cassius
Notes from Lecture
Dark Wood: symbolism of sin
Entry to hell
guarded by three beasts--leopard (envy), lion (pride), wolf (avarice)
Beatrice (muse) summons Virgil (the Roman poet) to guide Dante on his journey
Gate of Hell: "Abandon all hope ye who enter here"
Vestibule: cowards and the uncommitted who race endlessly after a blank banner and feed
worms. These are people who never committed to any casuse
Charon is the pilot of the boat that transports the dead over the River Acheron (the river of woe)
Circle 1: Limbo
Inhabitants: Innocent souls (unbaptized babies, old testament patriarchs, great Roman/Greek
poets (Homer, Horace, Lucan, Ovid, and Virgil) and philosophers, Islamic philosophers)
Punishments: Not punished but are separated from God for eternity
Here Minos becomes the judge for the lower circles of Hell.
Circles 2-5 (Sins of Weakness)
Circle 2: Lustful (Canto 5)
Inhabitants: Sinners who committed adultery or other sins of lust and passion (Cleopatra, Helen,
Achilles, Paris, Trista, Lancelot, Guinevere. Francesca and Paolo)
Punishments: Blown and tossed about by swirling winds that represent the tempest of passions
Circle 3: Gluttons (Canto 6)
Inhabitants: Sinners who feasted away their lives
Punishments: Live like pigs in the mud and eat their own excrements
Guardian: Cerberus, the three-headed dog
Circle 4: The Greedy (Canto 7)
Inhabitants: Sinners who hoarded money or spent it without care, the prodigal son
Punishment: Roll stones into each other continuously to represent their conflict in life.
Guardian: Guarded by Pluto each group pushes a great weight against the heavy weight of the
other group. After the weights crash together the process starts over again.
Circle 5: The Wrathful (Cantos 7 and 8)
Inhabitants: Those who are hateful
Punishments: The outwardly hateful float in the River Styx (the River of Hate) and try to strike
and bite others; the sullen float beneath the surface of the water
Guardian: Phlegyas reluctantly transports Dante and Virgil across the Styx in his skiff.
The lower parts of Hell are in the walled city of Dis. These levels represent the malicious sins.
Circle 6: The Heretics (Cantos 10 and 11)
Inhabitants: Individuals who choose their own opinions over the teachings of the church.
Punishment: Trapped in burning tombs
Circle 7: The Violent (Cantos 12-17)
Outer ring: Violent against people and property
Punishment: submerged in Phlegethon, the river of boiling blood
Middle ring: Violent against self
Punishment: transformed into gnarly bushes and trees and picked apart by the Harpies
Inner ring: Violent again God (blasphemers), art (usurers), nature (sodomites)
Punishments: all live on flaming sand with fire raining down on them
(the blasphemers lie on the sand, the usurers sit on the sand, the sodomites wander about on it)
Guardian: The Minotaur
Circle 8: The Fraudulent (Cantos 18-30)
Inhabitants: Those guilty of deliberate evil
In maleboge (ten pockets)
1. Panderers and seducers
Punishment: walk in separate lines
2. Flatterers
Punishment: sunk in excrements
3. Simonists (sell the church's favor)
Punishment: perpetually baptized in fire
4. Fortunetellers, wizards, sorcerers
Punishment: their heads are on backward
5. Grafters (sell the government's favor)
Punishment: immersed in a lake of boiling pitch
6. Hypocrites (people who say one thing and do another)
Punishment: wear gilded cloaks that are actually lead
7. Thieves
Punishment: bitten by snakes, turning into snakes
8. Evil Counselors (Odysseus is here.)
Punishment: encased in individual flames
9. Sowers of Discord (Muhammad is here.)
Punishment: Sword-wielding devil hacks at the sowers of discord. As they make their rounds the
wounds heal, only to have the devil tear apart their bodies again
10. Falsifiers (alchemists, counterfeiters)
Punishment: Afflicted with diseases
Circle 9: Traitors (Cocytus, the frozen lake of ice) (Cantos 31-34)
Zone 1: Traitors to kin
Place name: Caina, named for Cain who kills his brother Abel
Zone 2: Traitors to country
Place name: Antenora, named for Antenor of Troy who betrayed his city to the Greeks
Zone 3: Traitors to Guests
Place Name: Ptolemea, named for Ptolomey, a resident of Jericho who invited guests to a
banquet and then murdered them
Zone 4(Canto 34 --33+1): Traitors to friends/masters/benefactors
Place name: Judeeca
Residents: Judas, Cassius, Brutus
At the frozen center buried to his waist is Satan. He has three heads and flapping wings. He is
the total absence of goodness (the perverted trinity).
Oops, I almost forgot again: Lethe==the river of forgetfulness which must be crossed to get to
Purgatory
Common Elements of Vision Literature:
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one individual visionary, almost always male
soul separated from the body
visionary usually lies as if dead for three days while his soul views heaven and hell
(apotheosis)
a guide, usually an interested guardian angel or saint
guide interprets and protects the vision is profound and cathartic
Nostra vita= our life
"I found myself"=Dante is botht he subject and the object of the sentence. He is the author and
the character, the dreamer and the dreamed. In Italian this is accomplished with a reflexive verb;
in English it requires a reflexive pronoun.
Terza rima: three-line rhymed stanza
Dante's rhyme scheme: ABA BCB CDC DED (follows the spiraling downward to Hell).
Cantos 12-17
Canto 12
Circle 7: Round 1
The Violent Against Neighbors
Phlegethon: the river of boiling blood
Minotaur: head of bull, body of man; devoured 7+7; symbolic of violence
Centaurs: head of man, body of horse, known for passion and violence
Chiron: head of the centaurs (son of Saturn and a nymph) wisest of the centaurs
Nessus: tried to kidnap Dejanira, Hercules' wife; shirt soaked in Nessus' blood could be used to
harm Hercules if he strayed. When Hercules fell in love with Iole, Dejanier used the shirt to
harm Hercules. He burned himself to death to avoid the pain
Warmongers: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, Pyrrhus
Robber barons from Dante's own time
Turning to the right=holy, righteousness Turning to the left=sinister, evil
Dante's reaction when he first sees the sinners in the river of boiling blood: "Oh blind! Oh
ignorant . . . " marks a turning point in Dante's psychological journey
Canto 13
Circle 7, Round 2: Violent Against Themselves
Two types: physically violent (suicide) and wasters (14th century fad similar to anorexia and
bulimia)
Suicides are turned into gnarled bushes that are rooted to the ground and are attacked by Harpies,
birds with the faces of women that make screeching sounds.
Pier delle Vigne: minister to Frederick II, falsely accused of treason and kills himself in prison
"one who held the keys"
Wasters run through the Wood of Suicides being chased by dogs which tear their bodies apart.
Lano de Siena and Jacomo da Sant Andre ("the two who ran"
Anonymous Florentine suicide: importance of anonymity as a symbol
Canto 14
Circle 7, Round 3: Violent Against God, Nature, and Art
Blasphemers=violent against God
Sodomites=violent against Nature
Usurers=violent against Art
All are punished by being on burning sands (desert) pelted with a rain of fire (infertility and
sterility). Blasphemers lay prostrate on the sand; Sodomites run on the sand but must lay
prostrate for 100 years if they stop running; Usurers sit on the sand with their heads weighed
down by bags of money with their family crests emblazoned on them
Dante gathers brown fallen leaves and places them around the trunk of the anonymous Florentine
suicide
Capaneus: one of the Seven Against Thebes; boasts he is more powerful than Jove, struck down
by lightning bolt
Old Man of Crete: represents the ages of man
head=Golden Age
left foot=Iron, the Holy Roman Empire
right foot=Terra Cotta, the Roman Catholic Church
Tears=woes of man and form the rivers of Hell
Stands equidistance from Europe, Asia, and Africa, facing Rome (Catholic Church) with back to
Egypt (the birth of religions)
Canto 15
Circle 7, Round 3: Violent Against Nature
Ser Brunetto Latino: mentor to Dante in Florence, unlikely Dante knew he was homosexual until
he died
Dante stands on the petrified bank of Phlegethon, feet even with heads of sodomites
Their faces are burned past point of recognition.
Brunetto gives Dante a prophecy
Canto 16
Circle 7, Round 3: Violent Against Art and Nature
Dante outs Florentine homosexuals
Hears sound of waterfall--Circle 8 is lower than circle 7 (indicating the spiral nature of the trip,
sounds from below heard in a higher circle)
Cord: Dante's waistcord is thrown in the water to summon Geryon
Canto 17
Circle 7, Round 3: Violent Against Art
Usurers concentrate on money rather than supporting art or industry
Geryon: symbol of fraud, body seems different from every angle, dragon with hairy paws,
spotted body like a reptiles, human face
Canto 18
Bolgia 1—Panderers and Seducers
Bolgia 2—Flatterers
Bolgia 1
Major character: Jason (of the Argonauts) seduced Medea to obtain the golden fleece; seduced
Hypsipyle and abandoned her when she became pregnant
Punishment: walk in separate lines (seducers closer to center of Hell) whipped by demons
Sinners hide their faces (to avoid remembrance)
Bolgia 2
Major character: Thais (harlot), accused of false flattery
Punishment: sunk in excrement (symbolic of false flattery)
Dante uses coarse language in Circle 8 to match subjects
Canto 19
Bolgia 3: Simoniacs
Major characters: Pope Nicholas III—accepted money for ecclesiastical favors; Boniface VIII—
Dante held him responsible for corrupting the church; Clement V—bought his papal position;
Constantine—moved empire to East and bought favor with the church by giving Catholic Church
control of the West
Punishment—hang upside down in baptismal font of fire; oil in font=parody of oil used in last
rites. Popes wait in line, parody of succession of corrupt Popes on earth
Dante rebukes Nicholas III—sheds pity, condemns sinner
Canto 20
Bolgia 4: Fortune Tellers
Major characters: Tiresias and his daughter Manto; Aruns (foretold the war between Pompey and
Caesar), Michael Scott (Irish scholar of the occult)
Punishment: their heads are twisted around backward, distortion of God's law; vision blocked by
tears
Cantos 21-22
Bolgia 5: Grafters (Accepting bribes for political favors)
Major characters: Demons who guard the circle
Malacoda ("bad tail") chief demon
Grizzly, Hellken, Deaddog, Curlybeard, Grafter, Dragontooth, Pigtusk, Catclaw, Cramper,
Crazyred
Punishment: boiling tar ("sticky fingers")
Virgil's warning to Dante—may be in physical danger in Bolgia 5 because Dante was falsely
accused of being a grafter before his exile
Bridge to Bolgia 6—destroyed in earthquake 5 hours - 1 day agon, 1266 years ago) harrowing of
Hell
Demons escort Dante and Virgil but start fighting and fall into the tar
Anonymous grafter from Navarre causes the conflict
Malacoda "makes a trumpet of his rump"
Dante and Virgil run away during the conflict
Canto 23
Bolgia 6 Hyprocrites
Punishment: Gold cloaks weighted with lead
Jovial friars: monks assigned to enforce order and protect weak; protected personal interest
instead
Caiaphas and Annas: partially responsible for Jesus' crucifixion; crucified on floor and other
sinners must walk over them
Canto 24
Bolgia 7 Thieves
Punishment: bodies reportedly stolen and turned into snakes
Vanni Fucci delivers prophecy #4
Virgil angry at Dante who claims he is tired.
Canto 25
Bolgia 7 continued
Cacus—centraur, thief in Roman mythology (Aeneid)
Last stage of punishment—thieves must steal forms; change bodies so often no one knows what
to call his own
Fig: obscene gesture (cantos get more vulgar)
Dante brags his poetry will be better than Lucan and Ovid
Canto 26
Bolgia 8 Evil counselors
Ulysses (Odysseus) and Diomed—Trojan horse
Punishment—bodies stolen from sight by flames which resemble tongues
Dante begins to realize he cannot use his poem to de-base others—too much like those in Hell
Canto 27
Bolgia 8 continued
Guido de Montefeltro—head of the Ghibillines; tells Dante his story but does not want to be
remembered
Canto 28
Bolgia 9 (Sowers of Discord)
Three types: religious, political, kinsmen
Mohammad (Mahomet) founder of Islam, split from chin to anus with inner organs spilling out
Ali (Mohammad's nephew) split from chin to head
Together split the man in half, represents the splitting and dividing of Christianity by
Mohammad
Bertrand de Born—instigate war between Henry II and son; head chopped off, swings it like a
lantern
Canto 29
Bolgia 10 (Falsifiers)
Alchemists
Scabby diseases=falsification of all senses—darkness, stench, thirst, filth, disease, noise
Canto 30
Bolgia 10 (Falsifiers)
Evil impersonators
Counterfeiters, False witnesses
Argument between Sinon (convinced Trojans to take horse into the city) and Master Adam
(Florentine counterfeiter)
Virgil warns Dante that his desire to watch the argument is degrading. Dante is ashamed.
Canto 31
Giants rising from central pit
Nimrod: King of Babylon, built of tower of Babel (speaks in gibberish)
Ephialtes, Briareus, Tityos, Typhon—rebelled against gods, chained
Antaeus—not chained, places Virgil and Dante in Circle 9 in palm of his hand
Canto 32
Circle 9: Cocytus
Sin: Betrayal
Round 1: Caina (named for Cain) betrayal of kin
Representative sinner: Mordred
Round 2: Antenora (named for Antenor of Troy who betrayed Trojans to the Greeks)
Representative sinner: Ganelon
Dante abuses Bocca degli Abatti—complete rejection of pity
"What the hell's wrong?"
Canto 33
Round 2 continued
Round 3 Ptolemea (named for Ptolemea of Maccabees)
Betrayal of Guests
Ugolino and Ruggieri (Antenora) chomping on head
Friar Alberigo (Ptolemea) "Bring in the fruit."
Demons inhabit bodies on Earth, souls sent to Hell to suffer
Dante promises Alberigo's frozen eyes but breaks promise
Canto 34
Round 4: Judeeca (named for Judas)
Betrayal of masters
4 sinners—represents the natural world
Dis with Judas, Brutus, Cassius in his mouths
Parody of Trinity
The climb—climbing down the legs of Satan to go up (down is up)
Lethe—cleanses memory of sin before Purgatory
Emerge on Easter Sunday—see the Stars
"Stars" ends all three books of The Divine Comedy