DANTE’S INFERNO
English Teaching Activity
designed to support the
Language/ Literature class
Dante’s Inferno
• Objectives:
• To discuss Dante Alighieri’s idea of Hell.
• To have the students to reflect about their values and deeds.
• To have the students to reorganize Dante’s idea and create a new
version of it.
• To scan a written text.
• Topic: Dante’s literary work “The Divine Comedy”.
Dante’s Inferno
• Target group: 3rd -4th year High school
students
• Skill: reading comprehension and speaking
• Materials: handouts, an illustration of Dante’s
version of Hell, pencil, cardboard paper.
• Time : 2 hours
Dante’s Inferno
• Grammatical structures: simple present
tense, wh clauses, ordinal numbers,
irregular verbs and linking words.
Glossary
• Inferno: the first part of Dante Alighieri's poem, the
Divine Comedy, which chronicles Dante's journey to
God, and is made up of the Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio
(Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise)
• CIRCLES OF HELL: places in Hell where sinners are
punished according to their crimes.
• Virgil: A poet who lived in ancient Rome between 70
and 19 B.C., considered one of the great poets of world
literature
Glossary
• Hornets: a large wasp (= type of flying insect) which can give you a
bad sting.
• Lust: : a very strong sexual desire.
• Lurk: :to exist although it is not always noticeable.
• Wrath: extreme anger.
• Cesspool: :a large underground hole or container which is used for
collecting and storing excrement, urine and dirty water.
• Struggle: to experience difficulty and make a very great effort in
order to do something.
•
Warming up
• The teacher introduces the topic of the lesson by
asking the students the folowing ( 5 minutes):
• Do you think Heaven really exist? How about Hell?
• Have you heard about Dante Alighieri?
• Do you know how he describes his journey to Hell?
• Then the teacher tells the students about Dante
Alighieri and his journey through Hell in order to
get their attention and explains that Dante had the
poet Virgil as his guide in Hell ( 5 minutes).
Presentation
• Pre- reading :
• Step 1.- display the illustration of inferno on the board and deliver
the handouts. The vocabulary that students might find difficult is also
explained (5 minutes).
• While- reading :
• Step 1.-ask the students to read the text and answer the questions
individually (20 minutes).
• Step 2: ask the students to make groups of 3 and compare their
answers ( 10 minutes).
Post- reading and evaluation
• Post- reading
•
Step 1.-The teacher checks the answers with the whole class and ask them
if they agree or share Dante’s concept of Hell
(10 minutes).
• Evaluation
•
Step 1.-After that, the teacher asks the students to make groups of 4 and
draw their own version of hell on the cardboard paper and to present their
work to the rest of the class. They also have to choose someone as a guide
in Hell ( like Virgil), explain why. THe students have to decide what sins are
the worst and what punishment will be given to those who commit those
crimes( 20 minutes).
• Step 2.-The teacher has the groups to present their work to the rest
of the class (15 minutes).
Follow up activity
• The students may visit the following
website if they want to make a quizz which
rates their sins and places them in a circle
of Hell according to Dante’s version.
• http://www.4degreez.com/misc/danteinferno-test.mv
Inferno wallpaper
Text
• Dante’s Alighieri poem “Inferno” begins when Dante has lost his
path and now wanders fearfully through the forest on the evening of
Good Friday in the year 1300. The sun shines down on a mountain
above him, and he attempts to climb up to it but finds his way
blocked by three beasts—a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf.
Frightened and helpless, Dante returns to the dark wood. Here he
encounters the ghost of Virgil, the great Roman poet, who has come
to guide Dante back to his path, to the top of the mountain. Virgil
says that their path will take them through Hell and that they will
eventually reach Heaven, where Dante’s beloved Beatrice awaits.
He adds that it was Beatrice, along with two other holy women, who,
seeing Dante lost in the wood, sent Virgil to guide him.
• Virgil leads Dante through the gates of Hell, marked by the haunting
inscription “abandon all hope, you who enter here” . They enter the
outlying region of Hell, the Ante-Inferno, where the souls who in life
could not commit to either good or evil now must run in a futile
chase after a blank banner, day after day, while hornets bite them
and worms lap their blood.
Text
• Dante witnesses their suffering with repugnance and
pity. The ferryman Charon then takes him and his guide
across the river Acheron, the real border of Hell.
• The First Circle of Hell, Limbo, houses pagans, including
Virgil and many of the other great writers and poets of
antiquity, who died without knowing of Christ.
• After meeting Horace, Ovid, Dante continues into the
Second Circle of Hell, reserved for the sin of Lust. At the
border of the Second Circle, the monster Minos lurks,
assigning condemned souls to their punishments. Inside
the Second Circle, Dante watches as the souls of the
Lustful swirl about in a terrible storm.
• In the Third Circle of Hell, the Gluttonous must lie in mud
and endure arain of filth and excrement.
Text
• In the Fourth Circle, the Avaricious are made to charge at one
another with giant boulders.
• The Fifth Circle of Hell contains the river Styx, a swampy, fetid
cesspool in which the Wrathful spend eternity struggling with one
another.
• The Sixth Circle of Hell houses the Heretics, and there Dante
encounters a rival political leader named Farinata.
• A deep valley leads into the Seventh Circle of Hell, where those
who were violent toward others spend eternity in a river of boiling
blood. They also encountered those who were violent toward
themselves (the Suicides) and those who were violent toward God
(the Blasphemers).
Text
• Then Virgil and Dante across arrive at the Eighth Circle of Hell,
where the Hypocrites must forever walk in circles, wearing heavy
robes made of lead and the thieves sit trapped in a pit of vipers,
becoming vipers themselves when bitten; to regain their form, they
must bite another thief in turn.
• Virgil and Dante proceed to the Ninth Circle of Hell, Cocytus, a great
frozen lake where , those who betrayed their kin stand frozen up to
their necks in the lake’s ice. A huge, mist-shrouded form lurks
ahead, and Dante approaches it. It is the three-headed giant Lucifer,
plunged waist-deep into the ice. His body pierces the center of the
Earth, where he fell when God hurled him down from Heaven. Each
of Lucifer’s mouths chews one of history’s three greatest sinners:
Judas, the betrayer of Christ, and Cassius and Brutus the betrayers
of Julius Caesar.
• Virgil leads Dante on a climb down Lucifer’s massive form, holding
on to his frozen tufts of hair .Eventually, the poets reach the Lethe,
the river of forgetfulness, and travel from there out of Hell and back
onto Earth. They emerge from Hell on Easter morning, just before
sunrise.
Questions
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1. On what Christian holy day does Inferno begin?
(A) Good Friday
(B) Christmas
(C) The Feast of All Saints
(D) Michaelmas
• 2.-Which group of sinners must remain submerged in the swampy
Styx?
• (A) The Uncommitted
• (B) The Traitors to Their Kin
• (C) The Heretics
• (D) The wrathful
Questions
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•
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3.-How many circles constitute Dante’s Hell?
(A) Five
(B) Seven
(C) Eleven
(D) Nine
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4.-What words can be found above the Gate of Hell?
(A) abandon all hope, you who enter here
(B) and justice for all
(C) in the name of god, amen
• (D) remaining frogs
Questions
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5.-Where in Hell does Virgil reside?
(A) Malebolge
(B) The Styx
(C) Limbo
(D) The Ante-Inferno
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6.-Which river must souls cross before they enter Hell?
(A) The Avillon
(B) The Acheron
(C) The Styx
(D) The Lethe
Questions
• 7.-Where does Beatrice reside after death?
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(A) Hell
(B) Heaven
(C) Purgatory
(D) Nirvana
Bibliography
• http://school.discoveryeducation.com/lessonplan
s/programs/dantesinferno/
• www.sparknotes.com
• http://web.eku.edu/flash/inferno/
• http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-infernotest.mv