DANTE’S INFERNO
Visions of Hell
THE GREEK UNDERWORLD
 Rulers: Hades and
Persephone
 Location
 Rivers separating
underworld from earth
◦ Acheron: woe
◦ Beneath secret places of
earth (Iliad)
◦ Phlegethon: fire
◦ Over edge of world, across
ocean (Odyssey)
◦ Lethe: forgetfulness
◦ Various entrances in
caverns & deep lakes (later
poetry)
◦ Cocytus: lamentation
◦ Styx: the unbreakable
oath
 Important Figures
◦ Cerberus: 3-headed dog guards
entrance (you can come in, but you
can’t leave)
◦ Judges: Minos, Aeacus,
Rhadamanthus
◦ Erinyes (Furies)
 Divisions of the Underworld
◦ Tartarus
 Prison of sons of earth
 Deepest region
 Wrongdoers are punished here
◦ Erebus: where the dead pass &
are judged when they die
◦ Elysian Fields: place of blessedness,
where the good go
 Greeks believed they pursued sinners on
earth
 Romans placed them in underworld,
punishing dead sinners
◦ Sleep and Death: brothers, send
dreams from underworld through 2
gates
 Horn: true dreams
 Ivory: false dreams
SOME SUFFERING SINNERS IN THE UNDERWORLD
• Tityus: tried to rape Zeus’ mother, so
bound to earth; vultures tear out his liver
daily
• Ixion: tried to seduce Hera, so was bound
to a spinning, flaming wheel for eternity
• Sisyphus: betrayed a secret of Zeus, so now
he spends eternity pushing a boulder up a
hill, only to have it roll down before he can
get to the very top
• The Danaids: 49 sisters who murdered
their grooms and now have to fill barrels
that are full of holes (spoiler: it always
drains out)
•Tantalus: he’s the worst! He served his own
children to gods for dinner. His punishment? He
stands waist-deep in a pool of clear, fresh water,
under a tree full of juicy ripe fruit. He is super
thirsty and super hungry, but when he reaches for
fruit, the branches pull back, and when he tries to
drink, the water recedes. So he’s surrounded by
food and water and can have none.
•*****tantalize: to dangle the bait, always just
out of reach!
VIRGIL’S ACCOUNT OF THE UNDERWORLD
• In Hamilton’s Mythology book, read
pages 317-322 (“The Descent into the
Lower World”)
• Who are some of the characters/types
of people Aeneas encounters in the
Underworld?
• What are some of the punishments?
BACKGROUND ON DANTE ALIGHIERI
• 1265-1321
• Incredible political unrest
• Born in Florence, Italy
• Several civil wars in Florence
• Met and fell in love with Beatrice as a
child
• Believed Church should only have
spiritual role in the lives of the people
(separate from political role)
• She died before a disagreement could
be resolved
• Dante never got over her, includes her
in his writings including later parts of
The Divine Comedy
• Sentenced to die by political enemies
(Black Guelphs) while in exile
• Wrote The Divine Comedy in the last
years of his life
THE DIVINE COMEDY
• Purposes:
• Political
• Wanted to punish people he opposed
• Not funny ha-ha
• Happy ending (starting with Hell and
ending with Heaven)
• Written in the vernacular (usually seen
with comedies)
• Epic poem
• Medieval allegorical vision of the
afterlife
• Three parts, 33 Cantos with a Canto to
introduce each (total 100):
• Inferno (Hell)
• Purgatorio (Purgatory)
• Paradiso (Heaven)
• Virgil then Beatrice guide Dante
CANTO 1: THE DARK WOOD OF ERROR
• Read handout for Canto 1 (lines 1-60)
• Answer the following question:
1. Dante says in line 12 of Canto 1 that he has wandered from the “True Way.” If the “Dark
Wood of Error” is a symbol of worldliness, what does the True Way represent? On an
allegorical level, what might the three animals that try to force Dante back into the Dark
Wood represent?
CANTO 3: THE VESTIBULE OF HELL
• The Opportunists
• “Neither for good nor evil but only for themselves”
• Uncommitted one way or another; never chose
sides in Rebellion of Angels
• Reside on shores of Acheron (not in Hell or outside
of it)
• Punishment:
• race around chasing a banner that flows through
dirty air
• chased by wasps and hornets that sting them
constantly and draw blood and puss
• Inscription:
“I AM THE WAY INTO THE CITY OF WOE.
I AM THE WAY TO A FORSAKEN PEOPLE.
I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL SORROW.
SACRED JUSTICE MOVED MY ARCHITECT.
I WAS RAISED HERE BY DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE,
PRIMORDIAL LOVE AND ULTIMATE INTELLECT.
• worms and maggots feast on sores
•
•
•
•
•
•
Took no sides so no real consistent location
Always changing direction (chasing banner)
Choose no lighted path so much run around in dark
Stinging bugs mirror guilty conscience
Moral filth = physical filth
New souls gathered by Charon
ONLY THOSE ELEMENTS TIME CANNOT WEAR
WERE MADE BEFORE ME, AND BEYOND TIME I STAND.
ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.”
Circle One: Limbo
Inhabitants: non-Christians and
unbaptized pagans
Punishment: eternity in an inferior
form of Heaven
Circle Two: Lust
Inhabitants: those ruled by physical desire
Punishment: blown violently back and forth by
strong winds, preventing them to find peace and
rest
CANTO 5: THE CARNAL
• Read handout for Canto 5
• Answer the following questions:
1. In Canto 5, lines 82-87, Dante compares Paolo and Francesca to
doves. Why do you suppose Dante uses such a sympathetic image
for the lovers?
2. By including details about Paolo and Francesca’s reading, what
attitude do you think Dante is expressing toward courtly-love
poetry?
3. Why are the following allusions important? Why does Dante
include fictional characters as well as real people?
•
Dido, Cleopatra, Helen, Achilles, Paris, and Tristan
Circle Three: Gluttony
Inhabitants: excessive indulgers (eating/drinking)
Punishment: forced to lie in a vile slush that is
produced by never-ending icy rain
Circle Four: Greed
Inhabitants: those who hoarded possessions
and those who lavishly spent
Punishment: the two groups joust, using as
weapons great weights which they push
with their chests
Circle Five: Wrath
Inhabitants: the angry and sullen
Punishment: the wrathful fight each
other on the surface of the river
Styx and the sullen gurgle beneath
the surface
Circle Six: Heresy
Inhabitants: those who doubted or
denied the Christian faith
Punishment: condemned to
eternity in flaming tombs
Circle Seven: Violent
1. Outer ring: violent against others/property
• Punishment: sunk into a river of boiling blood
and fire
2. Middle ring: violent against
self (suicides)
• Punishment: turned into
trees and bushes which
are fed upon by harpies
3. Inner ring: violent against God and nature
(blasphemers and sodomites)
• Punishment: reside in a desert of burning
sand and rain falling from the sky
Bolgia 1: panderers and seducers
• Punishment: whipped by demons
Circle Eight: Fraud
Bolgia 2: flatterers
• Punishment: submerged in human excrement
Bolgia 3: simony (the making of profit out of sacred things)
• Punishment: buried head-first with flames burning their feet
Bolgia 4: sorcerers, astrologers, and false prophets
• Punishment: have their heads twisted around on their bodies backward
Bolgia 5: corrupt politicians
• Punishment: immersed in a lake of boiling pitch
Bolgia 6: hypocrites
• Punishment: apathetically walk along wearing gold-plated
lead cloaks
Bolgia 7: thieves
• Punishment: bitten and transformed by snakes and lizards
Bolgia 8: evil counselors and advisers
• Punishment: individually covered in fire
Bolgia 9: divisive individuals (start drama)
• Punishment: sword-wielding demon cuts them into pieces
Bolgia 10: alchemists, counterfeiters, perjurers, and impostors
• Punishment: afflicted with different diseases
Circle Nine: Treachery
Round 1: named Caïna, after Cain, who killed his own brother; traitors to kindred
• Punishment: immersed in the ice up to their chins with heads bent forward
Round 2: named Antenora, after Antenor of Troy, who betrayed his city to the Greeks; traitors to political entities
• Punishment: immersed in the ice up to their chins
Round 3: named Ptolomaea, after Ptolemy, who invited fatherand brothers-in-law to a banquet and then killed them; traitors
to their guests
• Punishment: lying on backs, fully covered in ice except
their faces
Round 4: named Judecca, after Judas Iscariot, Biblical
betrayer of Christ; traitors to their lords and benefactors
• Punishment: completely covered in ice
Circle Nine, Center of Earth: Satan
Satan, half submerged in ice,
gnaws on Brutus, Cassius, and
Judas with his three mouths
CANTO 34: COMPOUND FRAUD, THE
TREACHEROUS TO THEIR MASTERS, AND
SATAN
• Read the handout for Canto 34
• Answer the following questions:
1. In Canto 34, why does Dante regard Judas, Brutus, and Cassius as
the worst sinners of all? How does Judas’s sin differ from that of
Brutus and Cassius?
2. In what way could Satan’s three faces be explained as symbols?
EXTENSION QUESTIONS:
• Dante ranks human sins by his placement of different sinner in Hell. Does their
punishment fit their crimes? Explain.
• Honors:
• What importance does Dante place on reason? What generalization can you make about
Dante’s view of reason? Use evidence in the poem to make your generalization.
• In his introduction to the Inferno, Archibald T. MacAllister states that Dante believed “that the
mind must be moved in order to grasp what the senses present to it; therefore he combines
sight, sound, hearing, smell and touch with fear, pity, anger, horror and other appropriate
emotions to involve his reader to the point of seeming actually to experience his situations
and not merely to read about them.” Do you agree that Dante’s use of images effectively
draws readers into his story and makes them feel strong emotions? Explain, using specific
examples from the selection.