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Here, those who betrayed their benefactors spend eternity in complete icy submersion. 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.
- Dante Alighieri and Inferno Background
All of Dante’s work on The Comedy (later called The Divine...
- Cantos I & II
A summary of Cantos I & II in Dante Alighieri's Inferno....
- Flashcards
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- Antagonist
While the Inferno doesn’t have an antagonist in the usual...
- Character List
Dante. The author and protagonist of Inferno; the focus of...
- Full Book Analysis
Dante ’s Inferno is the story of his (imagined) voyage...
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- Dante Alighieri and Inferno Background
Inferno is the first poem in a three-part series called The Divine Comedy. Inferno is an allegorical journey through Hell. In part, Inferno is a political allegory, and in part it is a religious allegory. It is also a story following the classic elements of a comedy—it starts in the depths of Hell but ends with the joys of Heaven.
Canto 1. Midway through his life, Dante wakes up in a dark, unfamiliar forest. He attempts to climb up a mountain, but his path is blocked by a leopard, a lion, and a wolf. The spirit of the Roman poet Virgil appears to him and tells him that he must take another path out of the forest. Dante's beloved Beatrice, who is now deceased and in ...
- Limbo
- Second Circle
- Third Circle
- Fourth Circle
- Fifth Circle
- Sixth Circle
- Seventh Circle
- Eighth Circle
- Ninth Circle
The throng of souls entering the gates of hell extends as far as Dante can see; the scale of the desperation astonishes him. Once past the gates, Dante and Virgil enter Limbo, a region populated by noble but unbaptized souls. There, Dante finds himself in the company of great ancient poets—Homer, Ovid, Lucan, Horace, and Virgil—and refers to himsel...
At the entrance of the Second Circle, the pair encounter King Minos—who judges the incoming souls and assigns them to their appropriate place in hell—and meet the souls of the lustful, who are eternally buffeted by surging winds. The two representative souls are Paolo and Francesca, a pair of Florentine lovers who tell Dante of their ill-fated affa...
In the Third Circle, the souls of the gluttonous splash about in a bog, blinded by mud and chilled by icy rain, watched over by Cerberus. Virgil fills Cerberus’ mouths with heaps of mud, allowing him and Dante to slip past. Here, Dante speaks with Ciacco, a fellow Florentine who makes a political prophecy, which would not only come true but also be...
The Fourth Circlehouses the greedy, ruled by Plutus, the Roman god of earthly wealth. As Dante and Virgil approach, Plutus mutters the cryptic phrase: “Pape Satàn, pape Satàn aleppe!” There, they find the greedy souls, who are fated to eternally roll great bags of gold uphill or in pointless circles.
The souls of the wrathful float in the stagnant River Styx. Virgil and Dante hire Phlegyas to ferry them across the Fifth Circle. As they do, they encounter an acquaintance of Dante's, who bitterly accosts him; the pair merely continues onward. On the other shore, they enter the walled city of Dis, which contains the subsequent circles of hell.
The souls of heretics burn within the earth, piled deep in the flaming graves of the Sixth Circle. These heretics are punished for their belief that the soul dies with the body.
Virgil and Dante slip past the Minotaur as they enter the Seventh Circle, which detains the violent in three subdivided rings. In the First Ring, the souls of those who were violent against their neighbors—such as Alexander the Great and Attila the Hun—wallow in the Phlegethon, a great river of burning blood. The Second Ringhouses the suicidal, tra...
The Eighth Circle houses the souls of the fraudulent and is divided into ten bolge—trenches—arrayed in a series of concentric circles decreasing in size. 1. In the First Bolgia,the panderers and seducers are whipped and beaten by demons. 2. The Second Bolgiacontains the flatterers, who aremired in pools of feces. 3. The Third Bolgiaimprisons the si...
Traitors are punished in the Ninth Circle—home to the frozen lake Cocytus—which is divided into four rounds. 1. The First Roundis Caïna, where traitors to their kindred are frozen up to their necks in ice. 2. The Second Roundis Antenora, where traitors to their country are submerged up to their chins. 3. The Third Roundis Ptolomea, where traitors t...
Dante ’s Inferno is the story of his (imagined) voyage through Hell, guided by the poet Virgil, with the purpose of comprehending and rejecting human vice in order to draw closer to God. The story is highly symbolic. As Dante witnesses the bodily punishment experienced by the sinners and encounters various monsters who inhabit Hell, he learns ...
How It All Goes Down. The Inferno follows the wanderings of the poet Dante as he strays off the rightful and straight path of moral truth and gets lost in a dark wood. And that, folks, is just the beginning. Just as three wild animals threaten to attack him, Dante is rescued by the ghost of Virgil, a celebrated Roman poet and also Dante’s idol.
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Full Title: The Divine Comedy (The Inferno is the first of three sections of The Divine Comedy) When Written: Early 1300s (exact date unclear) Where Written: Italy. When Published: Unclear, but at least by 1317. Literary Period: The (late) middle ages. Genre: Epic poem (written in an Italian rhyme scheme called terza rima) Setting: Hell.
