1. Dante’s inferno
Reading ppt

2. Canto I Opens on the evening of Good Friday in the year 1300.
Written in tercet – 3 lines
Traveling through a dark wood, Dante has lost his path and now wanders fearfully through the forest; he has “strayed from the True Way into the Dark Wood of Error.”
Dark Wood of Error= worldliness
Allegorical journey- reference to a life’s journey, veering from the straight road, being alone, losing hope, etc… all suggest an allegorical, NOT a literal journey

3. Canto I: First 12 lines Close Read
We learn:
Dante the pilgrim is 35 years old; he is “midway along the journey of our life.” Biblical 3 score and 10 years of an average lifespan is 70 years, so half is 35.
Dante the pilgrim is “in a dark wood,” that he has “wandered off from the straight path,” and that he has strayed from “the path of truth.”
Dante the pilgrim is like a sinner in trouble
We are not told how he gets into the dark wood, but many people get there little by little. Most people take time to ask themselves, “how did I get here? Why am I this kind of person?”

4. Canto I
He wants out and attempts to climb to the sun ( a symbol of god/salvation)
The sun shines down on a mountain above him, and he attempts to climb up it but his way is blocked by three beasts (these three beasts all represent different aspects of world sin, and the three major classifications of the Inferno):
Leopard= malice and fraud
Lion = violence and over-ambition
She-Wolf = incontinence (lack of self-restraint) temptation to sin

5. Animal symbolism Taken from Jeremiah 5:6
“Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities: every one that goeth out thence shall be torn to pieces: because their transgressors are many, and their backslidings are increased”
Dante's symbols, the leopard, the lion, and the she-wolf, symbolize carnal sins which are divided into three categories of severity: the sins of malice and fraud, the sins of violence and ambition, and the sins of incontinence, respectively.
Leopard tricks people with his spots (fraud); lions are sneaking and violent as they hunt (violence); and wolves are mysterious and usually work in packs.

6. Canto I
Dante tries to reach the light by himself, but he fails. He needs a guide.
Just as Dante faces these three beats, a human figure appears. It is Virgil (great Roman poet).
Virgil = Human reason
Virgil has come to guide Dante from error, sent from God and Beatrice. They must first pass through Hell (the recognition of sin), Purgatory (the renunciation of sin), and only then can he come to the Paradise (the light of God).
Another guide, Beatrice will take over later
Beatrice= divine love

7. Canto I Look at lines 1-4: what tense is this written in?
Why this tense?
Lines : personification
Lines 21-24: epic simile
Lines 31-33: foreshadowing
Predictions include ideas of danger, deceit and fraud
The leopard is a real threat but it also represents an abstract idea (there is old story where a leopard changes his spots to fool the other animals)

8. Canto I Aries= god of creation He is MOST fearful of the She-Wolf
“new creation” (line 39)= Easter (symbolic new awakening)
He is MOST fearful of the She-Wolf
Temptation to sin
“many souls she has brought to endless grief”
He has an EMOTIONAL response to the She-Wolf (not just physical fear); he is convinced she will destroy his hopes for reaching the “high summit.”
“she has struck a mortal tremor in me” (line 87)

9. Canto I (pg. 662)- Virgil’s life
Story of Anchises’ son, Aeneas: In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas was a Trojan hero, the son of the prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite.
Virgil is his true master and mentor (lines 81-83)
She-Wolf
“but feeding, she grows hungrier than she was” (line 93)- gluttony; never satisfied
The She-Wolf kills all who approach her but someday a magnificent hound will come and chase her back to hell

10. Canto I
“set upon a burning mountain” (referring to the mountain of Purgatory)- line 111
Possible purification in this place (between heaven and hell)
Suffering is borne in hope because it is a part of purification that will result in the rise to Paradise.
Ends with Virgil offering to guide Dante to Paradise where Beatrice will take over (because of the She-Wolf, he cannot pass…)

11. Canto III
Pages

12. Canto III Gates of Hell (portrayal of Hell as an actual city)
“sacred justice moved by architect” (line 4)- God created Hell out of justice; a desire to see sin punished and virtues rewarded. (ultimate JUSTICE)
“Abandon all Hope, You Who Enter Here”

13. Canto III Law of symbolic retribution
Punishment that symbolizes the crime
“as they sinned, so are they punished”
All about ULTIMATE JUSTICE

14. Canto III Opportunists
Those souls who were neither good nor bad but only for themselves. They lived their lives without making conscious moral choices; therefore both Heaven and Hell have denied them. (reside in the Ante-Inferno)
They must constantly chase after a blank banner. Flies and wasps continually bite them and consume the blood and tears that flow from them.
Dante recognizes Pope Celestine V here (renounced his title)

15. Canto III Symbolic retribution of the opportunists:
Took no sides- so they are given no place
Ever-shifting illusion- so they pursue an ever-shifting banner
Their sin was a darkness- so they move in darkness
Guilty conscious pursued them- wasps pursue them
Actions were a moral filth- they run eternally through the filth of worms and maggots

16. Canto III Acheron (river) = the first of the rivers of Hell
Newly arrived damned souls wait to be ferried along
Charon= boatman of the river
Refuses to take Dante because is a living soul (lines 85-90)
Virgil forces Charon- God ordained it (lines 91-93)
Dante faints and does not awaken until they get to the other side
“sleep comes over in a swoon” (line 133)

17. Canto III
“Divine (Godly) justice transforms and spurs them so their dread turns wish: they yearn for what they fear” (lines ).
Hell= sin (allegorically) so….
Hell is their CHOICE, for divine grace is denied to none who wish for it in their hearts.

18. Canto V
Pages

19. Canto V
Virgil and Dante are now in the SECOND circle of Hell (size does not change, just “size” of crimes)
Minos: monster who stands in front of the endless line of sinners, assigning them to their torments.
Wraps his tail around them; number of times around = number of hell they are assigned
From classical Greek mythology; son of Europa and Zeus, descended in the form of a bull

20. Canto V
Sins of Lust: those who betrayed reason to their appetites; their sin was to abandon themselves to the tempest of their passions: so they are swept forever in the tempest (storm) of Hell, forever denied the light of reason and of God.
List of famous “sinners” of lust
Francesca tells her own story (as Paolo weeps)
Dante immediately feels sympathy for these souls and once again faints

21. Canto V
Semiramis: legendary queen of King Nimus; tricked her husband’s army and had him killed.
Dido: Queen of Carthage; falls in love, only to be left by the Trojan hero Aeneas
Cleopatra: last pharaoh of Ancient Egypt; had affair with Caesar and bore a son as co-ruler
Helen- of Troy
Achilles- Greek hero of Trojan War; died in an ambush after falling in love with the Trojan princess Polyxena; overall, lustful character
Paris- story of Troy
Tristan- a Cornish hero and one of the Knights of the Round Table; he and Iseult accidentally consume a love potion and fall in love, having a secret affair.
Francesca and Paolo (tells their story…)
Allusions
All are women who followed their passions

22. Canto V The story of Francesca and Paolo
Bound in marriage to an old and deformed man, she fell in love with Paolo, her husband’s younger brother. One day, as she and Paolo sat reading an Arthurian Legend about the love of Lancelot and Guenivere, each began to feel that the story spoke to their own secret love,
When they came to a particular romantic moment in the story, they could not resist kissing. Francesca’s husband quickly discovered them and had Paolo killed.
Francesca and Paolo are doomed to spend eternity in the second level of Hell.

23. Canto V Symbolic Retribution
“stripped bare of ever light” (in darkness)- where inappropriate sins/acts would have occurred
Naked
In a “hellish flight of storm” sweeping their souls and whirling and battering them on- just as their sin is of the flesh, the storm racks their nerves and hurts their skin.
Out of control storm- they demonstrated lack of control as well
**Central theme- those who abandon reason for passion will be punished**

24. Canto XXXIII
Count Ugolino volunteers to tell his story and why he is gnawing on the head of Archbishop Ruggieri for condemnation of his offender.
Ruggierri imprisoned Ugolino and his sons, starving them to death as well.
Ugolino watches his sons die one by one and then eats them.

25. Those punished in this level lie on their backs, frozen in a lake, with their tears frozen to their eyes.
In the 3rd level, sins were so great that certain souls leave the bodies before death and descend to hell.

26. The poets react with particular horror at the sight of the next two souls in the Third Ring, those of Fra Alberigo and Branca d’Oria.
Although these individuals have not yet died on Earth, their crimes were so great that their souls were obliged to enter Hell before their time; devils occupy their living bodies aboveground.