1. A Visual Depiction of Dante’s Inferno
Class project for Dr.Hale’s World Literature Course - Fall 1999 by Barbara Christopher

2. How to stay out of Hell
“The Law of contradiction is a basic principle of Aristotelian logic: to repent of one’s sin and to want to commit it at the same time is a self-contradiction.”
from Allen Mandelbaum’s Translation- Notes on Canto XXVIII
image by Gustave Dore

3. The Inferno: Hell
Hell spiraling downward. Within each circle you find sinners being eternally punished for their sins.
Image by Sandro Botticelli

4. The Inferno Hell has nine circles. Image by Barry Moser Limbo Lust
Gluttonous
Wrathful & Sullen
Heretics
Violent (includes 3 rings)
Fraud (includes 10 pouches)
Treachery (includes 4 rings)
Lucifer
Image by Barry Moser

5. The Inferno
The layers of Hell from the inside looking down. The deeper you descend the more grievous the sin and the grotesque and offensive the punishment.
Image by Bartolomeo

6. Canto I Lost in the Dark Woods
Dante, realizing he has strayed from a true path, finds himself lost in the woods.
Image by Gustave Dore

7. Canto I Lost in the Dark Woods
Lost and confronted by 3 beasts.
Image by Sandro Botticelli

8. Canto III: Gate to Hell
William Blake’s interpretation of Dante and Virgil readying themselves to enter the Gate to Hell.

9. Canto III: Inscription Over Gates of Hell
Through me the way into the suffering city, through me the way to the eternal pain, through me the way that runs among the lost. Justice urged on my high artificer; my maker was divine authority, the highest wisdom, and the primal love. Before me nothing but eternal things were made, and I endure eternally. ABANDON EVERY HOPE, WHO ENTER HERE.

10. Canto III: The Ferryman Charon
Charon crossing the Acheron River on his way to pick up shades who are going to meet their punishment.
Image by Gustave Dore

11. Canto IV: Virtuous Pagans Limbo
First Circle - Limbo: These souls created no evil. They were good men who used reason to live by but because they were never baptized, they reside in an area in Hell called Limbo.
Image by Gustave Dore

12. Canto V The next four slides tell the story of Paolo and Francesca
Upper Hell - The Lustful

13. Canto V: Paolo and Francesca
Paolo and Francesca reading the story of Sir Lancelot.
Image by Anselm Feuerbach

14. Canto V: Paolo and Francesca
Overcome by passion, the book falls to the floor and they read no more.
Image by Amos Cassioli

15. Canto V:Paolo and Francesca
Paolo and Francesca tossed violently by a wind storm as Virgil and Dante watch. Francesca tells Dante her story.
Image by Ary Scheffer

16. Canto V Paolo and Francesca
Image by Dante Rossetti

17. Canto VIII: The Wrathful and the Fallen Angels
The fallen angels protecting the Wall of Dis.
Image by Sandro Botticelli

18. Canto X: The Heretics
Virgil guides Dante through the heated tombs of the Heretics.
Image by Sandro Botticelli

19. Canto XIII: The Violent against Themselves
The woods of the suicides. In life, they had no desire to be human, in Hell they are deprived of their human form.
Image by Federico Zuccari

20. Canto XVIII: The Panders, Seducers and the Flatters
Image by Sandro Botticelli

21. Canto XIX: Simoniacs
Image by Sandro Botticello

22. Canto XX: The Fortune Tellers and Diviners
Because they tried to see so far into the future, Fortune Tellers and Diviners heads have been twisted so they they all face backward.
Image by Sandro Botticelli

23. Canto XXIII The Hypocrites
The Hypocrites in their hooded capes, gilded on the outside but heavily lined in lead.
Image by Sandro Botticello

24. Cantos XXIV: Thieves
Image by Sandro Botticello

25. Canto XXIV: Punishment of Thieves
Naked humans in the pit of snakes.
Image by William Blake

26. Canto XXVI Evil Counselors
Evil and fraudulent counselors cloaked in flames.
Image by Sandro Botticello

27. Canto XXVIII Sowers of Scandal
Sowers of discord and scandal perpetually circling while demons wound them. When their wounds heal they are wounded again just as rumor wounds again as it circles around.
Image by Sandro Botticello

28. Canto XXIX: The Falsifiers
Falsifiers live in a pit of disease that smells of festering and rotting limbs.
Image by Sandro Botticello

29. Canto XXIX: The Falsifiers
The pit of disease - notice how Virgil and Dante cover their noses to try to avoid the smell.
image by William Blake

30. Canto XXXII: Traitors to Kin
Immersed in the frozen lake of Cocytus with heads bent down.
Image by Gustave Dore

31. Canto XXXIV: Lucifer Lucifer with 3 heads gnawing on sinners.
Image by Sandro Botticello

32. Canto XXXIV: Lucifer
Lucifer with large bat type wings in the frozen lake of Cocytus.
image by Gustave Dore

33. The Inferno
Virgil guides Dante out of Hell using Lucifer’s hair stairs and “It was from there that we emerged to see - once more the stars”.