Thus, from the classics Dante seems to have derived his moral and political understanding as well as his conception of the epic poem—that is, a framing story large enough to encompass the most important issues of his day, but it was from his native tradition that he acquired the philosophy of love that forms the Christian matter of his poem. The depth of their placement in the river corresponds to how much you damaged in life. Dante’s years of exile were years of difficult peregrinations from one place to another—as he himself repeatedly says, most effectively in Paradiso [XVII], in Cacciaguida’s moving lamentation that “bitter is the taste of another man’s bread and…heavy the way up and down another man’s stair.” Throughout his exile Dante nevertheless was sustained by work on his great poem. The poem’s rhyme scheme is the terza rima (aba, bcb, cdc, etc.). Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. This, the first 'epic' of which its author is the protagonist and his individual imaginings the content, weaves together the three threads of Classical and Christian history; contemporary Medieval politics and religion; and Dante's own inner life including his love for Beatrice, to create the most complex and highly structured long poem extant. Traitors to their lords and benefactors are completely buried in ice in various positions. The poem is about the travels of a man through Christian hell, purgatory, and heaven. The poem consists of 100 cantos, which are grouped together into three sections, or canticles, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. (Born under Julius Caesar, he extolled Augustus Caesar.) 293 likes. Dante’s use of Virgil is one of the richest cultural appropriations in literature. Inferno (Italian: [iɱˈfɛrno]; Italian for "Hell") is the first part of Italian writer Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy. To begin, in Dante’s poem he is an exponent of classical reason. In the Paradiso true heroic fulfillment is achieved.

The Inferno tells the journey of Dante through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. While in life they were provided with warmth and comfort from their food, in Hell the souls are punished with cold and heavy rain.

Virgil had provided Dante with moral instruction in survival as an exile, which is the theme of his own poem as well as Dante’s, but he clung to his faith in the processes of history, which, given their culmination in the Roman Empire, were deeply consoling. In this circle souls who succumb to lust. As Beatrice in her magisterial return in the earthly paradise reminds Dante, he must learn to reject the deceptive promises of the temporal world.

When Virgil tries to enter, the angels of Hell slam the door in his face. This device allowed Dante not only to create a story out of his pending exile but also to explain the means by which he came to cope with his personal calamity and to offer suggestions for the resolution of Italy’s troubles as well. Dante meant it literally when he proclaimed, after the dreary dimensions of Hell: “But here let poetry rise again from the dead.” There is only one poet in Hell proper and not more than two in the Paradiso, but in the Purgatorio the reader encounters the musicians Casella and Belacqua and the poet Sordello and hears of the fortunes of the two Guidos, Guinizelli and Cavalcanti, the painters Cimabue and Giotto, and the miniaturists. The Divine Comedy is a piece of world literature.. Inferno is the most famous section of the poem. You were not formed to live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge.” ― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy. The visit to Hell is, as Virgil and later Beatrice explain, an extreme measure, a painful but necessary act before real recovery can begin. Inferno is the most famous section of the poem. Here the pilgrim Dante subdues his own personality in order that he may ascend. The Text is fully hyper-linked to the index and notes and vice versa. Meditations on the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Despite the regressive nature of the Inferno, Dante’s meetings with the roster of the damned are among the most memorable moments of the poem: the Neutrals, the virtuous pagans, Francesca da Rimini, Filipo Argenti, Farinata degli Uberti, Piero delle Vigne, Brunetto Latini, the simoniacal popes, Ulysses, and Ugolino della Gherardesca impose themselves upon the reader’s imagination with tremendous force. This explains why the Inferno is both aesthetically and theologically incomplete. Dante’s Inferno differs from its great classical predecessors in both position and purpose. His head is being chewed on by Satan, and his back is being skinned by Satan's claws. The Divine Comedy is Dante's record of his visionary journey through the triple realms of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. (In this way, Dante’s method is similar to that of Milton in Paradise Lost, where the flamboyant but defective Lucifer and his fallen angels are presented first.) He is also a historical figure and is presented as such in the Inferno (I): “…once I was a man, and my parents were Lombards, both Mantuan by birth. The greedy are guarded by Plutus, god of riches and wealth. The center mouth is chewing on Judas Iscariot. The basic structural component of The Divine Comedy is the canto.