6 From The Divine Comedy Inferno, Dante Alighieri

Introduction

The Divine Comedy (1307-1321) is one of the most intriguing and politically driven texts in the 14th Century. Who wouldn’t want to write an amazing poem and put all of your political enemies in hell and force them to suffer unspeakable acts of torture and pain! Indeed, Dante also put friends and people he respected in hell because he believed that all people needed to repent and care for their souls. The importance of this text lies not in its content necessarily (though that is important as well), but rather that it is written in Italian. This might seem trivial to us now, but that Dante chose to write in the vernacular language and not Latin significantly changes the course of literary history in the West—not to mention the movies, books, and video games this text has spawned. Up to this point in the Western Middle Ages, “literature” was only written in Latin, and anything written in a vernacular language was not worthy of a proper audience—i.e., educated people. The vernacular language was the language spoken by the people, the uneducated masses. So with this in mind, you can begin to see precisely who Dante was attempting to write for, who he wanted his work to touch and speak to, who needed to hear what he had to say.

Dante writes himself into the poem, referred to as Dante-pilgrim, and constructs a scenario in which Vigil, the author of The Aeneid, is his guide through hell. Dante meets Vigil just outside the gates of hell.  As the two writers enter limbo, they meet other important authors such as Homer, Ovid, Lucan, and Horace. By placing himself in the company of these authors, Dante not so subtly posits his own literary genius. This becomes a standard practice for many medieval authors that follow Dante’s lead and begin writing in a vernacular language. (A brief note on time periods and dating: Dante is writing at the very end of the Middle Ages and the very beginning of the Italian Renaissance in the 14th Century—typically scholars date the beginning of the Renaissance when Petrarch is crowned poet laureate in 1341, which comes after Dante’s death. In England, however, the 14th through the 15th century are still very much considered medieval. The “progress” that the Renaissance makes in Italy does not fully reach and affect other parts of Europe for some time.) As you read, consider the ways in which Dante-pilgrim’s journey has shaped our understanding of hell, punishment, and retribution. What kind of world does Dante create not through the creation of hell, but through writing and presenting new images in a language of the people?

Canto I

Canto II

Canto III

Canto IV

Canto V

Canto VI

Canto VII

Canto VIII

Canto IX

Canto XXXIV