Dante’s Inferno Outline Part 1

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Dante’s Inferno Outline/Review Sheet

• The following is a list of questions/characters/ideas to look out for and remember from the list of cantos. You will find these helpful as you complete your reader’s response journals
• Refer to the Dore sketches to get a visual sense of each canto.
• Keep the map of the Inferno handy
• Be able to discuss the items listed in each canto

Dante Alighieri & The Divine Comedy

Dante's Life

· Born in Florence in 1265; died in Ravenna in 1321

· Met Beatrice circa 1274

· Married Gemma Donati in 1289

· Elected Prior (highest magistrate, a 2 month post) in 1300

· Exiled from Florence in 1302

Literary Works

· De Vulgari Eloquentia, on the origin and development of language

· De Monarchia, on political theory

· Convivio, unfinished, a compendium of knowledge

· Vita Nuova, lyric poems and commentary

· Commedia , dubbed The Divine Comedy in the 16th century, written from 1307-21. Relates a symbolic pilgrimage through Hell, Purgatory, & Heaven undertaken by the fictitious pilgrim Dante beginning the evening before Good Friday, 1300.

The Divine Comedy Literary Influences:

· Old & New Testament

· Homer’s Odyssey, and especially Virgil's Aeneid

· St. Augustine's Confessions

Structure in Multiple Layers of Three to Symbolize the Trinity:

· Three Guides: 

 1. Virgil, symbol of human reason & poetry, through Inferno & Purgatorio 

 2. Beatrice, his “pure” human love, through most of Paradiso 

 3. St. Bernard de Clairvaux, a 12th century contemplative monk

· Written in vernacular Italian in terza rima (aba, bcb, cdc, etc.)

· 33 cantos in each canticle (Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso), plus one in the beginning as an introduction = 100.

· Nine circles of Hell + anteroom = 10; seven levels of purgatory plus three ante-terraces = 10; nine heavenly spheres + empyrean = 10.

· Three beasts block his path:

Leopard, Lion, and She-Wolf.

"Peopled" by hundreds of historical, contemporaneous, and mythical figures who had died by the year 1300, but who may have lived centuries before.

Inferno Map: 

 Circle 1: The Virtuous Pagans 

 Circle 2: The Lascivious/Lustful

 Circle 3: The Gluttonous 

 Circle 4: The Miserly and the Wasteful against kindred, country,

 Circle 5: The Wrathful guests, lords, etc.

 Circle 6: The Heretics

 Circle 7: The Violent

 Circle 8: The Fraudulent 

 Circle 9: The Lake of the Treacherous 

The poem begins on Holy Thursday, April 7th running to Easter Sunday, April 10, A.D. 1300

Three types of sin:

1) Incontinence: Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Circles. (Arch-heretics inhabit the

Sixth Circle.)

2) Violence: Seventh Circle (three concentric parts: river, wood, desert)

3) Fraud: (a) without treachery: Eighth Circle (ten “evil pouches” of Malebolge)

(b) with treachery: Ninth Circle (four concentric rings of ice)

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Part 2

Part 3