Dante's Inferno Questions and Answers
Dante's Inferno
What do you think was Dante's purpose in writing Inferno?
Dante wrote Inferno while in political exile from Florence, and he used it as a vehicle to express his political beliefs and take comfort in imagining bad ends for his enemies. However, the poem's...
Dante's Inferno
Why is Dante's work entitled Divine Comedy when there's not even a hint of funny stuff in it?
In very basic terms, a comedy in Dante's time was the name given to a work that started badly but ended well. If we examine The Divine Comedy, we will see that it falls perfectly into this...
Dante's Inferno
Why do you think Dante has chosen to encase Satan in ice instead of a lake of lava? What is the symbolism in that?
When Dante and Virgil arrive in Judecca, they find a frozen wasteland filled with freezing winds caused by the flapping of Satan's wings. This is different from our typical conception of hell as a...
Dante's Inferno
What is the moral lesson of Inferno?
If there's one moral lesson from Dante's Inferno that bears repeating, it's that evil is always eventually punished and that everyone will one day suffer the consequences of their actions. In...
Dante's Inferno
How are hypocrites punished in the Inferno?
In canto 23 of Dante’s Inferno, Virgil and Dante witness hypocrites meeting their punitive fates in the Eighth Circle of hell. A hypocrite is a person who publicly professes to possess virtues,...
Dante's Inferno
In Dante's Inferno, why does Dante have to go to Hell first before going to Heaven, rather than the other way around?
I think there may be a couple of reasons for this. One is that this is Dante's allegory of life, and as he is writing the story of a man who has strayed from the straight and narrow path to God,...
Dante's Inferno
In the Inferno, why are Brutus, Cassius, and Judas Dante's picks to be in the mouths of Lucifer?
Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius are a perverse inversion of the Holy Trinity. These three are a trinity of evil. They dangle from Satan's mouths, perpetually in pain from being ground by his...
Dante's Inferno
What is Virgil's advice to Dante as spoken at the gate of Hell?
As Dante and Virgil approach the gates of Hell, Dante starts getting more than a little scared, not least because the inscription above the gates says "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."...
Dante's Inferno
What Are The 7 Levels Of Purgatory?
Dante envisions Purgatory as a mountain. The seven levels of Purgatory in Dante's Divine Comedy are called terraces. At the top of the mountain is paradise. To get there, a person must be purified...
Dante's Inferno
What is the message of Dante's Inferno?
Dante Alighieri's three-part epic poem, the Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia)—composed of Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise or Heaven)—is intended to convey the message,...
Dante's Inferno
How or why is Dante sympathetic to some sinners and not others?
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) is an Italian poet who modeled The Divine Comedy after Virgil’s Aeneid in the form of an epic poem. It is separated into three distinct parts: the Inferno, or Hell,...
Dante's Inferno
In Dante's Inferno, how are the lustful being punished in the second circle of hell? Why is that punishment...
Dante's Second Circle of Hell (the first after Purgatory) marks the first of the Sins of Incontinence. This refers to sins that are committed by virtue of one not being able to control their sinful...
Dante's Inferno
What is the punishment for the sodomites in Cantos 15-16 of Inferno?
Dante puts the sodomites at the bottom of the seventh circle of hell. That's bad. Within the seventh circle, there are three rings. In ring number 1, Dante puts people who killed for their own...
Dante's Inferno
Why is Virgil Dante's guide?
Virgil is Dante's guide to the underworld for several reasons. First, souls who have ascended to heaven, such as Beatrice, St. Lucia, or the Virgin Mary, are pure and not allowed to enter hell....
Dante's Inferno
Which artist, William Blake or Gustave Doré, would Dante have chosen to illustrate the Inferno?
If Dante had a time machine, he would have been able to see the illustrations that both William Blake and Gustave Doré created for the entire Divine Comedy, not just Inferno. He could then have...
Dante's Inferno
How does Dante criticize the Church? If you could draw on three or four points, that would be great.
During Dante's time (the turn of the fourteenth century), the Catholic Church was known for greed and corruption. Dante's depicted hell is a place where the punishments for sinners fit their...
Dante's Inferno
What is the relationship between Dante the Author and Dante the Pilgrim from Dante's Inferno?
The major difference between the poet Dante and the character or pilgrim Dante is that the author is less sympathetic to the sinners in the circles of Hell than is the character. The poet Dante...
Dante's Inferno
In the Inferno, why are Brutus, Cassius, and Judas Dante’s picks to be in the mouths of Lucifer?
Remember, Lucifer has three faces and three mouths. You might argue that the three faces represent something like a satanic supervision of the Holy Trinity. You might also remember that being a...
Dante's Inferno
What sins did Dante commit?
As the Divine Comedy opens, the thirty-five-year-old Dante, halfway through his expected life of seventy years, has lost his sense of connection to God. He is experiencing a spiritual dark night of...
Dante's Inferno
What does the greyhound in Dante's Inferno symbolize?
In the first canto of the Inferno, Dante is driven off his path by a she-wolf. It is then that he meets the Roman poet Virgil, who is to guide him through the underworld. Virgil warns Dante to...
Dante's Inferno
In what language did Dante write The Divine Comedy?
It is difficult to imagine a work of literature of more importance to a national culture than Dante's The Divine Comedy. Not only did he write it in the Tuscan or Florentine Italian, this long poem...
Dante's Inferno
Why was the poet Homer in hell in Dante’s Inferno? Which level of hell is he in? What is his eternal punishment? What...
The first circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno is described in canto 4. It is called Limbo. The people in this circle are not suffering in the manner of other denizens of Hell, because they are not...
Dante's Inferno
Explain Dante’s use of allusion in canto 5 of the Inferno. What purposes do the references to Minos and the lustful...
Minos was an important figure in Greek mythology. Sometimes he was described as a human king and sometimes as the son of Zeus and Europa. He is famous for being heartless, as he would feed young...
Dante's Inferno
What are the rivers of hell and their ferrymen in Dante's Inferno?
The river and ferryman of Dante's Inferno are based on Greek myth rather than on Christian concepts of the afterlife, a reflection of Dante's work during the Italian Renaissance, when themes from...
Dante's Inferno
What are the soothsayers in Dante's Inferno?
The soothsayers are people who could foresee the future and who provided information to others based on what they saw. The classical soothsayer Tiresias from the Oedipus cycle is one example, and...
Dante's Inferno
Discuss allusions used in Dante's Inferno.
Allusions abound in Dante Alighieri's Inferno, the third part of his fourteenth-century epic poem, The Divine Comedy. In Inferno, Dante uses allusions—references to historical or cultural persons,...
Dante's Inferno
Explain the simile of the flowers in Dante's Inferno.
In canto 1 of the Inferno, poet Dante finds himself wandering in a savage forest and spots a sun-lit hill in the distance. Blocked by three beasts—a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf—he gives up his...
Dante's Inferno
What role does disillusion play in Inferno, canto XXXIV, in Dante's Divine Comedy? What role does disillusion play in...
In canto XXXIV of Inferno, Dante and Virgil have at long last reached the very bottom of hell, known as Judecca. This level of hell is reserved for people who have betrayed their benefactors, and...
Dante's Inferno
Who does Francesca blame for her adultery in Dante's Inferno?
The poet meets Francesca in canto 5 of Dante's Inferno by Dante Alighieri. Virgil has just led him into the second circle of hell, where he encounters the great beast Minos. The spirits in this...
Dante's Inferno
In Canto 18 of Dante's Inferno, why is the priest in hell?
Dante explores the numerous circles of Hell in this story, in each of which a different sin is relegated. Throughout the story we have seen the punishments for a number of terrible sins, and in...
Dante's Inferno
What is the point of Dante's journey through the after-life? What did it mean to be a Christian in Dante's time?
Dante is the middle of life when he embarks on his journey to the underworld and then to purgatory and paradise. At 35—midway between birth and his expected death at 70—he has lost his way. He no...
Dante's Inferno
Why does Dante use the number "3" multiple times in "Dante's Inferno"?
The number 3 is everywhere in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. For one thing, the poem itself is structured according to the rhyme scheme terza rima, which uses stanzas of three lines that employ...
Dante's Inferno
How is Dante’s Inferno an allegory?
Dante's Inferno is indeed a religious allegory. Dante is involved in a spiritual journey which will take him down to the fiery depths of hell, through Purgatory, and then finally up into the...
Dante's Inferno
Who are Anastasius and Photius in Dante's Inferno?
Dante doesn't have much time for popes. At least for those who transgress what he regards as the appropriate bounds of their authority. There are numerous pontiffs in Dante's vision of Hell, cast...
Dante's Inferno
In Canto 16 of Dante's Inferno, what are the sins of the three noble Florentines, and are they being burned with...
The title of Canto 16 is "Violent against Nature." The three men are in hell, it seems, for sodomy. Their punishment is to clutch each other as in a dance, or like wrestlers, and wheel around...
Dante's Inferno
What do the sinners in Dante's Inferno all have in common? Why can't we take what the sinners say at face value?
The sinners in Dante's Inferno have committed a variety of crimes, from lust to murder, which may not seem to have much in common, but they all share the common theme of having preferred self will...
Dante's Inferno
How does Dante use contrapasso in canto 5 of Inferno to address the sin of lust?
Dante's vision of perdition involves punishment for the souls of sinners in ways that mirrors the sins they were guilty of in life. This is what contrapasso refers to. Canto V deals with the second...
Dante's Inferno
Why does Charon dispute taking Dante on his boat?
In Canto 3, as Dante and Virgil stand on the "melancholy shore" of the River Acheron, the last barrier to their entrance into the underworld proper, Dante describes the approach of Charon: And...
Dante's Inferno
What is the sin, according to Virgil, that God hates the most?
In canto 11 of the Inferno, Virgil explains to Dante some of the reasoning behind the layout of hell and, in particular, how the sins are ranked in order of iniquity. He tells Dante why even...
Dante's Inferno
How many cantos are in the Inferno?
Inferno is a fourteenth-century epic poem written by famed Italian writer Dante Alighieri; it is the first part or cantica of his famous three-part poem the Divine Comedy, the other two being...
Dante's Inferno
What are the three categories of sin that Dante used in classification of sin (from Dante's Inferno)?
Inferno consists largely of a description of Hell and the various ironic punishments that await sinners of every variety. There are many different horrendous torments that await sinners, all...
Dante's Inferno
What were some literary devices in Canto VIII of Dante's Inferno?
Dante loves to make the abstract concrete and uses a number of literary devices to do this, including metaphor, simile, imagery, and personification. He also uses allusion and alliteration. In...
Dante's Inferno
Who are the souls tortured in Canto III of Dante's Inferno?
In canto 3 of Dante's Inferno, Dante encounters those people not fully dead, yet are no longer alive, who wait in the antechamber between Heaven and Hell. Here they're subjected to the meaningless...
Dante's Inferno
Distinguish between Dante the poet and Dante the pilgrim.
The Divine Comedy is a fourteenth-century epic poem written by the famed Italian poet Dante Alighieri. It consists of three parts: Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Heaven). The...
Dante's Inferno
Is Dante dead?
The historic Dante is dead. He died in 1321. However, the character Dante in the Divine Comedy is not dead. This can be confusing because he travels to places we associate with the afterlife: hell,...
Dante's Inferno
How did the Divine Comedy influence the world?
The Divine Comedy was almost immediately recognized as a classic and work of genius, and its status as a masterpiece has remained largely unchanged for 650 years. Much of its appeal has been in how...
Dante's Inferno
What does "canto" mean?
The generally accepted understanding of "canto" is that it is a single unit in the separation of a poem into sections. The word is derived from the Latin word cantus, meaning “song,” and...
Dante's Inferno
How does Dante portray Satan's body and appearance?
Dante the poet portrays Satan (also called Lucifer or Dis) as having a body and appearance entirely frightening to Dante the pilgrim. Dante first sees Satan's gigantic body rising in the distance...
Dante's Inferno
Why are the hoarders and wasters punished together in Canto 7 of Inferno?
Canto VII of the Inferno focuses on the punishment meted out to the Hoarders and the Wasters. As Dante and his guide Virgil continue their descent through the Fourth Great Circle of Hell, they come...
Dante's Inferno
Describe the settings in Dante's Inferno.
The main setting of Dante's Inferno, as the title suggests, is hell ("inferno" is an Italian word that literally translates to "hell"). There are a few notable places within hell, or near to it,...
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