Divine Comedy: Paradiso Lesson Plan

Why is Dante's version of Heaven divided into different celestial spheres? What benefit does this have for him and his readers?

This question doesn't have so much to do with the plot of Dante's Paradiso as much as does with its structure and genre. As students will no doubt have already noticed, Dante's Paradiso is in some respects a very didactic work, concerned with communicating certain moral and philosophical truths about the Christian faith to its readers. Accordingly, one answer to this question is that the division of Heaven into different spheres associated with different virtues allows Dante more latitude to explore those moral and philosophical truths.

What...