Divine Comedy: Purgatorio Essay Questions

Find a person Dante speaks to in the Purgatorio who seems at first glance inconsequential or unimportant. Explain why they are in fact important to the themes or motifs of the poem.

Although she only speaks seven lines in the Purgatorio, the woman named "La Pia" has a mysterious allure. Her name, which means "The Pious Woman" in Italian, seems to hint that she is indeed significant. But why? Perhaps we might consider that our lack of knowledge about her is intentional; we are still supposed to pity and pray for her, even if we don't perfectly understand who she was on Earth and whether she was a noblewoman. She then reveals how we can "remember" someone that we hardly knew through action and care.

Analyze a single simile in the Purgatorio, explaining its significance locally and across the poem.

At the beginning of Canto VI, Dante is likened to the winner of a dice game, whom everyone nearby crowds around. But importantly, the long simile also mentions a "loser, left dejected;" why does Dante draw attention to a figure in a simile that does not seem to have an equivalent in the poem? Perhaps this loser might be Virgil, who has not been able to win salvation. Yet, even if this is not the case, the simile brings attention to the importance of chance in who gains status and attention, a concept especially important in a poem so mired in history and fame.

Dante has three dreams on the mountain of Purgatory. How do they link up and why are these linkages important? Support your answer with evidence.

One notable link between all three dreams is the presence of women. On an autobiographical level, Dante's Vita Nova suggests that Beatrice appeared to him in a dream, spurring him on to write poetry, and these women may in some way respond to that experience. But their presence in his dream also seems to suggest the important role they play as spiritual interpreters and mediators. Indeed, even the final dream features Leah and Rachel as examples of the active and contemplative life, two distinctly medieval conceptions of virtue; and importantly, these figures are revealed through dreams that one must actively interpret, recreating for Dante the experience readers have reading his own poem.

Compare a scene, character, passage, or image in the Purgatorio with one in the Inferno. What does comparing these two reveal about the structure of the poem as a whole?

If we look at the first stanza of both the Inferno and the Purgatorio, we notice that both involve journeying; in the Inferno, Dante begins "Midway in the journey of our life / I came to myself in a dark wood"; while in the Purgatorio, he begins "To run its course through smoother water / the small bark of my wit now hoists its sail." Notably, the images have changed in scale: where the first book suggests a smaller, dense wood, the second suggests a vast ocean. Perhaps this is Dante suggesting the ways the scope of the Commedia has expanded, as the path before Dante becomes less obscure while still difficult to navigate.

Focus on one terrace of the mountain of Purgatory. Further explain the significance of the details of the terrace and their relevance to the work as a whole.

The first terrace, containing the prideful, is where we first encounter penitents suffering contrapasso punishments. But beyond their own punishment, the method through which the exemplary figures of pride and humility are presented are also significant. In an ironic reversal, the prideful exemplars have their images carved in the ground: rather than stand pridefully upward, they have been carved into earthly stones. Yet the humble, in juxtaposition, are elegantly carved into the high marble rock face.