The difference between death and dying can often seem minute. The dying are merely those on the way to death. Yet the intrinsic difference between the process of dying and the moment of death is one of great literary obsession, in particular in...

“Love is the seed in you of every virtue and of all acts deserving punishment.”

——Purg. XVII, 104-5

Dante calls his great work a comedy, not for its humor but because it meets the traditional definition of a comedy: a story with a rising plot from...

Galileo Galilei once stated that “all truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” However, in order to understand and discover such truths, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue. In...

Throughout Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio, the theme of love is visited often. Between the two works, it becomes clear that Dante’s notion of love is divided into two parts: Natural and Elective Love. Natural Love does not err -- that is to say,...

In the Inferno, Dante responds to the sinners’ torments with fear and compassion. Compassion comes from the Latin root meaning “to suffer with” and Dante often engages in the sinners’ suffering. He cries for the magicians in Canto XX, lamenting...

Dante’s Inferno is one of the most famous poems ever written in the vernacular. Dante is renowned for being a master of words and a great artist. But what few people know is Dante’s personal history, and the climactic events that prompted him to...

The Inferno by Dante is not only a catalogue of evil, it also serves as Dante’s outlet for his political frustrations. Dante creates a Hell where the punishments fit the nature and level of evil of the sin. In cataloguing the punishments this way,...

Two of the most influential pieces of epic literature ever written—John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy— have much more in common than it might first appear. Upon further examination of both the epics, it becomes...

As long as history has been recorded, a woman’s role in society was dictated by man, for a long time women accepted this patriarchy. This arrangement can be seen in different societies and cultures throughout history; after all, the great...

In Metamorphoses, Ovid attempts the great task of recounting the history of the world, from its creation to the death of Julius Caesar. However, Ovid's work is not solely an encyclopaedia of mythology; it is also the source of much standard...

In no other part of The Divine Comedy does Dante present his vision of the Church Militant, or the body of living believers who must struggle against sin and reach for virtue, than in Purgatorio. Striking parallels exist between the experiences of...

Inferno narrates Dante’s journey through Hell which is guided by the Roman poet Virgil. During their travels through each of the nine circles of Hell, Dante and Virgil witness contrapasso, or the law which ensures that each sinner is punished with...

Throughout the course of history, women have had a variety of social roles, some of which can be seen through the lens of literature written during various different eras. Using several cantos from Inferno, part of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy,...

Have you eaten today? If not, then perhaps it is best that you do, before continuing with this essay. The reason for caution lies in the overlying theme discussed from here on. Both Dante’s Divine Comedy and Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey are...

Literature has many essential elements like theme, plot, structure, and character development. But in The Inferno by Dante there is said to be little to no character development. So the question must be asked: is character development actually...

“Pape Satán, pape Satán aleppe!”[1] These baffling, untranslatable words screeched by Plutus in the Fourth Circle of Dante’s Inferno have been the subject of extensive linguistic exegesis for many years but, unfortunately, the attention given by...

One might say that Dante’s meeting with Lucifer is an anti-climax because of the contrast between it and the trials he has faced throughout the rest of Hell. Having been shut out of the city of Dis and only allowed in through the intervention of a...

The most puzzling circle of hell in Dante Alighieri’s Inferno is also one of the first. It is here, in the second circle, where the lustful spend eternity. Canto V is filled with contradictions, puzzlements, and curious word choices. At first...

In the Inferno, Dante teaches readers about the role of reason and emotion in the Christian life. On his journey through Hell, Dante the Pilgrim shows unregulated human emotion through the different reactions he has towards the sinners. Virgil...

"Abandon all hope ye who enter here" reads the Gates of Hell in Dante Alighieri's The Inferno. After awakening at the bottom of a hill, Dante learns that he must descend through Hell, the Inferno, to reach Paradise. Virgil appears to Dante as his...

In many cultures, wind has taken on its own personal identity. Through story telling wind has been given power of the supernatural in order to be used by the gods to influence or punish the heroes of Earth. The supernatural power of wind can be...

One of the few illustrations depicting both the spendthrifts and the self-murders of The Divine Comedy: Inferno’s “Canto XIII” is Gustave Doré’s print entitled Spendthrifts Running Through the Wood of the Suicides. This work includes not only the...

The Divine Comedy: Inferno’s “Canto XV” begins with the reader joining Dante pilgrim and Virgil as they exit the wood of the suicides on their way to the third ring of the seventh circle of hell: the burning sands. This is where the blasphemers,...

The poet Dante, for all intents and purposes, is the God of The Inferno. He is the author, creator, and judge of all the sinners he has placed in his hell. Readers understand that the hell that pilgrim Dante is travelling through is the product of...