Punishments In Dante

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& # 8217 ; s Inferno Essay, Research Paper

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Cindy Kenney

English 355

Burn in Hell

The Comedy, subsequently renamed The Divine Comedy was written by

Dante Alighieri of Florence, Italy. In the early fourteenth century,

while in expatriate, Dante wrote this heroic poem verse form which is broken down

into three books. In each book Dante recounts his travels through

Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven severally. The first book of The

Divine Comedy, Inferno, is an unusually superb narrative. He

narrates his descent into and observation of snake pit through its

legion circles and rings. One extraordinary manner Dante depicted

snake pit is in his descriptions of the assorted penalties that each

group of evildoers has received.

In a anterior college class I took we learned about medieval

anguish patterns. This cognition led me to see similarities in

the penalties given in Inferno. The diverse penalties that

Dante envisions all the evildoers in snake pit receiving are broken down

into two types. The first he borrows from many gruesome and

terrible signifiers of mediaeval anguish. The 2nd type is frequently less

physically agonising. It is Dante? s originative, really cagey signifiers

of penalty. Although all evildoers in snake pit are souls, Dante

gives each one a physical property so that the reader can

envision the full ambiance clearer. The borrowed medieval

signifiers of agonizing penalties create physical hurting for the

different evildoers in snake pit, and therefore intended to be interpreted

literally. The originative penalties are conceived to present

mental and psychological hurting to be understood metaphorically.

Creative penalties in many instances can, nevertheless, inflict both a

mental hurting and a physical hurting upon the evildoer.

Many of the terrible penalties that Dante foresees for the

evildoers are borrowed from patterns of mediaeval torture and

imprisonment. The mediaeval keeps were normally glooming and dark,

and inundated in gross outing malodors. Dante used this word picture

to depict the overall ambiance in the hell. Intolerable and

ineluctable extremes of cold or hot temperature, which are

portrayed in the Inferno, are besides representative of Medieval

times. Prisoners of Medieval gaols were provided with small or

no airing to protect them from the utmost cold or hot

conditions, they could easy stop dead to decease or dice of heat hyperpyrexia.

Throughout Inferno images of barbarous penalty adopted from

the thoughts of mediaeval anguish are seen to bring down physical hurting

upon the evildoers. The 8th circle, called Malebolge, contained

the evildoers known as the Flatterers. The wickedness of flattery was

punishable through anguish meaning to make physical torment.

As Dante travels over a span he sees that? the ditch beneath/

held people plunged in body waste that seemed/ as if it had been

poured from human toilets? ( 167 ) . The evildoers were evidently

condemned to populate in? *censored* ? because of all the? bull*censored* ? that

ran across their linguas while they were populating. Dante meets up

with a evildoer who informs him of this: ? I am plunged here because

of flatteries & # 8211 ; / of which my lingua had such sufficiency? ( 167 ) .

The sarcasm is knowing that the evildoers sit immersed in the

dirt that originally came from their oral cavities in the signifier of

flattery. This penalty is rather despicable and abhorrent. It is

designed to in

flict physical torment upon the evildoer. Dante, as a

visitant to this topographic point, is questioned by a evildoer, ? Why do you

stare more avariciously at me than at the others who are filthy? ?

( 167 ) . Although Dante feels depressed for the evildoers he has seen

throughout his journey, in this ring among the adulators he

seems to be casual about run intoing them. He is non as moved by

their status as he is in other rings, possibly because he thinks

they deserve this kind of penalty, nevertheless gross outing it may

be. Dante, the visitant, leaves the ring holding had his sights

fill of it.

The 2nd signifier of penalty Dante uses in Inferno is really

interesting to analyse. These are his metaphorical penalties

which are rather originative and more original than any physical

anguish. In Canto XX Dante, the visitant, travels with his

comrade through the 8th circle where the psyche of the

Diviners, Astrologers, and Magicians have been sent to endure.

Dante describes a emanation of? deaf-and-dumb person and crying? ( 179 ) psyche

who? found it necessary to walk rearward? ( 179 ) because they had

their caputs turned all the manner behind them. These psyches, when

populating idea they could see the hereafter and are now damned to

merely see behind them.

This description of these hapless psyches is an illustration of

one of the psychologically painful penalties invented by Dante.

It is evidently uncomfortable to hold one? s caput turned

backwards, but the mental torment is far greater. For Dante who

was raised in a spiritual background, stating the hereafter was a

signifier of blasphemy because merely God knew the hereafter. Dante has

angrily punished the evildoers to forever expression behind them and walk

backwards every bit good. The penalty for blasphemy in Medieval times

was frequently decease by firing in a fire, alternatively of utilizing some kind

of physical anguish such as this Dante creates a instead reasonable

and originative penalty for the evildoers.

While going through the 8th circle we read that Dante

interruptions down in cryings, ? May God so allow you, reader, gather fruit/

from what you read ; and now think for yourself/ how could I of all time

maintain my ain face dry/ when I beheld our image so nearby? ( 179 ) .

He speaks of the sad, contorted figures environing him and feels

really sorrowful. Dante? s usher berates his unhappiness explaining that

if God has judged these psyches this manner, sorrow should non be

felt, they are meriting of their penalty, ? Are you as foolish

as the remainder? / Here merely commiseration lives when it is dead: / for who can

be more impious than he who links God? s judgement to passiveness? ?

( 179 ) .

Through these two types of penalties, physical and

metaphorical, Dante has clearly illustrated how atrocious snake pit

genuinely is. His physical anguishs are dismaying in their

disgusting and tormenting extremes and his originative anguishs

are psychologically barbarous and cruel. The differences in the

signifiers of penalty attention deficit disorder to the verse form? s complexness and its

unexpected qualities. Dante wrote Inferno with the mission of

calling his equals in an nonsubjective mode and succeeded in making

so. His verse form is a chef-d’oeuvre and will go on to stand the trial

of clip.

Work Cited

Alighieri, Dante ( 1980 ) . The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri

Inferno ( Allen Mandelbaum, Trans. ) . California: University

of California Press.

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