& # 8217 ; s Inferno Essay, Research Paper
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.