...The Beasts and Monsters in Dante's Inferno The Inferno is the first section of Dante's three-part poem, The Divine Comedy. Throughout Dante's epic journey into the depths of Inferno he encounters thirty monsters and five hybrid creatures. The most significant of these monsters are of central importance to his journey and to the narrative, as they not only challenge Dante's presence in Inferno, but are custodians of Hell, keeping in order or guarding the "perduta gente". In this essay I am concentrating on these prominent beasts, namely Minos, Cerberus, Plutus and Geryon, establishing why they feature in Dante's eschatological vision and discussing the sources which influenced his inclusion of these particular creatures. These four monsters all fulfil important functions as well as representing important themes in Inferno, establishing them as symbols which reinforce Dante's allegory. Minos, as the infernal judge and agent of God's justice, represents our own conscience and morality. When the sinners come before him "tutta si confessa", which causes the reader to reflect on their own sins.His terrifying treatment of the souls is significant as after Charon, he is one of the first figures who they encounter on their passage into Hell, and his unique method of demonstrating which area of Hell that the souls should be sent to increases the horror and adds to the alarming atmosphere. His warning to Dante, is similar to several of the infernal custodians, who continually remind...
Words: 2998 - Pages: 12
...Literature Humanities/Essay 1 27 February 2014 Violence in Dante’s Inferno and Ovid’s Metamorphoses Scenes of great violence, as the prompt says, are often written into dynamic narratives of great literary merit. From Dante Alighieri’s Inferno to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the inclusion of violence as a literary technique is used to propel the narrative forward, all while adding action, intrigue, and engaging the reader. Despite it’s validity as a literary technique, the inclusion of violent scenes in literature serve much more than the simple purpose of pushing a plot along a set of structured points. Scenes of violence provoke thought in areas ranging from human nature to the nature of sin, thoughts that often can’t be provoked my images of calm, sublime, or tranquility. Extreme violence, juxtaposed with other scenes, provides insight into the amazing nature of human capability and human nature. In Dante Alighieri’s Inferno there is an abundance of violence that is illustrated in varying ways. Despite the copious inclusion of violence scenes throughout the text, violence does not appear throughout the literary work for its own sake. As one reads on through the Inferno, it provides it’s own clarity. As the levels of Hell increase, the severity of violence does so as well. The violence that appears occurs in different fashions, sometimes mentally, sometimes physically and many times both simultaneously. The scenes violence included in Dante’s Inferno contributes to the theme and darker overtone of the poem...
Words: 1996 - Pages: 8
...Katrina Ramos Professor Perrone LAC 1000C: Italian December 2011 Dante’s Inferno: A Detailed Look Into Canto XXIV, Lines 1-57 Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy is an allegorical epic novel describing Dante’s journey through the Inferno, to Purgatorio and finally to Paradiso. The purpose of this journey, particularly the journey through the Inferno, is to expose people to the recognition and rejection of sin (Casagrande). Dante, being that he is human, must first pass through the Inferno to witness the sinners and their according contrapasso, before he can enter Purgatorio towards his final pursuit to Paradiso. The Divine Comedy is a metaphorical journey of bringing the light of God to the darkness of human sin. In Canto XXIV (24) of the Inferno, Dante and Virgil have made their way to the eighth circle of Inferno – “The Malebolge” – and are in the process of making their journey through the 10 pits of Circle 8 (Mahfood). Being the second to last circle in the inferno, the circle of the sinners who commited fraud and theft in their early life (Dante Worlds), the contrapasso witnessed here is more terrifying than what Dante and Virgil have seen during their journey previously. To provide some background information to Canto XXIV, the previous happenings of Canto XXIII (23) should be provided: Virgil is leading Dante through the pits, or bolgia, of Circle 8 when he remembers a bridge connecting the sixth and seventh pit. Virgil asks the circle’s monster-keeper, Malacoda...
Words: 2372 - Pages: 10
...Hero's Journey: Dante's inferno In many stories that are told and taught, there is a protagonist that experiences the call to adventure. This character soon follows into the path of the Hero's Journey. There, they transform their beliefs and ideas. They go beyond their horizon and expand their knowledge. In Dante's Inferno, Dante Alighieri tells his voyage through Hell in a poem in order to display his journey to God in a time when he had lost his way. The Inferno, symbolizes Dante's recognition of sin and the need to deny the temptations of man in order to obtain paradise with God. The Hero's Journey is depicted throughout the poem. The Call: The Call is the beginning of the Hero's Journey. It is when the protagonist or hero of the book is brought out of their domain and into the unknown. They are called to pass the horizon and enter into a mystery that will lead them to their destiny. The poem of "Dante's Inferno" opens up with Dante being lost in his pathway to God. On the morning light of Good Friday he realizes the error of his ways and turns to go up the Mount of Joy in order to leave the Dark Wood of worldliness and enter into Paradise. After being denied entry into the pathway towards god by three beasts, Dante's...
Words: 1762 - Pages: 8
...heart, because they shall see God”, otherwise the ones not pure in heart would be committing the sin of adultery. Dante Alighieri writes about the Lustful sinners, which means the ones that were sent to hell because they were not pure in heart, in canto V of Inferno. Dante’s journey thru hell shows the types of punishments that the sinners received according to their way to live on earth. As Dante is being lead by Virgil thru Inferno, Dante describes how is the second circle of hell, which contains the lustful sinners, the ones that went against God. Dante show the symbolism that reflects the sermon that Christ gave to the humans at the top of the mount when Christ said that “I tell you that any man who puts away his wife, except for the reason of harlotry, is making her the victim of adultery; and any man who marries a wife who has been divorced is committing adultery.” That goes to man and woman as well, as it can be seen, not only men are put in the Lustful sinners, women as well are send to there to pay for they sin. Dante explain the difference between lust as the sin, and love as being a sin when not pure, Lust being the attraction to the sensual part of the opposite person toward to a possessive desire of the body. The souls that are put in the 2nd circle of Hell are the Lustful ones, the ones that let themselves been taken by the heart and their love led them to death. As Dante describe “I learned that this place of punishment all those who sin in lust … as the wings...
Words: 1579 - Pages: 7
...Life After Death, What Happens After We Die? Contents Introduction 3 Ideas on Life After Death in Different Religions 4 Perception of Life After Death in Literature: Dante's “Inferno” 6 Life After Death in Art: Rodin's “The Gates of Hell” 8 Conclusion 10 References 11 Introduction The question associated with life after death is associated with people of all races, genders, ages and world religions. It is understandable that people cannot live forever, and death is an inevitable event. But still people are interested what will happen to them after death, and what it means to die. There are great numbers of assumptions on this issue, and people's opinions differ, but still it is difficult to reveal the truth, as nobody knows this for sure. This paper will focus on different assumptions and possible events taking place after people's death. Of course every person thinks about afterlife concept in the current period of time, as it would be really strange not to consider this issue at least once. People should understand and be aware of possible events happened to them after life in order to value the current state of affairs and life in the present period of time. It is necessary to make the right choice and build proper relationships with people surrounding you, as every day is unique, and it would be impossible to return it again. D'Souza (2009) stated that the Bible teaches people “that...
Words: 2681 - Pages: 11
...Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, is the first story of a three part epic which depicts Dante’s journey through Hell, Purgatory and ultimately, Heaven. Inferno describes Dante and Virgil’s expedition through the layers of Hell as they encounter numerous demons and monsters along the way. Although Dante and Virgil encounter as many as thirty demons along their travels, I will only be addressing the demons who serve as the role of guardians. These demons are crucial to the narrative because they act as a barriers who jeopardize Dante’s travels. Dante and Virgil’s reactions and descriptions of the guardians display a change in the severity of the demons that they encounter. The first demon who Dante encounters is a ferryman named Charon. Charon rows the boat across the river Acheron that leads to the first circle of...
Words: 1924 - Pages: 8
...and Inferno, are noteworthy because they open important windows into the philosophical and theological underpinnings of the worlds into which these authors were born. Why is this important? Because their elaborately drawn visions of Hell represent the two great divides in how humans for 3,000 years have been seeing themselves and the universe they perceive surrounding them. In the Homeric vision, life is tragic and arbitrary. We as humans are mere playthings of the Fates and the gods. Sometimes justice occurs, but usually only by accident, and even then it comes wrapped up in irony. Good is punished and evil triumphs. The hero, instead of enjoying the fruits of his victory, is brought low by some tragic flaw. Homer’s portrayal of the gods and of hell in the Odyssey…[big long quote] For Dante, in sharp contrast, the universe is ordered and just. The wicked are, eventually, punished and the righteous are rewarded, if not in this life, then in the next. Existence, while often painful and scary, is not arbitrary, but proceeds according to a mysterious divine plan devised long ago by an eternally all-knowing, loving and merciful Creator. For Homer, Hell is a place where all the dead must go. There is an order and inevitability to this vision of Hell for the non-living. This is in contrast to the capriciousness and arbitrary nature of existence for the living, who must live on a world controlled by the gods, who, because they are immortal and endowed with super-human...
Words: 3218 - Pages: 13
...The Divine Comedy represents the mature Dante’s solution to the poet’s task annunciated in The New Life. Its three canticles (the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso) display a nearly limitless wealth of references to historical particulars of the late Middle Ages and to Dante’s life. Even so, its allegorical form allows these to function as symbols. The Pilgrim’s journey through Hell to Heaven thus becomes an emblem of all human experience and a recognition of life’s circularity. The “Comedy” of its title is, therefore, the situation of life and the accumulation of experience that attends it. Correspondingly, however, chronological placement of the narrative from Good Friday through Easter Sunday, 1300, particularizes the experience even as it implies the death and rebirth that attends a critical stage of any person’s life. The poet tells his readers in the first line of the Inferno that he is midway through life, and indeed Dante would have been thirty-five years of age in 1300. Though he maintains present tense throughout the poem, he is, however, actually writing in the years that follow the events that he describes. This extraordinary method allows the Poet to place what amounts to prophetic utterance in the mouth of the Pilgrim. Dante thus maintains and further develops the thesis of The New Life, that the progress of the Pilgrim corresponds directly to the progress of the Poet. The literal journey that the Pilgrim undertakes toward the Beatific Vision succeeds only...
Words: 3695 - Pages: 15
...In Dante’s Inferno he includes several laws. One law of nature he includes is contrapasso. Contrapasso states that for every sinner’s crime there must be an equal and fitting punishment. Throughout the story he explains several sins with their punishment. However, some of the punishments are fit for the sinners, but others are not fit. To begin, in the third circle for sinners that committed gluttony, Dante clearly presents a fitting contrapasso. For instance, he mentions, “Such as that dog is, who by barking craves, And quiet grows soon as his food he gnaws, For to devour it he but thinks and struggles” (Dante, Canto 6, Lines 28-30). This punishment is fit to the sinners because the punisher itself has also committed gluttony. In other words, they are being paid with the same coined. Furthermore, he illustrates, “ So we passed onward o’er the filthy mixture Of shadows and of rain with footsteps slow…” (Dante, Canto 6, Lines 100-101). This also shows this punishment...
Words: 398 - Pages: 2
...alienated from this world in which the living dead roam, communication has been butchered, gender identity has been lost, and the carnal human has come to rule. The modern world, he believes, is corrupt to the point of no hope. Through his use of allusion and descriptive diction Eliot creates for the reader this wretched and lifeless modern world through the looking glass of his own perceptions and emotions. Eliot believes that the modern world is in a state of Purgatory in which all humanity has been lost. He relates London to Dante’s Inferno. In the Inferno, Virgil guides Dante into the center of the earth where he finds the devil. In the devil’s mouth are Brutus, Cassius, and Judas, three great betrayers who will forever reside in the infernal world. With this allusion, Eliot is suggesting that Londoners are betrayers against the good of society; against what is right. The modern man is like a dehumanized drone wandering the wasteland in cyclical toil. Man walks around seemingly dead; however, not only are the people damned, but the modern city as a whole is damned. Similarly, in the movie, Chinatown, the dehumanization and objectivity of society results in an utterly damned city. A mysterious city that undergoes an ever-running cycle of bleakness in which no one can ever escape its dark and incestuous grasps. The description of the human body in the above instances serves to describe the lifeless and depressing modern world. Eliot also believes...
Words: 905 - Pages: 4
...In Dante’s Inferno, Dante creates a fantastical, yet dark underworld that portrays the various tortured souls of the dead. The concept is the souls’ committed sins completed in their lifetime is directly related to the punishment they must face in Hell. Through this, the souls forever remember their sins and face the consequences for eternity. Dante’s illustrative, encompassing journey has served as an image of the environment Hell to warn the sinners of the suffering expected when a particular sin is committed and not repented as soon as possible. The sinners who are positioned in Canto V give in to their sexual desires of lust. They are pulled into a violent storm that exudes intense despair and suffering. The storm represents how those who have sinned felt before death. In Hell, the storm manifests itself into a physical form. Amongst the souls who are engulfed in the storm are two souls that are combined together, Francesca and Paolo. Prior to Francesca and Paolo deaths, Francesca is married but commits...
Words: 767 - Pages: 4
...ARISTOTLE TRANSFIGURED Dante and the Structure of the Inferno and the Purgatorio by Donald J. Hambrick Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Phüosophy Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia August, 1997 Q copyright by Donald J. Harnbrick, 1997 N l*lofational Library Canada Bibliothèque.nationale du Canada Acquisitions and Bibliogaphic Services Acquisitions et seMces bibliographiques 395 Wdingtoci Street OttawaON K 1 A W 395, rua Wellington Ottawa ON K I A O N 4 canada Canada The author has granted a nonexclusive licence allowing the National Library of Canada to reproduce, loan, distribute or sell copies of this thesis in microfonn, paper or electronic formats. L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive permettant à la Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduire, prêter' distribuer ou vendre des copies de cette thèse sous la forme de microfiche/nlm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la proprieté du droit d'auteur q ui protège cette thèse. Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés ou autrement reproduits sans son autorisation. copyright i this thesis. Neither the n thesis nor substantid extracts fkom it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. To Those Who Teach. .. TABLE OF CONTEWS INTRODUCTION...
Words: 39283 - Pages: 158
...AUGUSTE RODIN’S GATES OF HELL The Gates of Hell (conceived in 1880 – 1917; by Auguste Rodin (1840 – 1917) is housed at the Musée Rodin in Paris, France. (Musée D'Orsay). This impressive gateway was commissioned by the French state. (Gerald) The new appointed Secretary of Fine Arts, Edmond Tuquet (1836 – 1914), venerates Rodin’s art pieces and commissioned the sculpture on August 16th 1880 for the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. The original arrangements for the Musée des Arts Décoratifs were discarded three years later. (Musèe) Therefore, Rodin left and focused on experimenting and redesigning the portal for the next 20 years. At that point, the sculpture was still remained at its plaster stage; the gateway was not molded in bronze until Rodin’s death in 1917. Rodin’s Gates of Hell was reputed as a distinct piece considering his unique interpretation of its rough surface texture and shape that demonstrates the illustration of Dante Alighieri’s famous poem, The Divine Comedy (1308 – 1321). A few of Rodin’s most famous sculptures including The Thinker (1880 - 1925), The Kiss (1888 – 1889) and The Three Shades (1902) are inspired by the alto relievo sculptures in The Gates of Hell. This masterpiece was created anon after the Franco- Prussian War (1870 – 1871) during the installation of the French Third Republic (1871 – 1940). Auguste Rodin accepted the commission for The Gates of Hell anon after the Franco- Prussian War between French and German Empires. After France has lost the war...
Words: 1792 - Pages: 8
...Chapter 1 The Christmas dinner dispute introduces the political landscape of late nineteenth-century Ireland into the novel. This is the first Christmas meal at which Stephen is allowed to sit at the grown-up table, a milestone in his path toward adulthood. The dispute that unfolds among Dante, Mr. Dedalus, and Mr. Casey makes Stephen quickly realize, however, that adulthood is fraught with conflicts, doubts, and anger. This discussion engenders no harmonious Christmas feeling of family togetherness. Rather, the growing boy learns that politics is often such a charged subject that it can cause huge rifts even within a single home. Dante's tumultuous departure from the dinner table is the first in a pattern of incidents in which characters declare independence and break away from a group for political and ideological reasons. Indeed, the political landscape of Ireland is deeply divided when the action of the novel occurs. Secularists like Mr. Dedalus and Mr. Casey feel that religion is keeping Ireland from progress and independence, while the orthodox, like Dante, feel that religion should take precedence in Irish culture. The secularists consider Parnell the savior of Ireland, but Parnell's shame at being caught in an extramarital affair tarnishes his political luster and earns him the church's condemnation. This condemnation on the part of the church mirrors Stephen's shame over expressing a desire to marry Eileen Vance, who is Protestant. On the whole, however, Stephen's reaction...
Words: 5021 - Pages: 21
