Inferno Essay Research Paper The Inferno the

Inferno Essay, Research Paper

The Inferno, the first part of Dante Alighieri’s poem, The Divine Comedy, written roughly around 1307-1308 chronicles Dante’s figurative journey to God. In this poem, Dante is led by the ghost of Virgil, the Roman poet, who has come to rescue him from he dark forest and to lead him through the realms of the afterlife. Geoffrey Chaucer, who emerged as the leading poet in English literature during the late fourteenth century, some fifty years after Dante s supremacy as the primary bard, brought forth the creation of The Canterbury Tales. This compilation of twenty-four tales begins with a general introduction of each of the pilgrims making their journey to Canterbury to the shrine of Thomas a Becket. Although the latter work drew its inspiration from Dante s Inferno, the two works exhibit two distinct approaches to human transgressions.

Dante’s vision in The Inferno expresses his personal experience, conveying his interpretation of the nature of human existence. He takes the reader through the dark, and ghastly depths of hell using very striking, and grotesque imagery. Writing in the first person, he enables the reader to identify, to deeply understand the truths he wished to share about the meaning of life and man’s relationship with God, and to follow his spiritual search of personal salvation. Dante uncovers theological truths the reality of God, his love, and man’s freedom of choice along the way of his journey. He shows life as a pilgrimage of the soul, which has lost its way, on its path to God. This path becomes frighteningly real as he enters hell and on his way, he encounters many who have chosen greed, lust, or have given into other human vices and turned away from God. Although this inner exploration proves to be a difficult one, full of temptations, disappointment and questions, Dante perseveres, realizing that he must face evil and rise above the iniquity of sin to come within the reach of the promise that is found in Heaven as they catch sight of the stars, a symbol of divine order and hope.

Dante’s relationship with God, which portrays the experience of a deeply committed Christian, is evidenced throughout The Inferno. At the time he completed his work, this commitment to Christianity and the sense of duty to lead a morally pure life were religiously upheld by the current medieval society. The spiritual belief that those who insist on denying God’s Will or those who give in to sinful temptation and die unrepentant are eternally damned, makes Dante’s Inferno a religious and morally challenging experience.

Dante s work, even though called the Divine Comedy , is not intended to be humorous. From the multitude of different stories in Inferno, including the cantos III, VII, and XIX, a major theme repeatedly emerges the eternal justice of God, which gives each sinner his due by perfecting the sins that he committed in life and thus makes the punishment always fit the crime.

Already in the opening cantos of the Inferno, when Virgil leads Dante up to the Gate of Hell, where they read a foreboding inscription: Through me the way into the suffering city, through me the way to the eternal pain, through me the way that runs among the lost. Justice urged on my High Artificer; my Maker was Divine Authority, the Highest Wisdom, and the Primal Love. Before me nothing but eternal things were made, and I endure eternally. Abandon every hope, who enter here , (Inferno, Canto III, lines 1-9) the reader is given the first taste of the nature of Dante s Hell its hopelessness and its absoluteness.

In canto VII, there were spirits that danced an infernal round while endlessly pushing around great weights. Divided into two groups, one shouted, “Why do you hoard.” and the other, “Who do you squander.” Examining the spectacle, Dante noticed that many of them appeared to be tonsured clerics. Half of these people, who had spent without measure , had been miserly and the others had squandered their wealth. Many of the misers were indeed “clergymen, and popes and cardinals, within whom avarice works its excess . The undiscerning life that made them filthy now renders them unrecognizable , (Inferno, Canto VII, lines 46-54) clarified Virgil, concerning the existence of the shadowy mass of these spirits, implying that this sight should make the wrong in putting too much importance in money apparent.

Although Church officials supposedly had a privileged relation to the divine will, in practice, as reflected in history and the Inferno alike, they were prone to usual human failings. Evidently, the status of the Church as a financial power as well as a moral institution was not entirely without conflict, as we can see from Dante’s indignant tone in Canto VII. The fact that the tonsured spirits are unrecognizable extends the offense to all deceased clergymen who are not specifically mentioned in other parts of the comedy. Dante s personal opposition of the Pope accentuated his sensitivity, revealed in his work, about the Church as a secular power. Dante addresses a serious matter of corruption within the Catholic Church and renders his remorseless view through grave illustrations.

As the Inferno progresses towards the deeper parts of hell, Dante s disapproval of the existing conditions within the Church strengthens, building up to a severe censure in Canto XIX. This passage opens with a condemnation of the Simon