ENGL 221 Final Exam Part 2: (Dante's: Inferno )

What inscription does Dante find written atop the gates of hell?

"Abandone all hope ye who enter here"

Contrapasso

counter punishment or retribution "One must pay for a transgression with a punishment of the same nature as the transgression itself"

Canto 1

- Wakes in the dark forest trying to climb a mountain, he then is stopped by 3 beast on the way back down (leopard, lion, and, she wolf) - He then meets Virgil, who is sent by Beatris to help Dante on his journey to understand sin

Paolo/Francesca

A pair of lovers condemned to the Second Circle of Hell for an adulterous love affair that they began after reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. - Dante takes an interest in talking to the couple, Virgil tells them that when they pass, "call to them in the name of love that drives the damn". - When talking to Francesca, Dante addresses the couple in pitty and pain

How is the punishment of the cowards in the anti-hell illustrative of the law of symbolic retribution (contrapasso)?

Because they have lost intellect

How can the order of the great chain of being be broken and shattered according to scholasticism?

By the illusion of evil - consists of "offending", meaning damaging others by omission or commission, by the action or intention

Canto 3: Limbo

Circle 1 - poets move on to Acheron river (first river). Here the newly arrived souls of damned gather and wait for Charon to ferry them over to punishment. - Charon recognizes Dante as living and refuses to give him passage. Virgil forces Charon to serve them. Dante faints in terror and reawakens on the other side

Canto 5- Carnal (Contrapaso)

Circle 2 - They find themselves on a dark ledge swept by a great whirlwind. Those who betrayed reason to their appetites. Their sin was to abandon themselves to the tempest of their passions: so they are swept forever i the tempest of hell

Canto 6&7: Prodigals (Contrapasso)

Circle 3 - Condemned to roll great boulders towards each other; when they meet, they separated then return again to punish each other

Canto 6&7: Gluttons and Misers/Prodigals (Contrapasso)

Circle 3 - Made pigs of themselves in life so they must live in the filth, guarded by the violent three-headed dog, Cerberus

Canto 6: The Wrathful and Sullen (Contrapasso)

Circle 5 & 6 - These sinners are two forms of a single sin: anger that is expressed and anger that is repressed: the attack of one another and the stew below the surface of the swampy river Styx

Canto 10: The Heretics

Circle 6 - Here Dante confronts his city's heritage, the sins of the fathers, and the unhealed wounds of his own life. Dante must confront the hopeless past and the seemingly hopeless present of a house divided against itself

Canto 12: The Violent against Neighbors (Contrapasso)

Circle 7: Round 1 Poets land in the River of Blood. Here are the great war-makers, tyrants, and those of shed the blood of fellow men. "As they wallowed in blood during their lives, so they are immersed in the boiling blood forever" each according to the degree of his guilt. - The centaurs ready to shoot with their arrows any sinner who raises himself out of the blood - Dante devises this punishment himself, but Virgil is quick to remind us that it happened first to Aeneid

Canto 13: Violent against themselves (Contrapasso)

Circle 7: Round 2 Those who destroyed their own bodies are denied human form. They are thorny trees whose leaves are eaten by foul harpies; from these wounds they bleed and can speak - Pier delle Vigne tells us that after the Last Judgment the bodies will be hung on trees

Canto XVII: Geryon

Circle 7: Round 3 - Descend into the Malebolg (evil ditches), a great circle of stones that slope like an amphitheater - G. is a spotted leopard turned into a dramatic figure, the monster of Fraud - They must fly down from the cliff on the back on the monster

Canto 14-16: The Unnatural in the Sterile Plain

Circle 7: Round 3 - The blasphemers, sodomites and users suffer on a plain of burning sand- obviously suggesting sterility and wrath - Virgil points out a "narrow stream" that petrifies the sands over which it flows, whose steam quenches the flames above. - The OLD MAN of CRETE- is the most involved symbol in the poem: cf. Nebuchadnezzar's dream in Daniel, and the myth of the golden age- the tears of woe become the water of hell. . . frozen Cocytus - Dante reunites with a dearly loved man who had influence over his own development as a writer. Dante addresses him by calling him "Ser" and uses formal pronouns with great sorrowful affection. This also to show Dante as the character not as the writer. BY USING SER, IT IS TO SHOW THAT DANTE THE PERSON WAS WRONG AND DIFFERENT ASIDE FROM DANTE THE POET

Canto XVIII: Bolgia 1&2 Panderers

Circle 8: (Malebolgia) - They are driven by horned demons who lash them just as they drove others to do their will

Canto XVIII: Bolgia 1&2 Flatterers (Contrapasso)

Circle 8: (Malebolgia) - They are sunk in excrement

Canto XXIX & XXX: Falsifiers- Counterfeiters (Contrapasso)

Circle 8: Bolgia 10 - Who falsified money, are afflicted with diseases and an unquenchable thirst and are immobile

Canto XXIX & XXX: Falsifiers- Alchemists (Contrapasso)

Circle 8: Bolgia 10 - Who falsified things, are covered with great scabs so that when they scratch they rend their own flesh

Canto XXIX & XXX: Falsifiers- False witnesses (Contrapasso)

Circle 8: Bolgia 10 - Who falsified words, burn with a fever and are immobile - It is notable that Dante is again reprimanded by Virgil because he is clearly ashamed, perhaps by his own potential sin. Ex. potiphers wife and Greek spy left after the Trojan war

Canto XXIX & XXX: Falsifiers- Evil impersonators (Contrapasso)

Circle 8: Bolgia 10 - Who falsified, must snatch and rend others like a pack of rabid dogs

Canto XIX: Simoniacs (Contrapasso)

Circle 8: Bolgia 3 - They are stuffed upside down in holes with the soles of their feet ablaze in proportion to their guilt. As they mocked holy office, they may be mocked with a demonic parody of the paraclete burning on their soles

Canto XX: Fortune tellers and diviners (Contrapasso)

Circle 8: Bolgia 4 - Their heads reversed on their bodies so they walk backwards blinded by tears

Canto XXI & XXII: Grafters (Contrapasso)

Circle 8: Bolgia 5 - punishment of those who misused political office for gain is to be sunk in boiling pitch and clawed by demons with grappling hooks "sticky fingers" is symbolic in the sticky pitch. It serves also to hide them from sight, as their sinful dealings on earth are hidden from mens eyes

Canto XXIII: Hypocrites (Contrapasso)

Circle 8: Bolgia 6 - They are weighted down by great robes of lead that are golden on the outside symbolizing the terrible weight of their own deceit

Canto XXVI-XXVII: Evil Counselors (Contrapasso)

Circle 8: Bolgia 8 -As they stole from God and worked in hidden ways, so are they now stolen from sight and hidden in flames of their own guilty consciences

Canto XXVIII: Sowers of Discord (Contrapasso)

Circle 8: Bolgia 9 - As they rend asunder what God intended united, so are they rent asunder only to be reunited to be hacked and mutilated again - His prime schismatic is Mohammed who is split in two - Political - Familial (Bertran de Born holding his head up so that Dante can hear)

Canto XXXI: The Giants

Circle 9: Central pit of Malebolge - They approach the frozen waters of the Cocytus and see a number of giants standing on the frozen waters. - Among these they see Nimrod, responsible to building the tower of Babel and if the only giant who cannot speak but instead only babels

Canto XXXIV: Judecca- The treacherous to their masters (Contrapasso)

Circle 9: Cocytus - At the very bottom of hell stands Satan, frozen in the ice, beating his wings to create icy winds that is the exhalation of all evil. - The demonic parody of the trinity= Satan has one head with 3 faces, each a different color. In the central mouth is Judas Iscariot and Cassius and Brutus are on either side - On Saturday evening, they start climbing down satan's coat and pants, when they reach his genitals, they turn around - the center of gravity- and they get up and start climbing up following the course of Lethe - Virgil states that the 12 hour has passed and it is now Easter Sunday "beneath the stars"

Canto XXXII-XXXIII: Treacherous (Contrapasso)

Circle 9: Cocytus - Since they denied all love and human warmth, their true nature is expressed in the unyielding ice. This is the polar opposite to the empyrean, which is divine fire

Canto XXXII-XXXIII: In Ptolomea (Contrapasso)

Circle 9: Cocytus - Those treacherous against hospitality

Canto XXXII-XXXIII: In Antenora (Contrapasso)

Circle 9: Cocytus - Those who were treacherous to country (as Antenor who betrayed Troy). They have their heads out of the ice but can't move their necks * Ugolino- one traitor who gnaws on his fellow traitors head- the killer by starvation becomes the food of his own victim

Canto XXXII-XXXIII: In Caïna (Contrapasso)

Circle 9: Cocytus - Those who were treacherous to kinsmen, as Cain had been. They have their necks and heads out of the ice

Canto XXVI-XXVII: Ulysses, Virgil & Dante

Dante inventes the final voyage odysseus called the final voyage of fools. the ending is transformed from the moment they come back to Circe, this leading his men to bad council. "When I left Circe, the lust to experience the far-flung world and the failing and felicities of mankind" - This version leading to believe he was a fools voyager and not a heroic one (his ship runs into mount purgatory and sunk into the sea) - This ultimately becomes his sin that he leads his men with a speech of adventure but leads them to death

Dante's reason for the journey?

Dante uses reason to confront and understand sin

When was the poem written?

Durring the middle ages in between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance

What rule does Dante follow when inventing various punishments?

He takes common metaphors and translates them into concrete visual events

Why Virgil?

He was Dante's poetic inspiration (created the destined for the birth of Rome)

What does Dante respond to the distortion of the fortune tellers and diviners

He weeps and Virgil tell him pitty is arrogance against Gods Judgment

Why does Dante feel in physical danger in the Grafters?

His exile from Florence was based on a false charge of graft

What does it mean when he faints because "my sense reel and faint away with anguish"?

Indicator of where Dante is in his understanding. He is not prepared for the moral lesson that should be drawn from this experience. At this point, Dante is unenlightened- almost as much as the condemned souls who submit reason to emotion

How does the tone change in Canto XXI

Into more comedic because of the acts of the demons in their symbolizing. For example when the captain signals his permission he permites flatulence to pass. They are stick out their tongs

The great chain of being

Related to the scholastic concept of the universe, each creature exists only in relation to the creator. - Everyone belongs to a group that lives by the rules of a certain hierarchy

Dante's world is organized by what principle?

Sin becomes graver the more people it damages. It begins with least serious offenses that hurt the individual sinner. The it moves all the way to the sin of treachery, which damages entire cities and notions

Where do the virtuous pagans reside?

The "great Citadel" of human reasons with seven battlements. He sees before his eyes the Maters Souls of Pagan Antiquity gathered on a green, and illuminated by the radiance of Human reason. - This is the highest state man can achieve without God, and the glory of it dazzles Dante, but he knows also that it is nothing compared to the glory of God

Difference between Dante the Pilgrim and Dante the Poet

The pilgrim is excited to meet the great mariner and the poet who put him in hell

What is the difference between the heretics Farinata and Cavalcanti?

Their eternal fate may be the same but they have different personalities, and former lives. They accept their fates in different ways. One disregards his situation while the other mourns for the lost light

Canto 4: Virtuous Pagans

Those that are born without the light of revelation of Christ, and, therefore, cannot come into the light of God, but they are not tormented because they have the light of reason. Their only pain is that they have no hope. - This is also where the great poets such as Homer, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, appear and greet Virgil making Dante their sixth company

Canto 11 Structure of hell: Three beasts

Three structures of hell She-wolf = Incontinence Lion = Violence Leopard = Fraud