The Divine

Comedy
 Dante
Alighieri
1265-1321
Dante Alighieri
• Dante was an Italian poet
and moral philosopher
best known for the epic
poem The Divine Comedy
• comprises sections
representing the three tiers
of the Christian afterlife:
purgatory, heaven and hell
Dante Alighieri
• This poem, a great work
of medieval literature
and considered the
greatest work of
literature composed in
Italian, is a philosophical
Christian vision of
mankind’s eternal fate.
 Dante Alighieri
• Birth date: May 21, 1265

• Death date: September 13,

1321

• Place of birth: Florence, Italy

• Place of death: Ravenna, Italy

Dante Alighieri
• When Dante was around 12
years old, it was arranged
that he would marry
Gemma Donati, the
daughter of a family friend.

• Around 1285, the pair

married, but Dante was in
love with another woman.
Dante Alighieri
• It was Beatrice Portinari,
who would be a huge
influence on Dante and
whose character would
form the backbone of
Dante’s Divine Comedy.
His parents were

Alighiero di
Bellincione Alighieri
Bella degli Abati
Guido Cavalcanti
Dante’s bestfriend

Gemma Donati
Dante’s wife
 Beatrice Portinari

Dante’s love, great muse ,

and inspiration
Selected Works of Dante
1. La Vita Nuova
2. Il Convivio
3. De Vulgari Eloquentia
4. La Divina Commedia
 Commedia / The Comedy
Dante Alighieri’s greatest work
Divine Comedy
the work is truly divine in its
political , moral, religious,
spiritual, and in its stylistic
design.
• Dante called the work simply
Commedia (Comedy) because it
ended happily . Later
generations added the word
Divine.
• Dante divided each of the three
parts of the poem into 33 sections
called cantos.
 FRAMEWORK OF THE
STORY
Three (3) Divisions

1.Inferno (Hell) - consists

of 34 cantos with the first
canto as the introduction
 2.Purgatorio (Purgatory)
consists of 33 cantos

3. Paradiso (Paradise or Heaven)

- consists of 33cantos
 Completed in 1321

Depicts the Its main

progress theme
from grief to is Life
joy after
death
It tells the state of the
soul after death
Dante’s Inferno is
designed as
an inverted funnel,
which was
illustrated by
 
Botticelli in his
famous Map of
Hell. Lucifer, a famous Inferno’s illustration by Gustave Doré
Dante’s moral doctrine, as well
as his vision of sin and the
afterworld, is fully Christian, but
he also used his imagination to
“furnish” Hell, Purgatory, and
Paradise. 
 Dante himself is the main character: he crosses the Christian
afterworld, which is divided into three parts: one for sinners,
one for sinners who can receive salvation after a period of
expiation, and one for benefactors.

INFERNO
 Dante himself is the main character: he crosses the Christian
afterworld, which is divided into three parts: one for sinners,
one for sinners who can receive salvation after a period of
expiation, and one for benefactors.

• Dante himself is the main character: he

crosses the Christian afterworld, which is
divided into three parts: one for sinners, one for
sinners who can receive salvation after a period
of expiation, and one for benefactors.
 Dante himself is the main character: he crosses the Christian
afterworld, which is divided into three parts: one for sinners,
one for sinners who can receive salvation after a period of
expiation, and one for benefactors.
• The Divine Comedy is Dante’s journey from Hell to
Paradise, where he finally meets Beatrice, the women
he loved platonically all his life.

• The journey also has strong allegorical value, as it

tells the journey to salvation, experiencing the abyss
of evil.
INTRODUCTION - INFERNO

April 7, 1300

Dante entered
the Gate of hell
on a Maundy
Thursday.
CANTO I --THE DARK FOREST
Theologically – it is
the state of spiritual
separation
from God.

Politically – it refers to
Dante’s anarchy in Italy..

Morally - it is the unworthy or evil

way of life.
CANTO I

April 8, 1300
Dante met the three beasts
that guard the gate of virtue.
The path to virtue is blocked by
three beasts, which represent the
three (3) aspects of man’s
sinfulness.

SHE WOLF Incontinence

LION
Violence
LEOPARD

Malice/Fraud
Virgil leads Dante from error
 CANTO II
Dante finds
himself tired and
despairing.

Virgil comforts him by explaining how

Beatrice descended to him in Limbo and
told him of her concern about Dante.
CANTO III

“Here we must leave

behind all hesitation;
Here every cowardice
must meet its death.”

-Virgil-
“ All those who enter the gate of
hell must leave hope behind for
Damnation is eternal.”
 INSCRIPTION ON
THE GATE OF HELL
Through me the way into the suffering city,
Through me the way to eternal pain,
Through me the way that runs among the lost,
Justice urged on my high officer;
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 enters here.
 The Vestibule of Hell

The OPPORTUNISTS are first of

the souls in torment.

They are neither warm nor cold on

important matters.
PUNISHMENT

These souls move in darkness;

they are pursued by swarms of
wasps and hornets.
They run eternally
through the filth of
worms and maggots
which they
themselves feed
with their flesh and
blood.
Pontius Pilate
 Charon

He was the ferryman who will

transport them to the Ist
Circle of Hell.
 CANTO III

Acheron River first river of Hell

THE NINE CIRCLES OF
HELL
1. The Limbo
2. The Lustful and Carnals
3. The Gluttons
4. Avaricious and Prodigal
5. The Wrathful and the Sullen
6. The Arch Heretics
7. The Violent
8. Ordinary Fraud
9. The Treachery
• In each circle, a different kind of sin is
punished according to the rule
of retaliation, or contrapasso, which comes
from the Latin contra and patior, “suffer
the opposite.”

• Actually, according to this rule, each sinner

is punished with something similar to the
sin he inflicted on his neighbor or with
Structure of Dante’s Inferno:
•Anti-Inferno: sinner of slothful.
Dante despises them even to the point
of excluding them from Hell. There is
no place for them in Hell.

•First Circle or Limbo: virtuous

pagans and unbaptized children; their
only punishment is not being able to
see God.
tructure of Dante’s Inferno:
•Second to Fifth Circles: sinners
of lust, gluttony, greed,
and anger.

•Sixth Circle: heretics.

•Seventh Circle: sinners

of violence, divided into three
rings.
tructure of Dante’s Inferno:
•Eighth Circle or Malebolge: it hosts
those who have committed fraud; it is
divided into ten ditches, according to
the type of fraud.

•Ninth Circle: it hosts traitors and is

divided into four areas according to
those who suffered from their sin.
•Lucifer or Satan is located at the deep
end of Hell, in the Earth’s center.

•In Dante’s Hell, the eternity of evil is

depicted, but it is presented as part of
God’s justice.

•For Dante, the destiny of a human

being is twofold: born for goodness, he
is always exposed to sin. A single
virtuous action cannot erase a lifetime of
defects in divine judgment.
• Dante often refers to the
characters he meets in Inferno as
“shadows,” because they are
only a shadow of what they
were in life. Many of these
characters are citizens of
Florence, actors of the
Florentine life that Dante puts
into the scene.
• The Divine Comedy was also
an impressive, striking way
to tell readers about the role
of politics in Dante’s time.
The landscapes of The Divine
Comedy are evocative: Hell is dark,
with dense forests, rugged mountains,
and treacherous swamp

Dante, who is still alive and not a

spirit, is not free to go through Hell
alone; for this reason, he has a guide:
Virgil.
Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro),
author of the epic poem Aeneid,
was perhaps the greatest poet of
ancient Rome and intensely
admired during the Middle
Ages.
Virgil is with Dante in Hell
according to Beatrice’s will:
she is waiting for Dante in
Paradise, which is the last
part of Dante’s journey.
Virgil meets Dante at the
beginning of the story, when he
intervenes to save him from the 
three beasts faced at the
entrance of Hell, and he
accompanies him through Hell
and Purgatory.
• Virgil is with Dante in Hell according
to Beatrice’s will: she is waiting for
Dante in Paradise, which is the last part
of Dante’s journey.

• Virgil meets Dante at the beginning of

the story, when he intervenes to save
him from the three beasts faced at the
entrance of Hell, and he accompanies
him through Hell and Purgatory.
• Dante identifies Virgil as
his teacher and guide.