The Divine Comedy Companion (Includes Study Guide, Historical Context, Biography, and Character Index)

By BookCaps

Dante’s "Divine Comedy" (the trilogy that includes Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise) is a true classic that people have appreciated for over a hundred years. The fact that it is a classic doesn’t mean every reader will breeze through it with no problem at all. If you need just a little more help with Dante's classic, then let BookCaps help with this simplified study guide!

This book contains a comprehension study of Dante's classic work (including chapter summaries for every chapter, and an overview of themes and characters). This edition does not include the poem.

We all need refreshers every now and then. Whether you are a student trying to cram for that big final, or someone just trying to understand a book more, BookCaps can help. We are a small, but growing company, and are adding titles every month.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookCaps
• Release date: Jul 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301996292

BookCaps

We all need refreshers every now and then. Whether you are a student trying to cram for that big final, or someone just trying to understand a book more, BookCaps can help. We are a small, but growing company, and are adding titles every month.Visit www.bookcaps.com to see more of our books, or contact us with any questions.

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About the Author

As we said, Dante was the Shakespeare of Italian literature, a major Italian poet of the middle ages. The Divine comedy is often considered the greatest literary work in the Italian language, it’s even considered a masterpiece of world literature.

Dante was born in Florence, Italy, around the mid-to-late 1600s. His family was part of the Whites, a political faction. During a time of political turmoil, Dante actually fought in the Battle of Campaldino.

All in all, Dante was an extraordinarily philosophical and religious man, a man that stood behind his political and moral convictions, no matter who didn’t agree with him.

Inferno Study Guide

Introduction

In a nutshell, Inferno is an epic poem in which Dante, the writer of the story, is forced to travel through Hell, taking an elaborate tour, with the ghost of another ancient poet for a tour guide. It’s the first of a trilogy, the Divine Comedy. In the other two parts of the Comedy, Dante must continue through the other two divine realms before he can go home—Purgatory and Heaven.

The word Comedy in the title doesn’t mean the epic poem is meant to be funny. It means it’s not a tragedy. In other words, in classical literature, the word comedy means the story has a happy ending.

That said, a lot of Inferno is very tragic. We see all kinds of sinners being tormented and tortured throughout the poem, many of whom are famous people from history or myth. But, when Inferno ends, Dante moving on to Purgatory, There is a feeling of things getting better and better with each installment. That’s why it can be called a comedy.

Before we look deeply into the characters and individual cantos of this poem, let’s take a broad look at Inferno with a general summary of the plot.

Plot Summary

Inferno begins with Dante in a deep and dark valley. He doesn’t really know how he came to be there, and he just wants to get back home. But, he encounters several wild animals that block his path. The ghost of the Roman poet Virgil arrives to tell Dante that he can’t get passed the animals to get home the short way. In fact, the only way for Dante to get home is to tour Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. In fact, the Virgin Mary herself has assigned Virgil to help Dante get through the first part of his trip: Hell.

And so, these two heroes begin a journey that lasts the entire rest of the poem. They start off by travelling through Limbo, the first circle of Hell, the dwelling place where people lived before Christ and, therefore, couldn’t be saved.

In the second circle, lustful sinners are tormented by great storms. Dante meets a woman named Francesca da Rimini there, who had an affair with her husband’s brother.

In the third circle, gluttons are made to suffer under a freezing rain. They meet Ciacco, a man from Florence, just like Dante.

In the forth circle, the greedy and the wasteful push heavy wheels around in circles, eternally insulting each other along the way.

In the fifth circle, the Wrathful fight in the muddy river Styx, while the Sullen are buried forever deep below the surface of the mud.

They next reach the gates of the city of Dis, where the sinners refuse to allow Dante and Virgil to pass. An angel must be sent to repel the sinners and let them through. Once inside the city, and also the sixth circle, Dante sees Heretics trapped in fiery tombs.

In the seventh circle, the Violent are punished. Virgil explains the Dante that all the sins he’s seen so far result from a lack of self control. But violence is a second, and worse, kind of sin. And there are different kinds of violence and different kinds of fraud.

So the eighth and ninth circles are dedicated to different kinds of fraud.

They cross into the eighth circle by riding on the back of a great beast named Geryon. This circle has ten pouches, and the travelers visit each kind of fraud separately. In each pouch, a very different kind of punishment is seen. In the fifth pouch, for example, sinners are submerged in a river of boiling pitch. If they come up for a little relief from the pitch, demons with long pitchforks run to them and stab them again and again. In the ninth pouch, those that caused scandal and division are constantly cut by a demon with a sharp sword. They then heal and are cut again, for eternity.

They finally arrive to the ninth circle of hell, which is also divided into four different areas. They pass towering giants that are buried up to the waist in the ground, Nimrod from the Tower of Babel among them. In the second zone, sinners are frozen in an icy lake, with their head only sticking up above the ice. In the third zone, sinners are lain out naked on the ice to suffer, their tear having frozen over their eyes, blinding them. In the fourth and final zone, Lucifer himself is there, a giant, three-headed beast half-buried in the ice, three great traitors in his three mouths. Other sinners are completely submerged below the icy surface.

The tour of Hell over now, Dante climbs onto Virgil’s back, and the ghost climbs Lucifer’s body, emerging on the southern hemisphere of the earth. They have come to Purgatory. Virgil must go back, and Dante must continue to the next divine realm.

Historical Context

Inferno was written in fourteenth century Italy. Medieval Florence, Dante’s home town, has long been in political turmoil. There was fighting between the Black (those that supported the Pope) and the Whites (those that didn’t support him). Dante was not a supporter of the Pope, so when Pope Boniface VIII schemed to help the Blacks take over Florence in a military coup, Dante and his family was exiled.

That little bit of background helps to see why Dante is always criticizing Boniface and previous Popes in Inferno. There are clergy mentioned in nearly every circle of Hell. There are also many major political names mentioned, people we probably don’t know anything about. When it was necessary to know what was going on, some of these people are explained a bit in this guide.

So, Inferno was very much a story that reflected the time it was written in. It was about political vengeance. But it was also about a man who found himself far from home (in exile and having a middle-age crisis, perhaps?), trying to find purpose in his life again.

It’s a good idea to note, also, that Inferno was originally written in Italian. At a time that Italy was is such turmoil, Inferno actually help unify the Italian language. Dante used many interesting words, here, and several Italian words were actually introduced to Italian through Inferno, some of which words are still used in the modern language in Italy. This is just like how catch a cold and it’s all Greek to me are common English expressions that came from Shakespeare. In fact, we can say that Dante is Italian’s Shakespeare, both men considered among the greatest poets/writers for their language.

Characters

There are only two major characters in Dante’s Inferno, Dante himself being one of those characters.

Dante

Dante is both the writer and the main character of Inferno. As a character, Dante has a very specific personality. He spends a lot of time, especially in the first half of the poem, crying and feeling compassion for the suffering sinners. His empathy is so strong that he rarely gets indignant with anyone, no matter how bad their sins were.

Throughout the story, though, Dante does learn to have righteous indignation for these sinners, especially as the heroes descend further and further into the depths of Hells, seeing sinners that have committed worse and worse crimes. Virgil congratulates Dante when he stops feeling sorry for the sinners all the time.

Dante the character blends with Dante that writer all throughout the poem. Dante can’t help but use metaphors and similes in every canto. His obsession with poetic description becomes stronger through the book, until each scene can’t be described plainly until Dante has compared it to two or three things. For the sake of simplicity, and the reader’s sanity, many of these colorful similes have been removed from the guide. In other words, we try and describe to you what it is, not all the things it is like.

Virgil

Virgil was a famous Roman poet, and a personal hero to Dante. His ghost was assigned by the Virgin Mary and God Himself to guide Dante through hell. He does this, taking special care of the often fearful Italian poet.

Virgil spends much time protecting Dante from potential dangers, explaining to vengeful souls and demon that Dante is on a mission from God and cannot be assaulted. He also spend s a good deal of time explaining to Dante about each circle, sin, and punishment.

Because Virgil was also a poet in life, we’re not surprised to hear fancy language from him. Many of his answers are very round-about and ambiguous. Sometimes it’s nearly impossible to know what exactly he means to say, since he’s always padding his meaning with extra words.

Themes

Inferno is a very thematic poem. The story doesn’t make much sense without the major themes that are explored by the characters. Here are five major themes you can’t miss when reading Inferno.

Compassion

Dante spend a lot of time in the first half of the poem showing compassion to the sinner in Hell. He cries for them, weeps over their plight, and he even faints from the sadness more than once!

Justice

What is justice in Hell? Justice here seems to mean eternal suffering, and that is a concept that Dante starts to understand as he continues his journey through Hell. He starts to get angry with, or righteously indignant towards, the sinners he meets. Virgil celebrates this change in Dante, insinuating that such a viewpoint is more like God’s perspective.

God and Nature

For Dante, there is little difference between God and Nature. Since God is the author of Nature, following the ways of Nature is a way of serving God. Therefore, when one goes against that which is natural, he/she is sinning against God. In Hell, there is a special zone dedicated to those that have sinned against Nature.

Levels of Sin

The idea of levels of sin is explored in Inferno. As the travelers descend deeper and deeper into the lower circles of Hell, they see the area dedicated to greater and greater sins, and the punishment for the sinners is more fierce because of that. It’s interesting that the whole idea for what sins are worse is loosely based on the writings of Aristotle, a pagan philosopher. That leads us, by the way, to another theme.

Christianity and Paganism

In Inferno, Christianity and Paganism are mixed. Several sinners are mentioned who are being punished for sinning against a Greek or Roman god, for example. In fact, pagan gods are seen as powerful beings, just like angels of saints. Also, Virgil, Dante’s ghostly guide in Inferno, isn’t even a Christian himself! He resides in Hell, a pagan condemned to the first circle of Hell, Limbo. It seems that Dante mixed and combines pagan myths, ideals, and beliefs with those of Christianity whenever it was convenient for him to do so.

Reputation and Fame

Reputation and Fame were on the minds of many characters in this poem. Many sinners offered to help Dante or tell him things he wanted to know, if only they would become famous by being mentioned in Dante’s poem. Others wished for Dante to carry along messages to their home towns or relatives, to perhaps clear their reputation. Dante would even offer fame to some souls just to get them to talk!

Canto-by-Canto-Summary

Now it’s time to get a closer look at the actually story of Inferno. Let’s look at the plot and events one canto at a time.

Canto I

Dante starts out in a kind of crisis. He says he’s strayed from his path, and he describes himself as walking in some kind of no-man’s land,