LIT 231/ENGL 217
Prof. G. Steinberg
The first few cantos of the Inferno are extremely important for giving us clues about how to interpret the poem. Dante sets up a lot of the parameters that he wants us to use to make sense of what he's writing.
First, he introduces the character of Virgil and develops that character to show us what we're supposed to think about the Inferno in relation to the Aeneid. In the very first canto, Virgil appears like "one who seemed faint because of the long silence," and this awe-inspiring figure ("light and honor of all other poets") is going to be Dante's authoritative guide throughout the Inferno. In addition, the first three cantos of the poem (and beyond) are filled with echoes of Virgil's Aeneid. In Canto III, for example, you can compare the approach of Dante and Virgil to the river Acheron with the parallel episode in Book VI of the Aeneid. The resemblance is incredible. Dante is mimicking the master. He clearly wants us to think of his poem as an imitation and extension of Virgil's master work. Much like Virgil with Homer, Dante wants to do for 14th-century Italy what Virgil did for Augustan Rome. He wants to follow in Virgil's footsteps, but at the same time, he wants to write the defining work for his culture -- the culture of fourteenth-century Christian Italy.
Also like Virgil with Homer, Dante doesn't think that Virgil got things quite right. In part, Dante, as a medieval Christian, inevitably sees Virgil's culture-defining masterpiece as flawed. Virgil's pagan Roman culture was unenlightened, heathen, and unsaved. So, the master work of that pagan culture must inevitably be unenlightened, heathen, and unsaved as well. Dante admires Virgil a great deal, but he thinks of Virgil as having missed the boat when it came to understanding cosmic reality and God.
But if Virgil were condemned to hell just for being pagan, we wouldn't think that Dante's world was very fair. After all, how was Virgil supposed to believe in Jesus Christ, who wasn't even born yet when Virgil died in 19 B.C.? Most medieval writers and theologians were quite clear about the fact that pagans who had never heard or known of Christ surely couldn't be damned to hell for this ignorance -- God would surely find a way to save them from their sins even though they weren't Christian. (Note that this consideration was generally not offered by medieval Christians to the Moslems living in their own time, since these Moslems lived late enough that they had heard about Christ but, to medieval Christian thinking, willfully refused to believe in him.)
Dante himself clearly believed that pagans could be saved and go to heaven. In the Pugatorio and Paradiso, the other two parts of Dante's Divine Comedy, there are pagans who are saved -- Cato, Statius, Trajan, and Ripheus. So, Dante could easily have made Virgil, pagan or not, be saved too. The fact that he chooses to put Virgil in hell leads me to believe that there is more going on here than meets the eye.
And that's the second crucial thing that we must learn from these early cantos. Things are often not what they seem in hell. The characters in hell just don't seem very bad. Virgil, Francesca da Rimini, and many other sinners in Dante's hell seem more sympathetic and sad than wicked and evil. But they are wicked and evil. As we follow Dante through hell, we observe all the souls there and listen to what they say. Some of the sinners in Dante's hell are very seductive. But they are all evil to the core. So, beware. Trust no one in hell. Always be looking for the catch or the rationalization or the lie. Every sinner in hell is misrepresenting the truth to make themselves look good -- to rationalize away their sin. But they always give clues in what they say and do of just how evil they are. You have to watch very closely to see and understand those clues.
Finally, Dante likes to tease his readers and to give us intellectual games and puzzles to figure out. Dante, for example, has his own character in the poem participate symbolically in all the sins that are being punished in hell. As Dante and Virgil pass through the circles of hell, Dante symbolically commits the sin punished in each circle in some way. Dante expects us as his readers to try to figure out in each circle how Dante is participating in the sin. So, for example, in the circle of the gluttonous (people who were too focused on food and drink), the character Dante keeps asking question after question after question, never satisfied, the way a glutton always wants more food no matter how much he or she has. In that way, Dante participates in the sin of gluttony with the damned souls. So, watch for the subtle clues of Dante's participation in each sin.
We'll focus primarily on Virgil and Francesca da Rimini in class.
Choose one of the following areas as the focus of your response paper: