A Descent Into Dante’s Inferno: An Allegorical Journey, Then & Now

Dante Alighieri, the father of the Italian language, wrote The Divine Comedy, a magnificent poem consisting of 14,233 hendecasyllabic verses in a form of his own invention, terza rima (aba, bcb, cdc…). La Divina Commedia profoundly influenced not only the Italian language and literature, but the entire Western culture, from Botticelli, Blake, and Dalí, to Milton, T. S. Eliot, and Beckett, among others. The last grand work of the Middle Ages, it was also a harbinger of the Renaissance and Humanism. We will examine Dante’s “Inferno,” the first canticle of The Divine Comedy, through the historical and literary point of view and enjoy reading select passages in Italian and English.

Recommended for purchase and used in class is Robert M. Torrance’s Dante’s Inferno, A New Translation in Terza Rima, Xlibris, 2011.

Photo: Dante shown holding a copy of the Divine Comedy, next to the entrance to Hell, the seven terraces of Mount Purgatory and the city of Florence, with the spheres of Heaven above, in Domenico di Michelino’s 1465 fresco. Source: Wikipedia