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Reading ppt
Canto I

 Opens on the evening of Good Friday in the year
1300.
 Written in tercet – 3 lines
 Traveling through a dark wood, Dante has lost his
path and now wanders fearfully through the forest;
he has “strayed from the True Way into the Dark
Wood of Error.”
 Dark Wood of Error= worldliness
 Allegorical journey- reference to a life’s journey,
veering from the straight road, being alone, losing
hope, etc… all suggest an allegorical, NOT a literal
journey
Canto I: First 12 lines
Close Read

 We learn:
 Dante the pilgrim is 35 years old; he is “midway along
the journey of our life.” Biblical 3 score and 10 years of
an average lifespan is 70 years, so half is 35.
 Dante the pilgrim is “in a dark wood,” that he has
“wandered off from the straight path,” and that he has
strayed from “the path of truth.”
 Dante the pilgrim is like a sinner in trouble
 We are not told how he gets into the dark wood, but
many people get there little by little. Most people take
time to ask themselves, “how did I get here? Why am I
this kind of person?”
Canto I
 He wants out and attempts
to climb to
the sun ( a symbol of god/salvation)
 The sun shines down on a mountain
above him, and he attempts to climb up it
but his way is blocked by three beasts
(these three beasts all represent different
aspects of world sin, and the three major
classifications of the Inferno):
 Leopard= malice and fraud
 Lion = violence and over-ambition
 She-Wolf = incontinence (lack of selfrestraint) temptation to sin
Animal symbolism

 Taken from Jeremiah 5:6
 “Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf
of the evenings shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over
their cities: every one that goeth out thence shall be torn to
pieces: because their transgressors are many, and their
backslidings are increased”
 Dante's symbols, the leopard, the lion, and the she-wolf,
symbolize carnal sins which are divided into three categories of
severity: the sins of malice and fraud, the sins of violence and
ambition, and the sins of incontinence, respectively.
 Leopard tricks people with his spots (fraud); lions are sneaking
and violent as they hunt (violence); and wolves are mysterious
and usually work in packs.
Canto I

 Dante tries to reach the light by himself, but he fails. He
needs a guide.
 Just as Dante faces these three beats, a human figure
appears. It is Virgil (great Roman poet).
 Virgil = Human reason
 Virgil has come to guide Dante from error, sent from God
and Beatrice. They must first pass through Hell (the
recognition of sin), Purgatory (the renunciation of sin),
and only then can he come to the Paradise (the light of
God).
 Another guide, Beatrice will take over later
 Beatrice= divine love
Canto I

 Look at lines 1-4: what tense is this written in?
 Why this tense?
 Lines 116-18: personification
 Lines 21-24: epic simile
 Lines 31-33: foreshadowing
 Predictions include ideas of danger, deceit and fraud
 The leopard is a real threat but it also represents an
abstract idea (there is old story where a leopard
changes his spots to fool the other animals)
Canto I

 Aries= god of creation
 “new creation” (line 39)= Easter (symbolic new
awakening)
 He is MOST fearful of the She-Wolf
 Temptation to sin
 “many souls she has brought to endless grief”
 He has an EMOTIONAL response to the She-Wolf (not
just physical fear); he is convinced she will destroy his
hopes for reaching the “high summit.”
 “she has struck a mortal tremor in me” (line 87)
Canto I

 (pg. 662)- Virgil’s life
 Story of Anchises’ son, Aeneas: In Greco-Roman
mythology, Aeneas was a Trojan hero, the son of the
prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite.
 Virgil is his true master and mentor (lines 81-83)
 She-Wolf
 “but feeding, she grows hungrier than she was” (line
93)- gluttony; never satisfied
 The She-Wolf kills all who approach her but someday
a magnificent hound will come and chase her back to
hell
Canto I

 “set upon a burning mountain” (referring to the
mountain of Purgatory)- line 111
 Possible purification in this place (between heaven
and hell)
 Suffering is borne in hope because it is a part of
purification that will result in the rise to Paradise.
 Ends with Virgil offering to guide Dante to Paradise
where Beatrice will take over (because of the SheWolf, he cannot pass…)
Pages 665-671
Canto III

 Gates of Hell (portrayal of Hell as an actual city)
 “sacred justice moved by architect” (line 4)- God
created Hell out of justice; a desire to see sin punished
and virtues rewarded. (ultimate JUSTICE)
 “Abandon all Hope, You Who Enter Here”
Canto III

 Law of symbolic retribution
 Punishment that symbolizes the crime
 “as they sinned, so are they punished”
 All about ULTIMATE JUSTICE
 Opportunists
Canto III

 Those souls who were neither good
nor bad but only for themselves.
They lived their lives without
making conscious moral choices;
therefore both Heaven and Hell
have denied them. (reside in the
Ante-Inferno)
 They must constantly chase after a
blank banner. Flies and wasps
continually bite them and consume
the blood and tears that flow from
them.
 Dante recognizes Pope Celestine
V here (renounced his title)
Canto III

 Symbolic retribution of the opportunists:
 Took no sides- so they are given no place
 Ever-shifting illusion- so they pursue an ever-shifting
banner
 Their sin was a darkness- so they move in darkness
 Guilty conscious pursued them- wasps pursue them
 Actions were a moral filth- they run eternally through
the filth of worms and maggots
Canto III

 Acheron (river) = the first of the rivers of Hell
 Newly arrived damned souls wait to be ferried along
 Charon= boatman of the river
 Refuses to take Dante because is a living soul (lines 85-90)
 Virgil forces Charon- God ordained it (lines 91-93)
 Dante faints and does not awaken until they get to the
other side
 “sleep comes over in a swoon” (line 133)
Canto III

 “Divine (Godly) justice transforms and spurs them
so their dread turns wish: they yearn for what they
fear” (lines 121-123).
 Hell= sin (allegorically) so….
 Hell is their CHOICE, for divine grace is denied to
none who wish for it in their hearts.
Pages 674-682
Canto V

 Virgil and Dante are now in the
SECOND circle of Hell (size does
not change, just “size” of crimes)
 Minos: monster who stands in
front of the endless line of sinners,
assigning them to their torments.
 Wraps his tail around them;
number of times around =
number of hell they are assigned
 From classical Greek mythology;
son of Europa and Zeus,
descended in the form of a bull
Canto V

 Sins of Lust: those who betrayed reason to their
appetites; their sin was to abandon themselves to the
tempest of their passions: so they are swept forever
in the tempest (storm) of Hell, forever denied the
light of reason and of God.
 List of famous “sinners” of lust
 Francesca tells her own story (as Paolo weeps)
 Dante immediately feels sympathy for these souls
and once again faints
Canto V

 Semiramis: legendary queen of King Nimus; tricked her husband’s army
and had him killed.
 Dido: Queen of Carthage; falls in love, only to be left by the Trojan hero
Aeneas
 Cleopatra: last pharaoh of Ancient Egypt; had affair with Caesar and bore
a son as co-ruler
 Helen- of Troy
 Achilles- Greek hero of Trojan War; died in an ambush after falling in love
with the Trojan princess Polyxena; overall, lustful character
 Paris- story of Troy
 Tristan- a Cornish hero and one of the Knights of the Round Table; he and
Iseult accidentally consume a love potion and fall in love, having a secret
affair.
 Francesca and Paolo (tells their story…)
 Allusions
 All are women who followed their passions
Canto V

 The story of Francesca and Paolo
 Bound in marriage to an old and deformed man, she fell in
love with Paolo, her husband’s younger brother. One day,
as she and Paolo sat reading an Arthurian Legend about the
love of Lancelot and Guenivere, each began to feel that the
story spoke to their own secret love,
 When they came to a particular romantic moment in the
story, they could not resist kissing. Francesca’s husband
quickly discovered them and had Paolo killed.
 Francesca and Paolo are doomed to spend eternity in the
second level of Hell.
Canto V

Symbolic Retribution
 “stripped bare of ever light” (in darkness)- where
inappropriate sins/acts would have occurred
 Naked
 In a “hellish flight of storm” sweeping their souls and
whirling and battering them on- just as their sin is of the
flesh, the storm racks their nerves and hurts their skin.
 Out of control storm- they demonstrated lack of control as
well
**Central theme- those who abandon reason for passion will
be punished**
Canto XXXIII

 Count Ugolino volunteers to tell his story and why
he is gnawing on the head of Archbishop Ruggieri
for condemnation of his offender.
 Ruggierri imprisoned Ugolino and his sons,
starving them to death as well.
 Ugolino watches his sons die one by one and then
eats them.

 Those punished in this level lie on their backs, frozen
in a lake, with their tears frozen to their eyes.
 In the 3rd level, sins were so great that certain
souls leave the bodies before death and descend
to hell.

 The poets react with particular horror at the sight of
the next two souls in the Third Ring, those of Fra
Alberigo and Branca d’Oria.
 Although these individuals have not yet died on
Earth, their crimes were so great that their souls
were obliged to enter Hell before their time; devils
occupy their living bodies aboveground.