Examples Of The Contrapasso In Dantes Inferno

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Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy is made up of three parts; the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.The Inferno in particular focuses on the conception of sin and how it taints the human’s soul and mind. Throughout the Inferno, there are many Cantos that each relate to a particular variation of a specific sin. For instance, direct fraud against the church which includes deceiving masses as well as corrupting the leadership within the church for secular gain is focused on in Canto XIX. Throughout, Canto XIX there are multiple metaphors and allusions that relate to the core aspect of the canto and its contrapasso and through these a deeper understanding of the severity behind this sin is revealed. Much like most of the Cantos, Dante uses …show more content…

In this Canto the sin that is specified is fraud against the church meaning anything from deceiving people to corruption in the leadership for personal gain. The exact punishment was that “from the mouth of every hole were sticking out a single sinner’s feet, and then the legs up to the calf- the rest was stuffed inside”(22-24), and “the soles of every sinner’s feet were flaming; their naked legs were twitching frenziedly-they would have broken any chain or rope” (25-27). This is significant to the sin and reveals a deeper sense of its severity. In Dante’s time the priests would stand in the holes of the Baptistery so that they could baptize people. Through Dante’s description of the given sinner being upside and on fire shows the core of this sin in which they are misleading the church through fraud. The idea of them being upside down and on fire goes against the pure objective of baptism. Position wise they are upside hence hell and that they are no longer looking to God whereas before they would be facing up towards the light, and with them being on fire contradicts the sense the baptism purifies your soul whereas the fire that they are experienced further burns with sin and evil. In conclusion, through the imagery that Dante inserts in the Inferno, one can see how each specific

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