In Dante Alighieri’s poem, The Inferno, Dante uses a system of thinking called the fourfold analysis. The fourfold analysis consists of four thought provoking categories; historical, spiritual, moral/psychological, and political. All four can be found within his twentieth chapter that contains the fortune tellers and the diviners. Using the fourfold analysis we can understand the fortune tellers and diviners and why Dante is so pitiful towards them. Dante knows that they are in Hell for a reason, yet human compassion gets the best of him and Virgil must step in to keep Dante on track because it is not right for Dante to cry tears for the damned.
Literally/historically, fortune tellers and diviners are mutilated humans who are punished for taking advantage of God’s power. They are mutilated to the point that Dante the pilgrim cries over the unfortunate sight. Amphiaraus, one of the many fortune tellers in this bolgia, tried to see too far ahead of him. “In life he wished to see too far before him, and now he must crabwalk backwards round this track” (Inferno, Canto XX, 162). When Dant...
Dante came a long way in reaching the lower part of Hell in the “Inferno” to not be to be highly satisfied with what he experienced from seeing, hearing, reflecting, and questioning. Throughout the journey we can see that Dante had two sides to him the one in which his felt sympathy for the sinners and felt frightened along the way and the other Dante in which he judgment that the sinners should have a more cruel punishment. Dante encountered many challenges as he progressed to each level.
Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy is said to be the single greatest epic poem of all time. The opening story of the character of Dante the Pilgrim is told in the first of the three divisions: The Inferno. The Inferno is a description of Dante’s journey down through Hell and of the several degrees of suffering and many mythical creatures that he encounters on the way. Throughout his travel Dante displays many different feelings and actions but the emotion that summarizes the entire poem is fear. While some of his character traits change as his mind matures and acknowledges the justice being carried out, from the very beginning until the final Canto, his fear does not subside. This does well to reinforce the symbolism of Dante as Everyman and serves to direct the reader to the moral purpose of Divine Comedy, because of the humility and dependence upon God that fear produces. In the first Canto, which serves as an introduction to the entire comedy, Dante encounters the three beasts which impede his progress out of the dark woods. Coming upon the She-Wolf he writes: "This last beast brought my spirit down so low / with fear that seized me at the sight of her, / lost all hope of going up the hill" (I.52-54). Dante is so shaken by the appearances of the three beasts that he rushes headlong into the dark woods he has just come out of. This is only the first obstacle Dante encounters, but it proves an insurmountable one.
In the Inferno we follow the journey of Dante as he wanders off the path of moral truth and into Hell. The Virgin Mary and Santa Lucia ask Beatrice, Dante’s deceased love, to send some help. Thus, Virgil comes to the rescue and essentially guides Dante through Hell and back to the mortal world from which he came. However, things begin to seem kind of odd. When reading the Inferno one may begin to question the way Dante describes Hell and the things that occur within, or even the things we have always believed about Hell. Despite the way it is described and well known in western civilization, Hell is not at all how we expect it to be because of Dante's use of irony throughout this poetic masterpiece.
Often skimmed over, is the story of Paul casting out a spirit from an unnamed slave-girl found in Acts 16. When read using a feminist lens, the seemingly minor text reveals unique power differentials between the girl and the other characters. Every character in the story exploits and uses the girl for a specific purpose, which illuminates the power differentials. The spirit of divination uses her body to speak through, the apostle Paul uses her by casting out her spirit so satisfy his needs, the owners exploit her for her fortunetelling abilities, and Luke, the author of the text, uses her to progress the story.
...ards monstrous figures and sympathy towards those who seem to be tortured unjustly. In his perverse education, with instruction from Virgil and the shades, Dante learns to replace mercy with brutality, because sympathy in Hell condones sin and denies divine justice. The ancient philosopher Plato, present in the first level of Hell, argues in The Allegory of the Cave that truth is possible via knowledge of the Form of the Good. Similarly, Dante acquires truth through a gradual understanding of contrapasso and the recognition of divine justice in the afterlife. Ultimately, Dante recognizes that the actions of the earthly fresh are important because the soul lives on afterwards to face the ramifications. By expressing his ideas on morality and righteousness, Dante writes a work worth reading, immortalizes his name, and exalts the beliefs of his Christian audience.
Dante Alighieri presents a vivid and awakening view of the depths of Hell in the first book of his Divine Comedy, the Inferno. The reader is allowed to contemplate the state of his own soul as Dante "visits" and views the state of the souls of those eternally assigned to Hell's hallows. While any one of the cantos written in Inferno will offer an excellent description of the suffering and justice of hell, Canto V offers a poignant view of the assignment of punishment based on the committed sin. Through this close reading, we will examine three distinct areas of Dante's hell: the geography and punishment the sinner is restricted to, the character of the sinner, and the "fairness" or justice of the punishment in relation to the sin. Dante's Inferno is an ordered and descriptive journey that allows the reader the chance to see his own shortcomings in the sinners presented in the text.
To further interpret The Inferno, the Italian poet, Dante Allegheri, created a method called The Fourfold Analysis. This method involves analyzing the historical, moral, political, and spiritual effects of the topic. For example, Dante’s fourfold method helps the reader to further understand the thieves and their allegorical symbolism. The Thieves are found in the Seventh Pouch of the Eighth Circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno, guarded by Cacus, a centaur. They are found with their hands tied up, being punished by snakes and lizards. The Thieves played a significant role in The Inferno, as they take up two entire cantos. The sight of the thieves in hell makes Dante’s “blood run cold with fright.” (Ciardi 197) At first glance, the actions of a thief seem to only affect 2 groups of people-the thief and the victim(s)-however, the effects include damage of community trust, personal costs, and continued separation between good and evil.
In “The Fortune Teller,” a strange letter trembles the heart of the story’s protagonist, Camillo as he to understand the tone and meaning. The author, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, attempts to make the reader believe that the letter is very ambiguous. This devious letter is a symbol of Camillo’s inability to realize that the treacherous deeds he has committed in the dark have finally come to light. This letter will ultimately change his life forever something he never expected. Not thinking of the large multitude of possible adverse outcomes, he reads the letter. Frightened that he has ruined what should have never been started, he broods over his decision to love a married woman. In light of this, Camillo continues his dubious love affair with his best friend’s wife, unconvinced that he will ever get caught. “The Fortune Teller” focuses on an intimate affair between three people that ends in death due to a letter, and Camillo will not understand what the true consequences that the letter entails until he is face to face with his best friend, Villela.
Dante’s The Divine Comedy illustrates one man’s quest for the knowledge of how to avoid the repercussions of his actions in life so that he may seek salvation in the afterlife. The Divine Comedy establishes a set of moral principles that one must live by in order to reach paradise. Dante presents these principles in Inferno, where each level of Hell has people suffering for the sins they committed during their life. As Dante gets deeper into Hell, the degrees of sin get progressively worse, as do the severity of punishment.
In Dante’s Inferno, the relationship between Dante the Pilgrim and Virgil the Guide is an ever-evolving one. By analyzing the transformation of this relationship as the two sojourn through the circles of hell, one is able to learn more about the mindset of Dante the Poet. At the outset, Dante is clearly subservient to Virgil, whom he holds in high esteem for his literary genius. However, as the work progresses, Virgil facilitates Dante’s spiritual enlightenment, so that by the end, Dante has ascended to Virgil’s spiritual level and has in many respects surpassed him. In Dante’s journey with respect to Virgil, one can see man’s spiritual journey towards understanding God. While God loves man regardless of his faults, His greatest desire is to see man attain greater spirituality, in that man, already created in God’s image, may truly become divine, and in doing so, attain eternality.
Inferno is the first and most famous of a three part series by Dante Alighieri known as the Divine Comedy that describes his journey to God through the levels of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise written in the early fourteenth century. Scholars spanning over nearly seven centuries have praised its beauty and complexity, unmatched by any other medieval poem. Patrick Hunt’s review, “On the Inferno,” states, “Dante’s extensive use of symbolism and prolific use of allegory— even in incredible anatomical detail—have been often plumbed as scholars have explored the gamut of his work’s classical, biblical, historical, and contemporary political significance” (9). In the story, each of the three main characters, Dante, Virgil, and Beatrice, represent
Dante’s Inferno presents the reader with many questions and thought provoking dialogue to interpret. These crossroads provide points of contemplation and thought. Dante’s graphic depiction of hell and its eternal punishment is filled with imagery and allegorical meanings. Examining one of these cruxes of why there is a rift in the pits of hell, can lead the reader to interpret why Dante used the language he did to relate the Idea of a Just and perfect punishment by God.
Dante's "Inferno" is full of themes. But the most frequent is that of the weakness of human nature. Dante's descent into hell is initially so that Dante can see how he can better live his life, free of weaknesses that may ultimately be his ticket to hell. Through the first ten cantos, Dante portrays how each level of his hell is a manifestation of human weakness and a loss of hope, which ultimately Dante uses to purge and learn from. Dante, himself, is about to fall into the weaknesses of humans, before there is some divine intervention on the part of his love Beatrice, who is in heaven. He is sent on a journey to hell in order for Dante to see, smell, and hear hell. As we see this experience brings out Dante's weakness' of cowardice, wrath and unworthiness. He is lead by Virgil, who is a representation of intellect. Through Dante's experiences he will purge his sins.
... Moreover, such belief in human reason signifies Dante's hope towards a bright society and the pursuit of God’s love as the other part of self-reflection. In conclusion, a great deal of tension and contrast between “dark” and “light” in The Inferno helps us to explore Dante’s self portrait—he fears dangerous desires and sinful darkness, but shows much courage and hope towards life since he nevertheless follows his guide Virgil to dive into horrible Hell. As shown in Canto I, such emotional reaction to dark and light symbols lays a great foundation for developing Dante’s broad and universal traits as his journey progresses.
In Italian Dante Alighieri (1265) Poem, The Divine Comedy Inferno, Translated by Mark Musa. Dante demonstrates the value of personal development which is the ability to keep a balanced life and continuously learn from past mistakes in order to create a better future. Dante begins the poem wrapped in his own thoughts and suffering but by the end of the poem he begins to understand other’s sufferings beyond his own. In his growth throughout his journey he learns about pain and sorrow that he cannot comprehend. He becomes more aware of the torture that is around him. At the beginning he appears to think that his life was horrible but by the end of the poem he seems to realize that he can make his and others lives better by becoming a better person. Dante also learns how to respect others by learning why the shades are in hell without judging them for their crimes, a few times however Dante disregards the core value of respect when he comes across a few shades that he personally disliked during that shades life time. Dante feels that a shade deserves to be psychically harm a shade when the shade does not respond. This shows complete disregard of the respect core value. The core value of excellence is also represented by Dante. The excellence core value is striving to be the best in all that you do and to always try to do everything better than the last time. As he goes through the layers of hell he learns more about life and gains courage that he lacked at the beginning of the poem.