The Issues Prevalent In Dante's Inferno

Dante’s Inferno explores the pilgrimage of Dante through the circles of hell with the guidance of Virgil. Inferno starts with Dante’s realization of his straying from the “True Way” to the “Dark Wood”(Simon,2009). With his realization, he arrives in hell unable to remember how he got there. After he, being chased away by “The Leopard of Malice and Fraud, The Lion of Violence and Ambition, and The She-Wolf of Incontinence.”(Simon,2009), meets Virgil who was sent by Beatrice, Dante’s lover before her death, with the support of the Virgin Mary, Saint Lucia, and Rachel to guide him through hell.

Dante’s Inferno is reflective of the social, historical, religious, and textual issues affecting Dante during his writing of Inferno.

Historically Dante’s Inferno was written during Dante’s exile from Florence Italy during which he lived in “Romagna, Padua and various country estates belonging to sympathetic nobles.” (Conliffe, 2018) due to the conflict between the Black and White Guelphs.

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The Black Guelph supported Pope Boniface VIII, who was known for publishing “Corpus juris canonici, the Liber Sextus, and the institution of the Jubilee of 1300” (Ladner,2019), and the White Guelph opposed him. The Black took control of Florence with the help of the king of France during Dante’s trip to Rome as an envoy to determine the Pope’s intentions. During Dante’s stay in Rome, he was asked to stay behind while his companions were sent home due to the Pope’s concern that he had learned of the Pope’s plan to take control of Florence.

The king of France's involvement in the issue of Florence was unexpected because the king and the Pope had a tenuous relationship and later the king supported a plot to remove the Pope's influence from French politics.

Upon his return, Dante learned he had been exiled and his property and wealth seized. Given his wife’s relation to Donatis, a leader of the Black she was able to stay in Florence leaving Dante to wonder Italy. This resulted in Dante moving from city to city while he wrote never returning to his home due to the requirement of paying a fine to lift his exile. Dante would not pay on the grounds of principle and could not pay due to his wealth being seized along with his property upon his exile. Dante’s constant movement from city to city enabled him to see the full range of human behavior which is shown in Inferno through his ability to list specific people, actions, and punishments for each circle of hell.

Socially Dante lived in a time of religious prominence in which not following the faith of the ruler meant persecution. This meant that moral standing was a priority to the people of the time and thus the requirements to be seen as a respectable person were high and dependent on one’s ability to follow the social standards of behavior at the time which were evershifting. Given that Dante was born and raised in Italy meant that he was catholic which can be seen in Inferno by the circles of hell is that each sin was taken from the Bible and ordered in its severity by his and the social values of his time. For example, the first few circles of hell follow the 7 deadly sins from gluttony to wrath.

However, he places traitors at the lowermost level of hell due to his hatred for them stemming from his love of Caesar and his hatred of those who betrayed him as well as the social hatred of traitors. Dante’s hatred for traitors may also stem from his sense of betrayal brought on by his wife's abandonment of him upon his exile. Furthermore, we can see the influence of famous poets in Dante’s writing and in the story itself. He inserted himself into the story and writes that the poets he admires, given they are not punished for not being of the Christian faith but simply left to exist in hell unharmed, call him the “Prince of Poets”(Simon,2009). Interestingly Beatrice, Dante’s sender of hope in Inferno, was, in reality, a woman Dante met only once at a party he was taken to by his father at a young age there he fell in love with her. While the person and character were different Dantes using his love for the true Beatrice developed what he called “my glorious lady of the mind... my beatitude, the destroyer of all vices and the queen of virtue, salvation”(Conliffe, 2018).

Religiously Dante follows the sins described in the Bible. Dante starts with the 7 deadly sins from Pride to Greed with the addition of those he felt were additionally as bad. He then in his lower circles goes deeper into details to specific sins. Furthermore, he used religious figures like God, The Virgin Mary, Saint Lucia, and Rachel. He also constructs his form of hell uses the rule that those not baptized even if they were good people in life could not enter heaven show in his inclusion of the Virtuous Pagans who were poets Dante admired that was born in a time before the rise of Christianity.

Dante's constant reference to God shows how he feels that God is as Christianity says omnipotent. However, his reference to greek gods and the Titans of Greek mythology also shows his flexibility to see the world from others’ points of view. Dante was especially interested and influenced by the Greek philosophers and poets drawing from them to develop the hierarchy of hell. Dante was the first to illustrate hell the way he did. He gave image and rules to what was previously simply a pit of fire and brimstone meant for those who sinned. Dante gives us sins and their punishment.

Textually Dante’s work was originally named “Commedia” (Conliffe, 2018), and only after his death was it named The Divine Comedy. Dante changed his style frequently in the writing of Inferno.[most likely due to the changes in his location as he wrote]. He changed “from the solemn-sad style of the opening lost-in-the-woods canto to the wrathfully charged style of Dante's seventh canto where he excoriates Filipi Argente, to the jarring style of Canto XXXII where Dante attempts futilely ...to find a 'language dark enough' to describe Hell's farthest depths.” (WHEDON,1994) Dante’s change in style seems to follow the stages of grief from sadness to anger to depression. While his writing does not follow the stages exactly they are all there and thus Inferno was most likely Dante’s way to deal with the grief of losing everything he owned and his family and home in light of his exile.

Thus, in the end, Dante’s Inferno is the product of the social, religious, historical, and textual circumstances of its author and time. The influence of Dante’s religion can be seen in his selection for the rules he lays out for hell from determining who is in hell to what the punishment and sins are. Dante’s Social circumstances are shown in his hatred for specific people and his unsympathetic journey through hell. Historically Dante’s circumstances are shown the progression of Inferno from sad to angry and ending in depression. Finally, Dante’s textual condition is shown in his changing of style throughout Inferno.