Interpretive Questions
Why do Dante and Virgil descend to Lower Hell on Geryon's back?
Does Dante uniformly show pity ("pietà ") towards the denizens of hell?
Why is Lucifer portrayed as a weeping demon frozen in the center of the Earth? Why are the betrayers of Julius Caesar (Brutus and Cassius) portrayed as being as wicked as the betrayer of Jesus Christ (Judas Iscariot)?
Why must Virgil and Dante ascend through the other side of the earth at the end?
Evaluative Questions
Has Dante constructed a just hierarchy of sins?
How well does Dante juggle his roles as pilgrim, judge, narrator, and poet?
What are Dante's views on Jews and Muslims (cf. cantos IV, XXIII, XXVIII)
Speculative Questions
Who was Dante's intended audience? How was the poem disseminated? Why has the poem become so wildly popular?
Who other than Virgil might have been a good guide to hell?
For Textual Analysis
V. Canto XXVI, pages 220 to 223 : the Fate of Ulysses, beginning "So when the flame had reached us, and my guide ... " to the end of the Canto.
VI. Canto XXXIII, pages 255 to 260, Tale of Ugolino and Ruggieri.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Friday, June 3, 2011
JFK and Dante
In Canto III of "Inferno," Dante and Virgil visit the Vestibule of Hell, an antechamber for indecisive souls. According to Dante, this place is reserved for "those sad souls who lived a life but lived it with no blame and no praise."
President John F. Kennedy is reported to have admired Dante's line about "the coward who made the great refusal," which scholars believe refers to Pontius Pilate. The Vestibule is reserved for those who could not make up their minds. Dante imputes a strong element of willfulness (the "great refusal") to this condition of moral indecision. He says,
Heaven, to keep its beauty, cast them out,
but even Hell itself would not receive them,
for fear the damned might glory over them.
In other words, sometimes a decisive sinner will outshine a namby-pamby fence-sitter, and Dante won't let this happen in his moral universe.
Illustration: Fresco by Domenico di Michelino in the nave of Florence's cathedral (1465). Though banished from Florence on political grounds in his lifetime, Dante definitely made it back big time later on. Note that with his right hand he gestures to the parade of sinners, and holds his poem in the left for the world to see.
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