Punishments in Dantes Inferno
The Comedy, later renamed The Divine Comedy was written byDante Alighieri of Florence, Italy. In the early 14th century,while in exile, Dante wrote this epic poem which is broken downinto three books. In each book Dante recounts his travels throughHell, Purgatory, and Heaven respectively. The first book of TheDivine Comedy, Inferno, is an remarkably brilliant narrative. Henarrates his descent into and observation of hell through itsnumerous circles and rings. One extraordinary way Dante depictedhell is in his descriptions of the various punishments that each In a prior college course I took we learned about medievaltorture practices. This knowledge led me to see similarities inthe punishments given in Inferno. The diverse punishments thatDante envisions all the sinners in hell receiving are broken downinto two types. The first he borrows from many gruesome andsevere forms of medieval torture. The second type is often lessphysically agonizing. It is Dante's creative, very clever formsof punishment. Although all sinners in hell are souls, Dantegives each one a physical attribute so that the reader can
The creative punishments are conceived to delivermental and psychological pain to be understood metaphorically. Many of the severe punishments that Dante foresees for thesinners are borrowed from practices of medieval torment andimprisonment. He is not as moved bytheir condition as he is in other rings, maybe because he thinksthey deserve this sort of punishment, however disgusting it maybe. The second form of punishment Dante uses in Inferno is veryinteresting to analyze. Dante, the visitor, leaves the ring having had his sightsfill of it. Unbearable andunavoidable extremes of cold or hot temperature, which areportrayed in the Inferno, are also representative of Medievaltimes. Prisoners of Medieval jails were provided with little orno ventilation to protect them from the extreme cold or hotweather, they could easily freeze to death or die of heatstroke. Dante meets upwith a sinner who informs him of this: "I am plunged here becauseof flatteries--/ of which my tongue had such sufficiency" (167). Dante wrote Inferno with the mission ofnaming his peers in an objective manner and succeeded in doingso. The punishment for blasphemy in Medieval timeswas often death by burning in a fire, instead of using some sortof physical torture such as this Dante creates a rather sensibleand creative punishment for the sinners. This description of these pathetic souls is an example ofone of the psychologically painful punishments invented by Dante. His poem is a masterpiece and will continue to stand the testof time. The borrowed medievalforms of torturous punishments create physical pain for thedifferent sinners in hell, and thus intended to be interpretedliterally. Dante, as avisitor to this place, is questioned by a sinner, "Why do youstare more greedily at me than at the others who are filthy?"(167). Work CitedAlighieri, Dante (1980).
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