Dantes Inferno

1
Dantes Inferno

• Canto III

2
Canto III

• Virgil leads Dante up to the Gate of Hell
• They read a foreboding inscription that includes
  the admonition
• Abandon all hope, you who enter here.
• As soon as they enter, Dante hears innumerable
  cries of torment and suffering.
• Virgil explains that these cries emanate from the
  souls who did not commit to either good or evil,
  but who lived their lives without making
  conscious moral choices.
• Therefore, both Heaven and Hell have denied them
  entrance.
• They must now reside in the Ante-Inferno, within
  Hell yet not truly a part of it.
• Flies and wasps continually bite them and
  writhing worms consume the blood and tears that
  flow from them.
• The souls of the uncommitted are joined in
  torment by the neutral angels those who sided
  neither with God nor Satan in the war in Heaven.

3
Canto III

• Virgil leads Dante to a great river called
  Acheron, which marks the border of Hell.
• A crowd of newly dead souls wait to be taken
  across.
• A boat approaches with an old man, Charon, at its
  helm.
• Charon recognizes Dante as a living soul and
  tells him to keep away from the dead.
• After Virgil informs him that their journey had
  been ordained from on high, Charon troubles them
  no longer.

4
Canton III

• Charon returns to his work of ferrying the
  miserable souls, wailing and cursing, across the
  river into Hell.
• As he transports Virgil and Dante across, Virgil
  tells the frightened Dante that Charons initial
  reluctance to ferry him bodes well only damned
  souls cross the river.
• Suddenly, an earthquake shakes the plain wind
  and fire rise up from the ground, and Dante,
  terrified, faints.

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Analysis Canto III

• In the first line of the inscription above the
  Gate of Hell in Canto III, through me you enter
  into the city of woes, Hell is described as a
  city.
• This description gains support in the portrayal
  of Hells architecture it is walled and gated
  like a medieval city.
• The idea of cities figures significantly in the
  Inferno, and Dantes treatment of them situates
  his poem both historically and theologically.
• Historically, large cities had begun to plan an
  increasingly important role in European social
  and economic life in the high Middle Ages.

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Analysis Canto III

• Dante portrays Hell as a city in large part
  because to a thinker in the early fourteenth
  century, any substantial population would have
  suggested a city.
• In the theological sense, the Infernos treatment
  of cities belongs to the great tradition St.
  Augustines City of God.
• In the City of God, the forces of charity,
  kindness, and love bind people together.

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Analysis Canto III

• Those who have lived metaphorically in the City
  of God go to Heaven.
• In the City of Man, each citizen acts in his own
  self-interest and thus preys on his neighbor.
• Those who lived in the City of Man go to Hell
• The souls of those who would not commit to either
  good or evil in life now must remain at the
  outermost limit of Hell closest to Heaven
  geographically, yet undeniably still a part of
  Hell.

8
Analysis Canto III

• Because these souls could not be made to act one
  way or another on Earth (moral choice is what
  gives action meaning), hornets now sting them
  into action.
• Throughout the poem, many of the souls of the
  uncommitted (those in Hell) are made to act out a
  grotesque parody of their failures on Earth.

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Analysis Canto III

• Through Canto III, the geography and organization
  of Dantes Hell generally conforms with medieval
  Catholic theology, particularly the views voiced
  by the thirteenth century religious scholar
  Thomas Aquinas.
• Aquinas held that pagans who lived before Christ
  and led virtuous lives could have a place in
  Heaven.
• As the architect in his own Hell, Dante shows
  less sympathy, automatically damning those who
  failed to worship the Christian God, regardless
  of their virtue.
• The punishment that Dante creates for them is to
  know finally about the God of whom they were
  ignorant when they were alive.