The early cantos of Purgatorio feel obsessed with haste and urgency as well as light and shadow, continuing the themes of right desires and purification I identified in the first two cantos. Stepping Partly in the Light The pilgrim often notices the sun and its path, and he and the many souls frequently notice and…

It has been a long, often bizarre trip, but at last we have reached the lowest point of Hell and the end of Dante’s catalog of the eternal wages of sin, Inferno. As I think about the Henry Center’s theme, The Sting of Death, it seems to me Dante has made a pretty extensive case…

Reading Journal Home << Previous Entry Next entry >> N.B.: The following is a guest post by Jonathan Castele (BA ’15). I never asked to be associated with Evangelical Christianity, but I was born and bred in it. I know its virtues and, sadly, its ugly vices all too well. Graduating from Trinity College felt,…

Reading Journal Home << Previous Entry Next entry >> Horrible Visions (Canto XXV) Cantos XXV and XXVI move quickly from thought to thought such that you can almost miss what holds the episodes together, which is the transgression of right order or proper boundaries. They both feature the poetic modesty we saw at the beginning of…

Reading Journal Home << Previous Entry Next entry >> What Happens in Hell? (Canto XXII) Souls suffer in Hell, but if their suffering is the same at every moment for eternity, does anything really happen? They do for the pilgrim because he’s never seen it before. But events that always occur, predictably and routinely, generally…

Reading Journal Home << Previous Entry Next entry >> Dante’s Hell is, of course, filled with monsters and monstrosities of all sorts, but the deeper into Inferno that Virgil and the pilgrim travel, the more extravagant the monstrosities get—and the more dramatic the commentary on sin. The Disturbing Emblem of Fraud (Canto XVII) Few sins…

Reading Journal Home << Previous Entry Next entry >> Love, Chaos, and the Order of Hell (Cantos XI-XII) Any decent edition will help you make sense of the order of Hell as Dante envisions it and as Virgil describes it here, so I needn’t rehearse it except to remark on the fact that it is…

Reading Journal Home << Previous Entry Next entry >> Canto III 1. Death, Hope, Narrative, and Heroism The first time through Inferno, adapting to the meter and encountering its strangeness can distract from some of its real horrors. But if we recall the invitation from Canto II to participate with our imaginations in evoking images the poet…

Reading Journal Home << Previous Entry Next entry >> Continuing my slow start to Dante’s Comedy, I look here at additional themes of love, community, and spiritual journey as the pilgrim prepares to enter the Inferno. N.B.: To get your bearings in our Dante series, start here. Canto II 1. Though the pilgrim has a guide in Virgil,…