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Inferno
by Dante Alighieri
Indulgent epic poetry at its best...
Dante’s Inferno is proof that an epic poem written in the fourteenth century can be outrageous, sharp, and seemingly ahead of its time. Set on the eve of Good Friday in the year 1300, Dante loses his way in a dark wood and cannot escape. Here he encounters the ghost of the great poet Virgil, who guides him through each level of the inferno. Dante’s hell is composed of nine circles, each a place for a different sin and punishment.
In the first circle, Limbo, reside the unbaptized and undecided in their Christianity. Here Dante encounters other well-known poets, including Homer (Iliad and Odyssey), Horace, and Lucan. The second circle of hell is for those who fell to the temptations of lust, where Dante encounters historical adulteress Francesca da Rimini, who suffers with the other souls by being blown by a violent storm eternally with no hope of rest. The third circle is for the gluttons, forced to lie in a muddy rain and consume their own waste. Each circle is more shocking than the preceding one; the crimes are more provocative and the punishments are increasingly gruesome. Dante is surprisingly bold in his opinions of good versus evil and right versus wrong, and most importantly, in choosing well-known writers and characters as examples of sinners. According to Dante, Homer was in Limbo, Brunetto Latini committed sodomy, and Greek hero Ulysses was a fraud.
Written between 1308 and the year of his death in 1321, Dante’s trilogy remains a scandalous and controversial depiction of the afterlife. The first of three canticas in what is referred to as the Divine Comedy, Inferno is composed of thirty-three cantos, each more colorful than the one before it. This is the perfect read for anyone who is afraid that classic Italian medieval poetry might be boring or intimidating. Inferno is like a tabloid for the fourteenth century, but with all the esteem of an epic poem. In its entirety, it is nothing less than a beautiful and satisfying piece of literature.
Title: Inferno
Author: Dante Alighieri
Publisher: Doubleday (December 26, 2000)
ISBN: 0385496974
Review written by: Jennifer Kneisley
Reviewer's Rating:9
Reader's Rating: 0
Reader's Votes: 0
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