The Literature Book

63

See also: Aeneid 40–41 ■ Odyssey 54 ■ The Faerie Queene 103 ■ The Lusiads 103 ■ Paradise Lost 103 ■

The Red Room 185 ■ The Waste Land 213

Long after the fall of classical

civilizations, the epic poem

remained the favored literary form

through which to celebrate national

power. For example, English poet

Edmund Spenser’s 1590 epic The

Faerie Queene is a paean to the

ascendancy of Elizabeth I and her

country, while Italian Ludovico

A riosto’s Orlando Furioso, written

in 1516, applauds the increasingly

influential House of Este.

A divine epic

Da nte’s The Divine Comedy fits into

the postclassical epic tradition—it

is long, heroic, allegorical, and often

nationalistic, reflecting Dante’s

active role in Florentine politics.

However, it is also unusual and

innovative in a variety of ways.

Whereas in earlier epics the

omniscient narrator remained

“outside” the story, Dante sets

the narrator within the text; the

book audaciously uses Tuscan

(Italian) vernacular language

rather than traditional Latin; and

Dante stretches the form of the epic

by combining classical thought

and mythological motifs with

contemporary European philosophy

and Christian symbolism.

Dante takes the reader on a

journey through hell, purgatory, and

heaven—from sin and despair to

ultimate salvation—mapping out

the geography of each realm in

detail, evoking an almost physical

reality. The work recalls many

classical epics that describe

journeys to the underworld and,

like earlier epics, it is an allegory:

the journey through the underworld

is symbolic of Dante’s search for

personal meaning.

Originally, Dante called this

poem simply the Commedia, or

“Comedy,” which at the time was

a term used for works in which the

difficulties or challenges faced by

the protagonist were resolved in a

broadly happy ending (in contrast

to the classical tragedies, which

focused on loss and suffering). It

was the 14th-century poet Giovanni

Boccaccio who first called the ❯❯

RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT

Dante’s Hell is situated below the

city of Jerusalem and is shaped like a

gigantic funnel that leads to the very

center of the Earth. Outside Hell is a

“vestibule” containing the souls of those

who in life did neither good nor evil. Hell

itself is made up of nine circles, which contain

the souls of sinners, from the least offensive (the

unbaptized) to the most offensive (the treacherous).

A wall, guarded by devils, impedes Dante’s progress

to Lower Hell, where violent and malicious sinners

are punished. At Hell’s core, trapped in ice, is a

winged, three-faced Satan.

The Unbaptized and the Virtuous Pagans

The Vestibule:

the Uncommitted

Sins of

wantonness

Sins of violence

Sins of malice

The Carnal

The Gluttonous

The Greedy

The Wrathful

The Dark Forest

Wall of Dis separates

Upper Hell from

Lower Hell

Jerusalem

Satan

The Heretical

The Violent

The Fraudulent

The Treacherous

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