Danteworlds: A Reader's Guide to the Inferno

164 Pages·2007·0.5 MB·English

by  Guy P. Raffa

Danteworlds
a reader’s guide to the inferno
Guy P. Raffa
danteworlds

Danteworlds
aa rreeaaddeerr’ss gguuiiddee ttoo tthhee iinnffeerrnnoo
Guy P. Raffa
The University of Chicago Press :: Chicago & London
guy p. raffa is associate professor of Italian
at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of
Divine Dialectic: Dante’s Incarnational Poetry.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2007 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2007
Printed in the United States of America
16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 1 2 3 4 5
isbn-13: 978-0-226-70267-4 (cloth)
isbn-13: 978-0-226-70268-1 (paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-70267-7 (cloth)
isbn-10: 0-226-70268-5 (paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Raffa, Guy P.
Danteworlds : a reader’s guide to the Inferno /
Guy P. Raffa.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-226-70267-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-70267-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-13: 978-0-226-70268-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-70268-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Dante Alighieri, 1265–1321. Inferno. I. Title.
pq4443.r24 2007
851(cid:99).1 —dc22
2006032999
Illustrations by Suloni Robertson.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1992.
To my mother, Theresa Marino,
and in memory of my father, Gaetano Raffa,
and my grandparents:
Grazia, Giuseppe, Louise, and Placido

contents
Welcome to Danteworlds, 1
Major Events in Dante’s Life, 9
Map of Italy in the Thirteenth Century, 11
Illustration of Dante’s Hell, 12
Dark Wood (inferno 1–2) :: 13
Periphery of Hell: Cowardice (inferno 3) :: 21
Circle 1: Limbo (inferno 4) :: 25
Circle 2: Lust (inferno 5) :: 33
Circle 3: Gluttony (inferno 6) :: 39
Circle 4: Avarice and Prodigality (inferno 7) :: 45
Circle 5: Wrath and Sullenness (inferno 7–9) :: 49
Circle 6: Heresy (inferno 9–11) :: 57
Circle 7: Violence (inferno 12–17) :: 65
Circle 8, pouches 1–6: Fraud (inferno 18–23) :: 83
Circle 8, pouches 7–10: Fraud (inferno 24–30) :: 99
Circle 9: Treachery (inferno 31–34) :: 121
Changing Values? 135
Acknowledgments, 137
Note on Texts and Translations, 139
Bibliography, 141
Index, 149

Welcome to Danteworlds
we are in the midst of a mini renaissance in the cultural ap-
preciation of Dante’s poetic masterpiece, the Divine Comedy. Hardly
restricted to the rarefied air of higher education, this extraordinary
interest in Dante Alighieri, an Italian poet from the late Middle Ages
(1265–1321), is easily seen in the proliferation of new and recent
works—translations, biographies, even popular novels featuring Dante
or his poem—displayed on the shelves and Web sites of booksellers.
Naturally, this growing fascination with the man and his poem
inspires many readers to learn more about Dante’s world and the influ-
ences, events, and experiences out of which his vision of the afterlife
was born. To gain a better understanding of the Divine Comedy, inquisi-
tive readers (students and literature enthusiasts alike) most often rely
on explanatory notes accompanying the poem or on the occasional
book or essay written with a general audience in mind. The valuable
notes provided with translations are generally limited (due to lack of
space) to brief presentations of background information and concise
explanations of difficult passages. Translations are sometimes accom-
panied by a separate volume of commentary, usually aimed at a schol-
arly audience, but these notes, like those placed after each canto of the
poem or gathered together at the back of the book, still follow a strictly
textual order, commenting on the poem canto by canto, line by line.
Essays and book-length studies, while broader in scope and freer from
a rigid textual chronology, are perhaps most useful to Dante’s readers
after they have already worked through the Divine Comedy at least once
on their own or with a teacher and classmates.
Danteworlds takes a different approach. The project grew out of a
desire to meet two basic challenges facing college students who read
and discuss the Divine Comedy, in most cases for the first time, in the
Dante course I teach one or more times each year: first, to become ad-
equately familiar with the multitude of characters, creatures, events,
and ideas—drawn from ancient to medieval sources—that figure
prominently in the poem; second, to become adept at recalling who and
what appear where by creating and retaining a mental map of Dante’s
postmortem worlds. My own experience, and that of my students, sug-