OVERVIEW
Dante's Inferno, widely hailed as one of the great classics of Western literature, details Dante's journey through the nine circles of Hell. The voyage begins during Easter week in the year 1300, the descent through Hell starting on Good Friday. After meeting his guide, the eminent Roman poet Virgil, in a mythical dark wood, the two poets begin their descent through a baleful world of doleful shades, horrifying tortures, and unending lamentation. LEARNING OBJECTIVES
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Portrait of Dante, Sandro Boticelli (ca. 1495)
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LITERARY TEXTS
Poetry
INFORMATIONAL TEXT
Poetry
- Inferno (Cantos 1-13, 26, 31-34) from Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy
INFORMATIONAL TEXT
- The Ingredients of Medieval Philosophy (article)
Online Resources
- Princeton Dante Project: Educational website that offers new verse translations of the poem, texts of Dante's minor works, recitation of the poem in Italian, and historical and interpretive notes.
- Digital Dante: Digital Dante, a venue for research and ideas on Dante, is managed by a group of affiliates with Columbia University’s Department of Italian.
- The World of Dante: A multi-media research tool intended to facilitate the study of the Divine Comedy through a wide range of offerings, including an encoded Italian text that allows for structured searches and analyses, an English translation, interactive maps, diagrams, music, a database, timeline, and gallery of images. Website is sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Technologies in the Humanities (University of Virginia).
- Danteworlds: An integrated multimedia journey -- combining artistic images, textual commentary, and audio recordings -- through the three realms of the afterlife (Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise) presented in Dante's Divine Comedy.
- Dartmouth Dante Project: A searchable full-text database containing more than 70 commentaries on Dante's Divine Comedy.
TERMINOLOGY
Allegory
Allusion Canto Cantica |
Contrapasso
Epic simile Ghibelline Guelph |
Imagery
Stanza Terza rima Vernacular |
IMAGE GALLERY
MAPS OF HELL (INFERO)
GEOGRAPHY OF MOUNT PURGATORY (PURGATORIO)
SPHERES OF PARADISE (PARADISO)
VIDEO GALLERY.
Why You Should Read Dante's Divine Comedy
Shelia Marie Orfano (TEDEd)
Shelia Marie Orfano (TEDEd)