Introduction to Western Literature, Lesson Four
Monday, January 30, 5th and 6th period
Professor Chaucer appears to have weathered the stormy weekend quite well. He's in good spirits, with a smile for each student as they enter. His lecture is given as he walks about the classroom.
The quiz that was scheduled for today will be given next week instead.
[LECTURE] Durante degli Alighieri, better known as Dante, was an Italian Florentine poet, born 1265 and died 1321. His greatest work, La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy), is considered the greatest literary statement produced in Europe in the medieval period, and the basis of the modern Italian language.
The Divine Comedy is composed of three canticas (or "cantiche"): Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise), composed respectively of 34, 33, and 33 cantos. The first cantica, Inferno, is by far the most famous of the three, and is often published separately under the title Dante's Inferno. As a part of the whole literary work, the first canto serves as an introduction to the entire Divine Comedy, making each of the canticas 33 cantos long. The number 3 is prominent in the work, represented here by the length of each cantica. Also, that they add up to 100 cantos is not accidental. The verse scheme used, terza rima, is the hendecasyllable (line of eleven syllables), with the lines composing tercets according to the rhyme scheme ABA BCB CDC . . . YZY Z.
The poet tells in the first person his travel through the three realms of the dead, lasting during Holy Week in the spring of 1300. His guide through Hell and Purgatory is the Latin poet Virgil, author of The Aeneid, and the guide through Paradise is Beatrice, Dante's ideal of a perfect woman. Beatrice was a real Florentine woman whom he apparently knew from childhood and admired from afar in the tradition of the then-fasionable courtly love tradition.
An interesting note: the last word in each of the three parts of The Divine Comedy is "stars".
The poem entitled Inferno begins on Holy Thursday of the year 1300, a significant holiday, "In the middle of our life's journey" (Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita). Dante is thirty-five years old, half of the biblically alloted age of 70 (Psalm 90:10), lost in a dark wood (perhaps allegorically, contemplating suicide--as "wood" is figured in canto XIII), assailed by beasts (a lion, leopard, and a she-wolf; allegorical depictions of temptations towards sin) he cannot evade, and unable to find the "straight way" (diritta via) to salvation (symbolized by the sun behind the mountain). Conscious that he is ruining himself, that he is falling into a "deep place" (basso loco) where the sun is silent ('l sol tace), Dante is at last rescued by Virgil after his love Beatrice intercedes on his behalf (Canto II), and he and Virgil begin their journey to the underworld.
Before entering Hell, Dante and his guide see the Opportunists, souls of those who in life did nothing, neither for good or evil. Mixed with them are the outcasts, who took no side in the Rebellion of Angels (among these Dante recognizes either Pope Celestine V, or Pontius Pilate; it is deliberately ambiguous). These souls are neither in Hell nor out of it, but reside on the shores of the Acheron, their punishment to eternally pursue a white banner (no cause), and be pursued by wasps and hornets that continually sting them.
Here they reach the ferry that will take them across the Acheron and to the Gate of Hell. The ferry is driven by Charon, who does not want to let Dante enter, for he is a living being. Their passage across is unknown since Virgil forces him to let them across, but Dante faints and does not awake until he is on the other side and approaches the Gate of Hell, on which is inscribed the famous phrase, "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate" or "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here". Dante and Virgil enter.
Virgil guides Dante through the nine circles of Hell. The circles are concentric, each new one representing further and further evil, culminating in the center of the earth, where Satan is held, bound. Each circle's sin is punished in an appropriately revengeful way to fit the crime. The nine circles are:
First Circle: Limbo - the unbaptized and virtuous pagans, who, though not sinful, did not accept Christ. They are not punished in an active sense, but are merely unable to reach Heaven and denied God's presence for eternity (Canto IV).
All of the condemned sinners are judged by Minos, who sentences each soul to one of the lower eight circles. These are structured according to the classical (Aristotelian) conception of virtue and vice, so that they are grouped into the sins of incontinence, violence, and fraud (which for many commentators are represented by the leopard, lion, and she-wolf respectively). The sins of incontinence - weakness in controlling one's desires and natural urges - are the mildest among them, and, correspondingly, appear first.
Second Circle: Those overcome by lust, trapped in a violent storm, never to touch each other again, featuring Francesca da Rimini and her lover Paolo (Canto V).
Third Circle: Gluttons, forced by Cerberus to lie in the mud under continual cold rain and hail (Canto VI).
Fourth Circle: The greedy, who hoarded possessions, and the indulgent, who squandered them, forced to push giant rocks in opposite directions (Canto VII).
Fifth Circle: The wrathful, fighting each other in the swamp-like water of the river Styx, and the slothful, trapped beneath the water (Canto VII).
The lower parts of hell are contained within the walls of the city of Dis, which is itself surrounded by the river Styx (Canto VIII-IX). These are the active (rather than passive) sins; first are the sins of violence. It is unclear whether the city of Dis encompases just the sixth circle or circles 6-9.
Sixth Circle: Heretics, trapped in flaming tombs (Cantos X and XI).
Seventh Circle: The violent (Cantos XII through XVII). These are divided into three rings:
Outer ring: The violent against people and property, in a river of boiling blood (Canto XII).
Middle ring: The violent against themselves-suicides -turned into thorny black trees. Uniquely amongst the dead, they will not be bodily reincarnated after the final judgment. Where others will continue to occupy Hell (and Heaven) in corporeal (rather than merely spiritual) form, suicides-because they alienated themselves from their own bodies-spend eternity in the body of a tree, their own corpses hanging from the limbs. Also punished in this circle are profligates, chased perpetually through the trees by ferocious dogs (Canto XIII). They are held here with the suicides because, during Dante's time, one's property is seen as an extension of one's physical body. Hence, doing violence to one's property is kin to suicide.
Inner ring: The violent against God, art, and nature-blasphemers, sodomites, and usurers-in a desert of flaming sand where fire rains from the sky (Cantos XIV through XVII).
The last two circles of Hell punish sins of malice, or sins of the intellect; that is, sins involving conscious fraud or treachery, and can only be reached by descending a vast cliff into the "pit" of Hell.
Eighth Circle: The fraudulent-those guilty of deliberate, knowing evil-are located in a circle named Malebolge (Cantos XVIII through XXX). This is divided into ten ditches:
Ditch 1: Panderers and seducers, running forever in opposite directions, whipped by demons (Canto XVIII).
Ditch 2: Flatterers, steeped in human excrement (Canto XVIII).
Ditch 3: Those who committed simony, placed head-first in holes, flames burning on the soles of their feet (Canto XIX).
Ditch 4: Sorcerers and false prophets, their heads put on their bodies backward, so they can only see what is behind them (Canto XX).
Ditch 5: Corrupt politicians (barrators), trapped in a lake of burning pitch (Cantos XXI and XXII).
Ditch 6: Hypocrites, made to wear brightly painted lead cloaks (Canto XXIII).
Ditch 7: Thieves, chased by venomous snakes and who, after being bitten by the venomous snakes, turn into snakes themselves and chase the other thieves in turn (Cantos XXIV and XXV).
Ditch 8: Fraudulent advisors, trapped in flames (Cantos XXVI and XXVII).
Ditch 9: Sowers of discord, whose bodies are ripped apart, then healed, only to be attacked again (Cantos XXVIII and XXIX).
Ditch 10: Falsifiers, i.e. alchemists, counterfeiters, perjurers, and impersonators. Each group is punished by being afflicted with a different type of disease (Cantos XXIX and XXX).
The passage to the Ninth Circle contains classical and Biblical giants (Canto 31). Dante and Virgil are lowered into the pit by Antaeus.
Ninth Circle. Traitors, distinguished from the "merely" fraudulent, in that their acts involve knowingly and deliberately betraying others, are frozen in a lake of ice known as Cocytus (Cantos XXXII through XXXIV). Each group of traitors is encased in ice to a different height, ranging from only the waist down to complete immersion. This is divided into four concentric zones:
Outer zone 1 (Caïna): Traitors to their kindred (Canto XXXII). Named for Cain.
Zone 2 (Antenora): Traitors to political entities, such as party, city, or country (Cantos XXXII and XXXIII), such as Count Ugolino. Named for Antenor of Troy, who, according to medieval tradition, betrayed his city to the Greeks.
Zone 3 (Ptolomæa): Traitors to their guests (Canto XXXIII). Named (probably) for Ptolemy, captain of Jericho, who invited Simon the High Priest and his sons to a banquet and there killed them. One of its inhabitants, Friar Alberigo, explains that sometimes a soul falls here before the time that Atropos (the Fate who cuts the thread of life) should send it. Their bodies on Earth are immediately possessed by a fiend.
Central zone 4 (Judecca): Traitors to their lords and benefactors (Canto XXXIV). This is the harshest section of Hell, containing Satan, waist deep in ice, who is eternally consuming the bodies of Brutus and Cassius for assassinating Julius Caesar, and the head of Judas Iscariot (the namesake of this zone) for betraying Jesus.
Satan is depicted with three heads, each chewing one of the former. His six wings beat as if he is trying to escape, but the icy wind that emanates only further ensures his imprisonment as well as all the others in the ring.
The two poets escape by climbing the ragged fur of Lucifer, passing through the center of the earth, emerging in the southern hemisphere just before dawn on Easter Sunday beneath a sky, studded with stars.
The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: Each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings. Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem, he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory (the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical).
The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines. What has made the poem as great as it is are its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination. The fact that he uses real characters allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description.
Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" added later in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar language of Italian, not Latin as one might expect for such a serious topic.
[DISCUSSION] Choose one of the nine circle of hell described by Dante and explain why you think he chose to situate that particular sin in that particular place in the sequence. For example, why are the slothful in the Fifth Circle, or thieves in the Eighth Circle? Do you agree with the sequencing Dante uses, or would you have ordered the offenses differently?
***Assignment for Next Week: Begin reading Julius Caesar. We'll be doing something other than the usual lecture next week, and the following week we'll have a guest speaker -- Professor Lyman.***
Don't forget to turn in your written assignment on Plato's Symposium, from last week's lesson.
[Lecture shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia. :)]
CLASS ROSTER
ihatedenmark
kawalsky
izzyalienqueen
kitty__fetish
lady_jessica_bg
apocalypsesoon
harried_potter
Auditing: gotcanewillpoke
Independent Study
future_visions
kikidelivers
Professor Chaucer appears to have weathered the stormy weekend quite well. He's in good spirits, with a smile for each student as they enter. His lecture is given as he walks about the classroom.
The quiz that was scheduled for today will be given next week instead.
[LECTURE] Durante degli Alighieri, better known as Dante, was an Italian Florentine poet, born 1265 and died 1321. His greatest work, La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy), is considered the greatest literary statement produced in Europe in the medieval period, and the basis of the modern Italian language.
The Divine Comedy is composed of three canticas (or "cantiche"): Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise), composed respectively of 34, 33, and 33 cantos. The first cantica, Inferno, is by far the most famous of the three, and is often published separately under the title Dante's Inferno. As a part of the whole literary work, the first canto serves as an introduction to the entire Divine Comedy, making each of the canticas 33 cantos long. The number 3 is prominent in the work, represented here by the length of each cantica. Also, that they add up to 100 cantos is not accidental. The verse scheme used, terza rima, is the hendecasyllable (line of eleven syllables), with the lines composing tercets according to the rhyme scheme ABA BCB CDC . . . YZY Z.
The poet tells in the first person his travel through the three realms of the dead, lasting during Holy Week in the spring of 1300. His guide through Hell and Purgatory is the Latin poet Virgil, author of The Aeneid, and the guide through Paradise is Beatrice, Dante's ideal of a perfect woman. Beatrice was a real Florentine woman whom he apparently knew from childhood and admired from afar in the tradition of the then-fasionable courtly love tradition.
An interesting note: the last word in each of the three parts of The Divine Comedy is "stars".
The poem entitled Inferno begins on Holy Thursday of the year 1300, a significant holiday, "In the middle of our life's journey" (Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita). Dante is thirty-five years old, half of the biblically alloted age of 70 (Psalm 90:10), lost in a dark wood (perhaps allegorically, contemplating suicide--as "wood" is figured in canto XIII), assailed by beasts (a lion, leopard, and a she-wolf; allegorical depictions of temptations towards sin) he cannot evade, and unable to find the "straight way" (diritta via) to salvation (symbolized by the sun behind the mountain). Conscious that he is ruining himself, that he is falling into a "deep place" (basso loco) where the sun is silent ('l sol tace), Dante is at last rescued by Virgil after his love Beatrice intercedes on his behalf (Canto II), and he and Virgil begin their journey to the underworld.
Before entering Hell, Dante and his guide see the Opportunists, souls of those who in life did nothing, neither for good or evil. Mixed with them are the outcasts, who took no side in the Rebellion of Angels (among these Dante recognizes either Pope Celestine V, or Pontius Pilate; it is deliberately ambiguous). These souls are neither in Hell nor out of it, but reside on the shores of the Acheron, their punishment to eternally pursue a white banner (no cause), and be pursued by wasps and hornets that continually sting them.
Here they reach the ferry that will take them across the Acheron and to the Gate of Hell. The ferry is driven by Charon, who does not want to let Dante enter, for he is a living being. Their passage across is unknown since Virgil forces him to let them across, but Dante faints and does not awake until he is on the other side and approaches the Gate of Hell, on which is inscribed the famous phrase, "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate" or "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here". Dante and Virgil enter.
Virgil guides Dante through the nine circles of Hell. The circles are concentric, each new one representing further and further evil, culminating in the center of the earth, where Satan is held, bound. Each circle's sin is punished in an appropriately revengeful way to fit the crime. The nine circles are:
First Circle: Limbo - the unbaptized and virtuous pagans, who, though not sinful, did not accept Christ. They are not punished in an active sense, but are merely unable to reach Heaven and denied God's presence for eternity (Canto IV).
All of the condemned sinners are judged by Minos, who sentences each soul to one of the lower eight circles. These are structured according to the classical (Aristotelian) conception of virtue and vice, so that they are grouped into the sins of incontinence, violence, and fraud (which for many commentators are represented by the leopard, lion, and she-wolf respectively). The sins of incontinence - weakness in controlling one's desires and natural urges - are the mildest among them, and, correspondingly, appear first.
Second Circle: Those overcome by lust, trapped in a violent storm, never to touch each other again, featuring Francesca da Rimini and her lover Paolo (Canto V).
Third Circle: Gluttons, forced by Cerberus to lie in the mud under continual cold rain and hail (Canto VI).
Fourth Circle: The greedy, who hoarded possessions, and the indulgent, who squandered them, forced to push giant rocks in opposite directions (Canto VII).
Fifth Circle: The wrathful, fighting each other in the swamp-like water of the river Styx, and the slothful, trapped beneath the water (Canto VII).
The lower parts of hell are contained within the walls of the city of Dis, which is itself surrounded by the river Styx (Canto VIII-IX). These are the active (rather than passive) sins; first are the sins of violence. It is unclear whether the city of Dis encompases just the sixth circle or circles 6-9.
Sixth Circle: Heretics, trapped in flaming tombs (Cantos X and XI).
Seventh Circle: The violent (Cantos XII through XVII). These are divided into three rings:
Outer ring: The violent against people and property, in a river of boiling blood (Canto XII).
Middle ring: The violent against themselves-suicides -turned into thorny black trees. Uniquely amongst the dead, they will not be bodily reincarnated after the final judgment. Where others will continue to occupy Hell (and Heaven) in corporeal (rather than merely spiritual) form, suicides-because they alienated themselves from their own bodies-spend eternity in the body of a tree, their own corpses hanging from the limbs. Also punished in this circle are profligates, chased perpetually through the trees by ferocious dogs (Canto XIII). They are held here with the suicides because, during Dante's time, one's property is seen as an extension of one's physical body. Hence, doing violence to one's property is kin to suicide.
Inner ring: The violent against God, art, and nature-blasphemers, sodomites, and usurers-in a desert of flaming sand where fire rains from the sky (Cantos XIV through XVII).
The last two circles of Hell punish sins of malice, or sins of the intellect; that is, sins involving conscious fraud or treachery, and can only be reached by descending a vast cliff into the "pit" of Hell.
Eighth Circle: The fraudulent-those guilty of deliberate, knowing evil-are located in a circle named Malebolge (Cantos XVIII through XXX). This is divided into ten ditches:
Ditch 1: Panderers and seducers, running forever in opposite directions, whipped by demons (Canto XVIII).
Ditch 2: Flatterers, steeped in human excrement (Canto XVIII).
Ditch 3: Those who committed simony, placed head-first in holes, flames burning on the soles of their feet (Canto XIX).
Ditch 4: Sorcerers and false prophets, their heads put on their bodies backward, so they can only see what is behind them (Canto XX).
Ditch 5: Corrupt politicians (barrators), trapped in a lake of burning pitch (Cantos XXI and XXII).
Ditch 6: Hypocrites, made to wear brightly painted lead cloaks (Canto XXIII).
Ditch 7: Thieves, chased by venomous snakes and who, after being bitten by the venomous snakes, turn into snakes themselves and chase the other thieves in turn (Cantos XXIV and XXV).
Ditch 8: Fraudulent advisors, trapped in flames (Cantos XXVI and XXVII).
Ditch 9: Sowers of discord, whose bodies are ripped apart, then healed, only to be attacked again (Cantos XXVIII and XXIX).
Ditch 10: Falsifiers, i.e. alchemists, counterfeiters, perjurers, and impersonators. Each group is punished by being afflicted with a different type of disease (Cantos XXIX and XXX).
The passage to the Ninth Circle contains classical and Biblical giants (Canto 31). Dante and Virgil are lowered into the pit by Antaeus.
Ninth Circle. Traitors, distinguished from the "merely" fraudulent, in that their acts involve knowingly and deliberately betraying others, are frozen in a lake of ice known as Cocytus (Cantos XXXII through XXXIV). Each group of traitors is encased in ice to a different height, ranging from only the waist down to complete immersion. This is divided into four concentric zones:
Outer zone 1 (Caïna): Traitors to their kindred (Canto XXXII). Named for Cain.
Zone 2 (Antenora): Traitors to political entities, such as party, city, or country (Cantos XXXII and XXXIII), such as Count Ugolino. Named for Antenor of Troy, who, according to medieval tradition, betrayed his city to the Greeks.
Zone 3 (Ptolomæa): Traitors to their guests (Canto XXXIII). Named (probably) for Ptolemy, captain of Jericho, who invited Simon the High Priest and his sons to a banquet and there killed them. One of its inhabitants, Friar Alberigo, explains that sometimes a soul falls here before the time that Atropos (the Fate who cuts the thread of life) should send it. Their bodies on Earth are immediately possessed by a fiend.
Central zone 4 (Judecca): Traitors to their lords and benefactors (Canto XXXIV). This is the harshest section of Hell, containing Satan, waist deep in ice, who is eternally consuming the bodies of Brutus and Cassius for assassinating Julius Caesar, and the head of Judas Iscariot (the namesake of this zone) for betraying Jesus.
Satan is depicted with three heads, each chewing one of the former. His six wings beat as if he is trying to escape, but the icy wind that emanates only further ensures his imprisonment as well as all the others in the ring.
The two poets escape by climbing the ragged fur of Lucifer, passing through the center of the earth, emerging in the southern hemisphere just before dawn on Easter Sunday beneath a sky, studded with stars.
The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: Each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings. Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem, he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory (the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical).
The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines. What has made the poem as great as it is are its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination. The fact that he uses real characters allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description.
Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" added later in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar language of Italian, not Latin as one might expect for such a serious topic.
[DISCUSSION] Choose one of the nine circle of hell described by Dante and explain why you think he chose to situate that particular sin in that particular place in the sequence. For example, why are the slothful in the Fifth Circle, or thieves in the Eighth Circle? Do you agree with the sequencing Dante uses, or would you have ordered the offenses differently?
***Assignment for Next Week: Begin reading Julius Caesar. We'll be doing something other than the usual lecture next week, and the following week we'll have a guest speaker -- Professor Lyman.***
Don't forget to turn in your written assignment on Plato's Symposium, from last week's lesson.
[Lecture shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia. :)]
CLASS ROSTER
ihatedenmark
kawalsky
izzyalienqueen
kitty__fetish
lady_jessica_bg
apocalypsesoon
harried_potter
Auditing: gotcanewillpoke
Independent Study
future_visions
kikidelivers