General Advice: Read each canto through. Then read the notes at the back. Then reread the canto. Each canto is only about 100 lines. If you do as recommended for Cantos I through V, you will still read less than you would for ONE book of the Aeneid.

Canto I

1. How is the opening of the Inferno similar to the opening of the Aeneid? How different?

2. How do you interpret the allegory of the leopard, the lion, and the wolf? Why can’t Dante get past them? Why must he find an alternative route? (25-39)

3. How can you tell that there is a difference between Dante the pilgrim and Dante the poet?

What is that difference?

4. Why is Virgil Dante’s guide? (89)

Canto II

1. Who is Beatrice, and why does she summon Virgil to help Dante find his way out of the dark wood?

Canto III

1. Why do you think Hell’s Gate has over it the inscription, "Abandon all hope, you who enter here"?

2. What resemblances do the regions decribed here bear to the underworld described in Book VI of the Aeneid?

3. Why does the world not remember those who "chose neither side"? (33-40)

4. How does Virgil demonstrate a pagan perspective? Is he too harsh a judge, when he says, "look and pass on"? (44)

5. Look at the punishment that the waverers receive (45-57) In what sense is this punishment appropriate for the crime they committed? Dante’s word for this is "contrapasso."

6. Why is it that Charon won’t ferry Dante across the river Acheron?

Canto IV

This is the region of the unbaptized and the virtuous pagans. In this first circle of Hell there is no punishment except that souls here will never know God.

1. What is significant about Dante being greeted by poets like Homer and Ovid in Limbo? (82)

2. Where does Dante find Aeneas and Hector? Why? (106)

Canto V

This is the second circle, where actual punishment begins.

1. What do you make of Dante the Pilgrim’s sympathy for Francesca?

2. Are we supposed to agree with him? How can you tell?

Canto VI (3rd Circle)

1. What future can the damned look forward to? 94-101

Canto VII (4th Circle)

1. How does Dante adapt the epic simile for his purposes? 11-13, 20-23

2. How can Fortune be considered a force for good? 68-9

3. What do avarice and anger have in common?

Canto VIII (Approaching the City of Dis)

1. Why does Virgil praise Dante for being cruel to one of the souls stuck in the Styx, biting at his own body? 34-43, 51-60

2. Why does Virgil fail to enter Dis? 109-124, IX. 32

Canto IX (Still trying to get into Dis)

1. Why must Virgil cover Dante’s eyes in the presence of Gorgon? 49-56

Canto X (Inside Dis)

1. Why does this canto create such a confusing sense of time?

Canto XI (Map of Hell)

1. Why is fraud worse than violence? 22-27

2. Why is suicide worse than homicide? 37-42

3. Why is betrayal worse than theft? 58-61

4. What’s wrong with Mastercard charging interest on loans (i.e., usury)? 99-107

Cantos xii-xiv: circle 7: violence vs. others, self, God (3 rings)

1. Why do you think Dante considers suicide worse than murder?

Canto xv: third ring, continued

1. Why is Dante’s revered teacher, Brunetto Latini, not allowed ever to stop moving? (34-35)

2. Is there a tension here between what the pilgrim and the poet think of Latini? (118-121)

Canto xvi: third ring continued

Canto xvii: Geryon provides transportation down to the eighth circle

1. What is the significance of the physical appearance of Geryon? 9-24

2. Why are usurers deeper in Hell than murderers? 38-45

3. How does Dante freighten us with the account of his ride on Geryon? 90-127

Canto xviii: circle 8: Malebolge: 10 Evil pockets, connected by bridges: Fraud

1st Malebolge: Pimps and Seducers

2nd Malebolge: Flatterers and Whores: Why is a prostitute punished with the flatterers?

Canto xix: Malebolge 3: Simonists (who sold ecclesiastical offices): Popes

Canto xx: Malebolge 4: Soothsayers (heads reversed): Tiresias

1. Why does Virgil rebuke Dante as he looks at the distorted shapes of soothsayers? 19-49

Canto xxi: Malebolge 5: Swindlers (devils poke at them, hurl them off bridge)

1. What is the effect of the simile of ship-caulking? 6-18

2. What makes this canto comic? 48 ff.

3. Do you like Malacoda?

Canto xxii: Malebolge 5 (continued)

1. What is the purpose of the slap-stick comedy in this canto?

2. Why do you think Dante uses similes here? (the dolphin and the frog, 27-48)

3. Why is it that one of the damned gets to outwit his tormenting devil?

Canto XXIII: 6th Bolgia: Hypocrites

1. Why do you think Virgil, the representative of reason and wisedom, succumbs to Anger in this Canto?

Canto XXIV: 7th Bolgia: Thieves in metamorphosis

1. Why does Dante begin this canto with a long epic simile about a peasant?

2. What is particularly fitting about the thieves’ punishment? 94-104

Canto XXV: 7th Bolgia (continued)

1. Why does Vanni Fucci give God the finger?

2. What is most significant about the metamorphosis the thieves go through here?

Canto XXVI: 8th Bolgia: Deceivers: Ulysses and Diomed imprisoned in flame.

1. Why do you think Dante alters Homer’s happy ending of the Odyssey to have Ulysses (Odysseus) go down in a storm at sea? Does it remind you of the storm at the beginning of the Aeneid?

Canto XXVII: 8th Bolgia (continued)

1. What do you think T.S. Eliot saw in Guido da Montefeltro that made him want to quote five lines of his speech (59-64) at the beginning of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"?

Canto XXVIII: 9th Bolgia Sowers of scandal and schism

1. In the descriptions of Mohanned and Ali, do you think Dante crosses the line to porno violence? (22-40)

2. As Bertran de Born, who carries his own severed head like a lantern, speaks, do you think he expresses regret for turning father and son against each other? 112-127

Canto XXIX: 10th Bolgia: Falsifiers

1. Why do you think Dante presents falsifiers as lepers madly scratching sores? 80-91

Canto XXX: 10th Bolgia continued

1. What is the point of having Sinon, the Greek who deceived the Trojans about the horse, get caught up in a dispute with another sinner about whose crime was worse? 114-151

Canto XXXI: The giant Antaeus deposits the pilgrims on the lake of ice, Cocytus.

1. According to Dante, why is it a good thing we no longer have giants, even though we do have whales and elephants? 45-54

2. Why is the giant Antaues willing and able to help Virgil and Dante get to the bottom? 123-4

Canto XXXII: 9th Circle: First Division: Caina: treachery to kin (Paolo and Francesca’s murderer); Second Division: Antenora treachery to city or country.

1. Why is Count Ugolino so unforgettable? 125-139

Canto XXXIII: 9th Circle continued: Third Division: Tolomea: treachery to guests

1. How does Dante use Ugolino’s eating habits to capture our imaginations? 1-3, 74-75

2. What does this remark mean: "And then the hunger had more/ Power than even sorrow had over me"? 80-81

3. What clues do Dante’s remarks about Ugolino’s captors give us about where in Hell he might put the child abusers Ivan describes in "Rebellion"?

Canto XXXIV: 9th Circle continued: the center: Judecca: treachery to lords and benefactors.

1. Why is Lucifer (Dis, Satan) crying? 54

2. Is the presentation of Satan an anti-climax?

3. Why must Virgil carry Dante on his back as they scale the hairy legs of Satan? 69

4. Why must the pilgrims climb down/up Satan’s actual body in order to escape from Hell? 81-83

General Questions

1. Do you consider either Homer or Dante gratuitously violent?

2. Does Dante use similes and other comparisons with the every-day world in the same way that Virgil and Homer do (to make the unfamiliar more familiar, to contrast the world of peace with the world of punishment, to intensify our reactions), or is he doing something different? What would that be?

3. What do you think is the most important thing Dante learned from Virgil? What do you think Virgil could have learned from Dante?

4. Is the very ending of the Inferno a disappointment?

5. Is the path to virtue easier from Dante’s perspective than it was from Virgil’s? from Homer’s?