Study Guide for Dante's Divine Comedy

Introduction to Dante (PowerPoint Presentation)

Plan of Dante's Comedy

The Seven Deadly Sins

The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas

Internet resources

• The Princeton Dante Project
• Digital Dante and Columbia University
• The World of Dante at the University of Virginia
• Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America
• The structure of Dante's Inferno
• Take the Dante's Inferno Test.
  

Discussion Questions

Inferno, Cantos 1-4

• Compare Canto 1 to the opening of the Iliad or the Aeneid.  How is it different?
• Compare Dante's journey to the journeys taken by characters in Gilgamesh, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, and Augustine's Confessions.  How does Dante's appearance as the central character in the poem make it a different kind of epic?
• Dante encounters a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf in Canto 1.  What do you think these beasts symbolize, if anything?  Which animal seems to pose the greatest problem for Dante?
• What is the role of classical literature and culture in the Inferno?  Why does Dante have a pagan, Vergil, guide him through Hell, and not a Christian, like St. Paul or St. Augustine (who certainly has actual experience with many of the sins described in the poem)?
• Who are the women discussed in Canto 2?  What is their historical or symbolic significance?  What is their function in the poem?
• The "neutral angels" (Canto 3) are the product of Dante's poetic imagination, not orthodox Christian theology.  Why do you think he created them?
• Compare Dante's Underworld to Vergil's Underworld.  How is Dante's Charon different from Vergil's Charon in Aeneid 6?
• What kind of souls are in Limbo? (Canto 4) What is their defect (difetto)?

Inferno, Cantos 5-6, 10, 13

• Why do you think Dante makes lust a lesser sin than gluttony?  (NB: the sins encountered at the top of the slope are less horrible or offensive than the ones at the bottom, and the ones in between are arranged in a corresponding hierarchy from one to the other.)
• Paolo and Francesca (Canto 5) are some of the most attractive sinners in Hell.  What does Dante do, in a very short space, to make them real to us?  Why do you think he makes them so sympathetic (they are, after all, sinners)?
• What is the political theme of Canto 6?  How does it relate to Dante's own political experiences?
• Look up "epicurean" in a good dictionary.  What kind of sin is this?
• Describe the relationship between Farinata and Cavalcante.  What do you learn about Florentine politics from the exchange between Farinata and Dante?
• Why are the Violent against Themselves (suicides) punished the way they are?  Remember that in Dante's system the sin itself is a form of punishment.
• Does Pier della Vigne use language in a way that seems peculiar to you?  What does his manner of speaking tell you about him as a person?

Inferno, Cantos 14-15, 21-22

• Who is Brunetto Latini and what is his message to Dante?
• How does Dante depict the Grafters (or "barrators" in the Durling translation) in cantos 21-22? What kind of people are they?  What kinds of names do the demons in charge of them have? Is their sin more immediate to modern readers than others discussed by Dante?  How do the Grafters affect Dante?

Inferno, Cantos 26-27

• How is Dante's Ulysses different from Homer's Odysseus?
• Guido da Montefeltro is guilty of the same sin as Ulysses--but how is he a different kind of person?

Inferno, Cantos 32-34

• What sin is punished in the lowest level of Hell?  Why do you think Dante's considers this to be the worst sin?  How are these sinners punished?
• Why does the lowest part of Hell look like?  Does the landscape surprise you?  What did you expect?  How is it an appropriate place for punishing the sinners who are found here?
• Ugolino is one of the last sinners examined in detail in the Inferno.  What kind of commentary on extreme evil is Dante making in his depiction of Ugolino?  What does Dante's description of Ugolino contribute to the poem's political theme?
• What does Dante's Lucifer look like?  How is he placed at the bottom of the slope?  Is there anything about Dante's Lucifer that surprises you?

Purgatorio Cantos 30-31

• Why does Vergil vanish?  When Dante weeps at the loss of Vergil, what does Beatrice say to him?
• What are the three Virtues Dante encounters and what do they help him achieve?

Paradiso Cantos 3, 31-33

• What kinds of things is Piccarda eager to discuss?  What subjects is she more modest about?
• What is the final simile of the poem, and what does it suggest about Dante's poetic project?