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    The Inferno Companion (Includes Study Guide, Historical Context, and Character Index)
    The Inferno Companion (Includes Study Guide, Historical Context, and Character Index)
    The Inferno Companion (Includes Study Guide, Historical Context, and Character Index)
    Ebook69 pages35 minutes

    The Inferno Companion (Includes Study Guide, Historical Context, and Character Index)

    By BookCaps

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    About this ebook

    Dante’s “Inferno” is a true classic that people have appreciated for over a hundred years. The fact that it is a classic doesn’t mean every reader will breeze through it with no problem at all. If you need just a little more help with Dante's classic, then let BookCaps help with this simplified study guide!

    This annotated edition contains a comprehension study of Dante's classic work (including chapter summaries for every chapter, and an overview of themes and characters). This edition does not include the novel.

    We all need refreshers every now and then. Whether you are a student trying to cram for that big final, or someone just trying to understand a book more, BookCaps can help. We are a small, but growing company, and are adding titles every month.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookCaps
    Release dateMay 7, 2013
    ISBN9781301092550
    The Inferno Companion (Includes Study Guide, Historical Context, and Character Index)
    Author

    BookCaps

    We all need refreshers every now and then. Whether you are a student trying to cram for that big final, or someone just trying to understand a book more, BookCaps can help. We are a small, but growing company, and are adding titles every month.Visit www.bookcaps.com to see more of our books, or contact us with any questions.

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      Book preview

      The Inferno Companion (Includes Study Guide, Historical Context, and Character Index) - BookCaps

      Introduction

      In a nutshell, Inferno is an epic poem in which Dante, the writer of the story, is forced to travel through Hell, taking an elaborate tour, with the ghost of another ancient poet for a tour guide. It’s the first of a trilogy, the Divine Comedy. In the other two parts of the Comedy, Dante must continue through the other two divine realms before he can go home—Purgatory and Heaven.

      The word Comedy in the title doesn’t mean the epic poem is meant to be funny. It means it’s not a tragedy. In other words, in classical literature, the word comedy means the story has a happy ending.

      That said, a lot of Inferno is very tragic. We see all kinds of sinners being tormented and tortured throughout the poem, many of whom are famous people from history or myth. But, when Inferno ends, Dante moving on to Purgatory, There is a feeling of things getting better and better with each installment. That’s why it can be called a comedy.

      Before we look deeply into the characters and individual cantos of this poem, let’s take a broad look at Inferno with a general summary of the plot.

      Plot Summary

      Inferno begins with Dante in a deep and dark valley. He doesn’t really know how he came to be there, and he just wants to get back home. But, he encounters several wild animals that block his path. The ghost of the Roman poet Virgil arrives to tell Dante that he can’t get passed the animals to get home the short way. In fact, the only way for Dante to get home is to tour Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. In fact, the Virgin Mary herself has assigned Virgil to help Dante get through the first part of his trip: Hell.

      And so, these two heroes begin a journey that lasts the entire rest of the poem. They start off by travelling through Limbo, the first circle of Hell, the dwelling place where people lived before Christ and, therefore, couldn’t be saved.

      In the second circle, lustful sinners are tormented by great storms. Dante meets a woman named Francesca da Rimini there, who had an affair with her husband’s brother.

      In the third circle, gluttons are made to suffer under a freezing rain. They meet Ciacco, a man from Florence, just like Dante.

      In the forth circle, the greedy and the wasteful push heavy wheels around in circles, eternally insulting each other along the way.

      In the fifth circle, the Wrathful fight in the muddy river Styx, while the Sullen are buried forever deep below the surface of the mud.

      They next reach the gates of the city of Dis, where the sinners refuse to allow Dante and Virgil to pass. An angel must be sent to repel the sinners and let them through. Once inside the city, and also the sixth circle, Dante sees Heretics trapped in fiery tombs.

      In the seventh circle, the Violent are punished. Virgil explains the Dante that all the sins he’s seen so far result from a lack of self control. But violence is a second, and worse, kind of sin. And there are different kinds of violence and different kinds of fraud.

      So the eighth and ninth circles are dedicated to different kinds of fraud.

      They cross into the eighth circle by riding on the back of a great beast named Geryon. This circle has ten pouches, and the travelers visit each kind of fraud separately. In each pouch, a very different kind of punishment is seen. In the fifth pouch, for example, sinners are submerged in a river of boiling pitch. If they come up for a little relief from the pitch, demons with long pitchforks run to them and stab them again and again. In the ninth pouch, those that caused scandal and division are constantly cut by a demon with a sharp sword. They then heal and are

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