Inferno

One of the most profoundly influential works in all of literature, the Inferno by Italian poet Dante Alighieri helped to change the language of poetry and shaped people’s ideas about the afterlife. As the first section of the long narrative poem The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–21), it is composed of three sections (or canticles) written in Italian. The Divine Comedy traces Dante’s fictional journey from darkness and error to the revelation of the divine light, culminating in his beatific vision of God. The Inferno follows Dante, accompanied by the shade of the Roman poet Virgil, through Hell, where he witnesses a harrowing roster of the damned and their gruesome punishments. After navigating Hell, Dante journeys through Purgatory and Heaven, which are treated in the sections Purgatorio and Paradiso, respectively.

The Inferno in particular occupies an enduring place in the cultural and religious imagination. Dante’s “circles of Hell” (and their sinful denizens) have inspired many artists, finding their way into works as varied as the paintings of English Romantic artist and poet William Blake, the sculptures of French sculptor Auguste Rodin, the poetry of Irish poet Seamus Heaney, and the irreverent humor of American pop culture.

The Inferno’s function as a story in its own right is reflected in the structure of The Divine Comedy. It is composed of 100 cantos, which constitute the major divisions of an epic or another kind of long narrative poem. There are 33 cantos in each of the three sections of The Divine Comedy, plus an additional canto—that is, the prologue of the Inferno.