Dante's Inferno What is it?
What is Dante's Inferno? Inferno (The Italian word for "Hell") is the first part of Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy. It is an allegory telling of the journey of Dante through what is largely the medieval concept of Hell, guided by the Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine circles of suffering located within the Earth. Allegorically, the Divine Comedy represents the journey of the soul towards God, with the Inferno describing the recognition and rejection of sin. The poem begins on the day before Good Friday in the year of our Lord 1300 A.D. The narrator, is Dante himself. At the tim, he is thirty-five years old, and thus "halfway along life's path"—that is, half of the Biblical life expectancy of seventy (See Psalm 90:10). The poet finds himself lost in a dark wood in front of a mountain, assailed by three beasts he cannot evade, and unable to find the "straight way" —also translatable as "right wa