By Peter Celano, with quotations from Inferno translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Midway upon his journey in life, Dante wrote a powerful little book about hell. No one had ever created such an elaborate architecture for the underworld before. The result shocked Dante’s contemporaries – and still inspires fear and mystery in those who read it today. This brief introduction to the text will introduce you to 50 faces of those who appear in Dante’s hell, to discover what the world looks like without grace, love, and mercy.
This short, informative “tour” of Dante’s Hell introduces some of the most important people to be found there, including Cassius and Brutus, who appeared famously in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar; Pope Celestine V, the one who quit; and of course, Virgil, the author of The Aeneid, who served as Dante’s personal guide.
While this poetic tour of the unfortunate afterlife was first published 700 years ago, this book explains its twists and turns to you, today. Follow along, and in a brief amount of time you will see where Virgil and Dante go, the meaning behind the circles of Hell, and the faces one meets along the way.
