Prepare for Next Week
View more in A Hell of a City: Dante’s Inferno on the Road to Rome | Hell’s Vineyard (Inferno 13)
Read Inferno 18 and Inferno 27.
Reading Questions:
1. Identify the location in the map of Hell of the sinners and describe the punishments of the sinners in these two cantos. How do the locations in the Inferno express something about the nature of fraud, and how do the punishments, or contrapassos, express the nature of the specific sins punished in these cantos?
2. How do you interpret the significance of the simile of the Jubilee bridge in Inferno 18, lines 25-33, where the sinners in the first pouch are compared to the pilgrims to Rome?
3. Analyze the speech of the false counselor Guido da Montefeltro in Inferno 27, lines 58-132. What are some of the key rhetorical figures and expressions that reveal Guido’s personality and his sin?
4. Analyze carefully Inferno 27, lines 94-99, in which Guido compares himself and Boniface VIII to Constantine and Pope Sylvester. What’s wrong with this picture?