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Dante's Inferno- God's Perfect Punishment

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Dante's Inferno- God's Perfect Punishment
God’s Perfect Punishment Dante Alighieri, an Italian poet, was born in Florence in 1265. The exact day of his birth and death is unknown. He was born into a noble family with a no fortune. He may have attended the University of Bologna, and around the age of twenty he married Gemma Donati, with her he had several children. He began writing poetry at a very young age. After he was exiled from Florence he wrote the epic poem, Divine Comedy. It is believed that some of the epic poem, of the Inferno was written about the people in his life that wronged him. Dante the poet creates Dante the character in the Inferno. Dante, the character, in the Fourth Bolgia is in an astonishing disbelief by the punishment of the sinners in the Eighth Circle of Hell. In Canto XX, Dante and Virgil journey through the Eighth Circle of Hell, the Fourth Bolgia with the sinners for Fortune Telling and Divining. Dante explains “Now I must turn strange torments into verse to form the matter of the twentieth canto of the first chant, the one about the damned. “ (1-3) Some of the damned in this Circle are: Manto, Amphiaraus, Theban, Tiresias, Aruns, Eurypylus, Michael Scot, Guido Bonatti, and Asdente. They will forever be in the Eighth Circle of Hell for attempting to look into the future. Their punishment tragically fits their crime. “Their heads are twisted completely around so that their hair flows down their fronts and their tears flow down to their buttocks.” (106) Dante who was brought to tears by their punishment described it as, “And when my gazed moved down below their faces, I saw all were incredibly distorted, the chin was not above the chest, the neck was twisted-their faces looked down on their backs; they had to move ahead by moving backward, for they never saw what was ahead of them. “ (10-15) These sinners who dared to look into the future will for all eternity be forced to move backwards. The most significant allusion is Tiresias daughter, Manto. Manto, a
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