Rather than picking apart a single passage from Dante’s COMEDY, this episode presents the entirety of the fifth circle of INFERNO, the wrathful. We’ve already had three episodes on this circle—and we’ll have more to come. But right here, I’d like to stop and read you the entire story. Because storytelling is becoming the point!

The fifth circle. The wrathful. Except where are the damned? Not here. Instead, this passage is full of all sorts of problems: it opens with a scene of interpreting, it leads out to a rather obscure figure from classical literature, and it finishes up by putting the pilgrim firmly in his body. Dante-the-poet is never satisfied. His art is ever-changing. And it’s finally settled into the very thing that will make it last: storytelling.

Here’s the problem: there are no manuscripts of COMEDY in Dante’s hand. So what do we have? And can we trust it? Here’s my brief history on the problems of manuscript transmission for Dante’s masterwork. Sure, it’s a bit in the weeds. But weeds can be fascinating!

The famous break! It’s at this point that many see a stop-restart in the poem. True, it does back up, just about the only time the poem does. And true, Boccaccio tried to explain the break with a story. But perhaps we don’t need his story. Perhaps we can understand the shifting dynamics of the poem the poet needs to write by looking at the poem itself and how it carries on from this point.

We descend a full level while still in a canto! After the avaricious (and the prodigal spenders), the pilgrim and his guide scramble down to the next circle of hell: the wrathful. Or really, the wrathful in their two states, a perversion of some pretty standard medieval imagery. But also this section of the canto is stocked with gorgeous, naturalistic imagery. The poem is settling into its stride—despite the fact that it’s breaking the walls of the cantos.

After we’ve seen the ones who hoard and the ones who spend too much, Virgil steps back and offers a boiler-plate sermon straight out of Boethius’ THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY. But maybe that sermon’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Maybe the poet has left us some hints that there’s more afoot here than may first meet the eye.

The clergy. Avarice. And Aristotle, too. It’s all packed into this dense passage from Canto VII of INFERNO. I’ve got some thoughts on the anti-clerical nature of some passage of COMEDY. And some further thoughts on why Dante-the-pilgrim doesn’t seem to recognize anyone in the fourth circle of hell.

The fourth circle. The great enemy. But more questions than we can imagine. Who is this blocking figure at the entrance to the circle? What’s he saying? Why’s he so easily put down? And why does Virgil have such a grip on Christian theology all of a sudden? So many questions—with no time to answer them as we’re hoisted up to get a bird’s-eye view of an entire circle of hell for the first time in the poem.

Dante the pilgrim and Virgil walk on among the gluttons discussing the only thing possible: the last judgment and the resurrection of the body.

Dante the pilgrim and Virgil have made it to the 3rd circle of INFERNO, the gluttons, where they encounter a surprising future-teller in the rancid muck.

Dante, our pilgrim, comes upon Ciacco, the emblematic glutton, who gives us readers more questions than answers in this passage from The Divine Comedy.

The third circle of hell: the gluttons, a dumbfounded Dante, a snarling Cerberus, and Virgil, who rewrites his own epic, The Aeneid.

Long seen as one of the oiliest sinners, maybe Francesca is much more: a character who escapes not only the pilgrim, but Dante himself, her creator.

In Inferno, Canto V, we meet the first great sinner: Francesca (and her lover Paolo). In this episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE, I’ll build a case against Francesca, showing her to be the gravest threat yet to our pilgrim as he walks across the known universe.

Dante asked Virgil who's out on the wind. Virgil answers with a list of the "great" souls on the wind--but much more: a surprising redefinition of lust.

We've left Minos behind and stepped into the winds of lust: a relentless storm that provokes a gorgeous simile as the pilgrim stares into this abyss.

In this interpolated episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE, I’ll introduce a historical overview of the deadly sins: why these sins? And why are there seven of them? Who decided which sins “count”? And how does that affect Dante’s art?

The second circle of Dante's INFERNO--a stranger place than the last, with a sure judge who might even be able to tell the truth about Virgil.

Why has Dante's THE DIVINE COMEDY lasted 700 years? Its architecture, its invitation to multiplicity, and its very human motivation: love.

We finally come to the crowd in Limbo's castle: a great list of warriors, thinkers, writers, geometers, physicians, and (yes) Islamic writers.