The opening proem (a prefatory poem) to Inferno, Canto XIX. We change gears dramatically from Canto XVIII. We can see the tonal shift while still understanding that the question of pimps, prostitutes, seducers, flatterers, and metamorphosis in Canto XVIII are still with us here, at the beginning of the canto about the damned popes.

Two flatterers, covered with human excrement in the second evil pouch of the eighth circle of hell, the circle of fraud. This passage would be quite straightforward except for two weird things: both of the damned are garbled, one by history and one by literary textuality. Is this garbling intentional in the circle of the flatterers? Or is our “divine” poet as fallible as the rest of us?

Entering the second of the evil pouches of fraud in the eighth circle of hell! Dante and Virgil are crossing along the spiny ridge to see a moldy pit filled with the muck from human privies. This passage is without a doubt the most disgusting in COMEDY—at least, so far. And how could it be otherwise? The sins are getting more human. So the language is getting coarser.

Virgil takes over—and becomes enamored with Jason, one of the seducers in the first evil pouch of the eighth circle of hell. Is Virgil overcome? Is he a reliable guide? Or is Jason with Hypsipyle and Medea just a little too much like Virgil’s Aeneas and Dido?

Pimps and fraud: what do they have in common? They both attempt to turn the good things into the world into something foul for the sake of money. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I explore the damned in the first of the evil pouches, the “Malebolge” of the eighth circle of Dante’s INFERNO.

Our first old-school demons! But more than that, a strange passage that may have some garbled details (intentionally so or not?). And that has a historical analogy about Pope Boniface VIII’s Jubilee Year of 1300 that may be more snark than sanctified imagery.

Welcome to the Eighth Circle of hell, the biggest single landscape in all of INFERNO: the circle of fraud. Our poet opens this circle in a whole new direction: an objective point of view that fuses an inverted (or perverted) castle with a spiderweb to illustrate what fraud does to human society. But maybe more is going on here? Is the poem becoming more self-conscious? Or just more fraudulent?

A look back over the seventh circle of INFERNO—that is, over Cantos XII through XVII. We’ve been among the violent for almost forty episodes of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE. What structural and thematic devices does Dante use to unify these cantos? And what are some of the unanswered questions?

Geryon’s flight: an imaginative tour de force. But there’s more here. How can this unnatural act of flying be described in the middle of a canto about those who sin against art, the usurers. Is the poet hedging his bets? Or winking at us from behind the text? Either way, he offers us tragic examples of overreach in a canto in which he imagines flight that ends with a minor comedic ending halfway through INFERNO.

Our beast of fraud is named: Geryon! Except doing so just makes things more confusing. Or more modern. Because this passage shows off the poet Dante as a forerunner of modern narrative in so many ways. Dante truly stands in the gap between the ancient and modern worlds. He’s not medieval. He’s transitional!

The usurers, out on the precipice of the seventh circle of hell, the end of the violent, overlooking the fraudulent far below. There are so many gaps and open spaces in this, the most colorful moment in Dante’s INFERNO. And so many questions, mostly because the very bones of the masterpiece’s poetic technique are being exposed.

Classical poetry has to negotiate with fraud to complete the journey to hell, so the modern pilgrim is sent off on his own at the lip of violence. There’s so much at stake for the poetics, structure, and symbolism in this strange passage from INFERNO, Canto XVII.

Behold the beast of fraud! And behold INFERNO, canto XVII, in which Dante, having sworn on his COMEDY that he really saw this thing, goes silent. In which Virgil takes over. And in which the poetic techniques become more elaborate and more aesthetically pleasing. The beast of fraud brings on the poetry. Naturally.

A meta episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE—and perhaps a personal confession, too. Here’s my own overview of COMEDY—or perhaps the overview of the way I idiosyncratically read (that is, interpret) Dante’s masterwork COMEDY. It’s an overview of the writerly strategies as a whole and a clue to my own obsessions with the poetics of this work.

The most meta bit of poetry yet in INFERNO. Dante the poet steps out from behind the plot and names his own work—and swears on this COMEDY that he really saw the beast of fraud in his walk across hell. It doesn’t get more fraudelent than that!

Dante the poet is rewriting COMEDY as Dante the pilgrim is providing the raw material only a classical poet can straighten out. COMEDY is getting more complicated, more meta by the line. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, for an exploration of this tough passage from Inferno, Canto XVI, on WALKING WITH DANTE.

Dante finally replies to his political heroes. He does two incredible things. He refuses to pick up the game of courtesy and disdain. And instead of anger at his dashed hopes, he comes to a place of sadness and human connection. This is a fundamental change in the pilgrim. And he sees the journey ahead clearly for the first time.