As Dante and Virgil move toward the ninth evil pouch (or malebolge) of fraud in Inferno’s eighth circle, the poet Dante seems to begin to rethink the cost of empire. The wreckage of empire is the body in pain, even Muslim bodies. And the body in pain makes and unmakes language and the world it expresses.

Ulysses and Guido da Montefeltro: two of the most compelling and brilliant characters in Dante’s INFERNO. Since they’re down in the same pit (the eighth of the malebolge or evil pouches of fraud), here’s a comparison and contrast of these two overwhelming shades.

The demonic struggle for Guido da Montefeltro’s soul at his death. Saint Francis is bested by a demon. Does that seem right? And Minos makes another appearance in Dante’s INFERNO, despite having been forgotten among the barrators.

Guido da Montefeltro offers his (self-)justification for his life: a masterpiece in subterfuge and blame avoidance. He tells a tale of his own innocence from the eighth of the evil pouches (the malebolge) that make up the deep, eighth circle of fraud in Dante’s INFERNO.

An interview with J. Simon Harris on his new translation of INFERNO. And his own reading of Guido da Montefeltro’s self-serving and self-damning speech in INFERNO, Canto XXVII, lines 58 - 129.

The mercenary Guido da Montefeltro is more interested in the politics of his home region of Romagna than he is of the torments he’s enduring. Dante the pilgrim gives him an earful, guaranteed to irritate and flatter him, all in the bloodbath of central Italy as it slides into tyranny.

Ulysses leaves and a second flame shows up in the eighth of the malebolge, the evil pouches that make up the giant eighth circle of fraud in Dante’s INFERNO. We’re leaving tragedy for comedy. We’re leaving the global or universal for the local or the provincial. As always with Dante.

Although Dante damns Ulysses to the INFERNO, we needn’t. In fact, there’s a case to be made for him in his own words. He is the forefather of us, modern humans. And he is the forerunner of Dante, our poet.

Dante puts Ulysses far down in Inferno. But do we have to? Especially given the gorgeous poetics and rousing rhetoric of his monologue? Perhaps. Here’s an episode of WALKING WITH DANTE in which I build the case against Ulysses by using his own words as found in Dante’s masterpiece, COMEDY.

In the first of three episodes on Ulysses’ glorious monologue in Dante’s INFERNO, we’ll take apart some of the plot knots that might now be clear, look at the construction of the monologue, and explore its absurdly gorgeous poetry.

Dante and Virgil have a bit of a contest to see who will speak to Ulysses and Diomedes. Virgil wins, and then uses a combination of flattery and self-aggrandizement to get Ulysses to finally speak and tell what no one could possible know: how did Ulysses die?

Our first introduction to one of the great sinners of Dante’s INFERNO: Ulysses. Dante is relying on a host of classical and even Christian sources to bring forward the character of one of the most revered figures from classical literature—and to put him in hell among the fraudsters.

We get our first vision of the eighth of the evil pouches (the malebolge) in the circle of fraud in Dante’s INFERNO with a couple of messy metaphors, a bumbling pilgrim, and an almost useless Virgil. What seems like a simple passage is anything but! No wonder Dante’s COMEDY is worth a slow walk.

Between the thieves and the next sinners in the next pouch of Inferno’s giant landscape of fraud, Dante the pilgrim has to scramble up rocks while Dante the poet pauses to explain his growing notion of what his poetics are. How can he continue to write the poem ahead of him?

We’ve come through some tough passages in INFERNO, particularly in the pit of the thieves. Why should we keep wrestling with Dante’s poem? What’s he up to? And how can we understand that his issues mirror our own?

The seventh of the malebolge in the vast circle of fraud is one of the most difficult passages in Dante’s INFERNO. I have way more questions than answers, but here’s an overview of the evil pouch, the thieves, and their metamorphoses.

The conclusion of the long episode among the thieves in the seventh of the evil pouches, the “malebolge” that make up fraud’s eighth circle of hell. We come down to slippery identities, uncertain poetics, and for-sure prophetic judgments on Florence: a complicated ending to a complicated set of passages.

The third metamorphosis of the thieves: the most complicated, the most overtly literary, and the most challenging in terms of its implications for Dante’s poetics. In the seventh of the evil pouches, the malebolge of fraud, Dante may finally confront his own fears so he can move on and write the poem he wants to write.

The third metamorphosis in the seventh of the malebolge, the evil pit of the thieves in the eighth circle of hell, the vast landscape of fraud. This one’s an overt challenge to Lucan and Ovid. And maybe to the nature of creation itself.

In the last episode of this podcast, we explicated the second metamorphosis in the pit of the thieves, down in INFERNO’s eighth circle. Now let’s talk about the implications of this complicated passage, a fusion of Dante and Ovid—implications on the surface and down under the text as well.