History Literature / TheDivineComedy

The first part, [[CirclesOfHell the Inferno]], is the best-known and most often retold and alluded to in modern media, with adaptations including [[Literature/InfernoLarryNivenAndJerryPournelle a sci-fi novel]], [[Creator/GoNagai a manga]], and [[VideoGame/DantesInferno a video game]]. Essentially, every portrayal of Hell (from [[Literature/ParadiseLost Milton]] to [[Literature/TheGreatDivorce Lewis]]) owes something to Dante, who himself drew from [[Literature/TheFourGospels the Gospels]] and the poems of Virgil, [[Literature/TheThebaid Statius]], and Creator/{{Ovid}}. The ''Comedy'''s influence has led a few to mistake the CirclesOfHell for Biblical doctrine, lending the name to WordOfDante.

Translations of the Comedy from Italian can be found all over the place online: there's the plain-and-annotated [[http://www.worldofdante.org/index.html World of Dante]], the poetic [[https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/text/ Digital Dante]], the scholarly [[http://dantelab.dartmouth.edu/ Dartmouth Dante Lab]], the navigable [[https://dante.princeton.edu/ Princeton Dante Project]], and [[http://www.danteonline.it/english/opere.asp?idope=1&idlang=OR Dante Online]], [[MyFriendsAndZoidberg which exists]]. There's also invaluable illustrations from [[http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/ Danteworlds]] from the epic's seven centuries worth of FanArt. An ever-growing archive of "sightings" of Dante in contemporary culture can be found at [[https://research.bowdoin.edu/dante-today/ Dante Today]]

* GenreRefugee: The first damned soul Dante meets[[note]] besides the benevolent residents of Limbo[[/note]] is a woman who casts herself as the protagonist of a tragic, romantic ballad where her only flaw was loving too much in an unloving world. A poet himself, Dante is moved with sympathy, but context makes it clear our romantic protagonist is just making excuses for cheating on her husband with his brother.

* HeavensDevils: Virgil trusts the devils of fraud because his paganism has taught him that demons are agents of the gods' justice. The trope is {{subverted}} when the Malebranche try to kill Virgil and his ward after lying to them about how to leave their torture-chamber. It's so foolish to think Fallen Angels would act justly that even a damned {{hypocrite}} mocks Virgil for his blunder.

--->''"Even Heaven’s most enlightened soul,\\

** He also rhymed ''volse'' with ''volse'', though in the first case it means “turned” and in the second “wanted.”
* RiddleForTheAges:

* RuleOfFunny: As Beatrice explains, there were many preachers and homilists around the 1300's who worried more about making the laity laugh at the expense of the truth of the scriptures. Suspending holy reality like this allows the greedy and devilish preachers of the world to gain popularity through their comedy while being as wicked without scriptural criticism.

* StarsAreSouls: SubvertedTrope; upon ascending into Heaven, it seems as if every human soul ascends to a different Heavenly body, whether it be a star or one of the planets. Our hero finds it odd that somehow the pagan philosophers were right about this, but God's messenger, Beatrice, explains that the souls only appear on different stars and planets to help our hero understand the distinctions between types of saints.

* SuspiciouslySpecificTense: The protagonist recognizes a damned heretic and in his excitement, he mentions that perhaps the son of the heretic "did disdain" God (or possibly “did disdain” Virgil; it’s a little ambiguous, but at least two translators think the latter). The heretic catches on to the "did" and asks if his son is alive. The protagonist hesitates, giving the heretic enough information to fall on his back and never speak again. The protagonist later makes it clear the son's still alive and the heretic just read too much into a moment's silence.

* YouAreWorthHell: DeconstructedTrope in ''Inferno'', in which souls damned for lust are bound forever to their StarCrossedLovers, yet this only adds to their torment by serving as a perpetual reminder of their sins.

[[caption-width-right:330:''“Thou follow me, and I will be thy guide, and lead thee hence through the eternal place.”'']]

->''“It's not just Dante’s story; it’s everybody’s story.”''

The world’s first poem written in Italian. Or perhaps more accurately, the poem that invented Italian.

[[folder: Tropes A to F]]

* AsTheGoodBookSays: To soothe the tears of those upset by the corruption of Christ's Church, Beatrice reminds them to have hope with UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}}'s words before his death. She recites them in Latin instead of Italian, but the English translation of [[Literature/TheFourGospels John 16:16]] is as follows:
-->''“A little while and you will no longer see me, and again a little while later and you will see me.”''

* TheOmnipotent: While implied with {{God}}, there may actually be a stealth subversion: deep in Hell, Dante meets several [[OurGiantsAreBigger giants]] who are chained up for rebelling against God. One of the giants (Anteus) didn't participate in the rebellion directly but was still an accessory, so he's in Hell, but not chained up. Virgil implies that if he ''had'' participated, the giants would have overthrown God. This [[UnreliableNarrator could just be Virgil flattering the giant, however.]]

* OurDemonsAreDifferent: The word "demon" is mainly used to describe beasts and monsters who punished the damned in Hell rather than angels who are themselves punished there. So while Lucifer is never called a demon, Greek monsters like [[TheFerryman Charon]] and [[{{Hellhound}} Cerberus]] alongside original creations like the winged Malebranche get the designation.

* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: Farinata, a heretic who believed the soul died with the body, seems to find everything uninteresting, even the eternal pain he suffers. At most he expresses mildly annoyance by the flaming tomb of spikes he rests in and when his conversation is interrupted by a father who realizes his son is dead, he doesn't move his face an inch until the father shuts up and then Farinata continues as if nothing had happened.
-->''"[T]hat great-hearted one, the other shade\\

** In Hell there are some figures from Greek Mythology, as well as some completely fictional characters, who are down there right alongside real people who actually existed. None of the damned seem to think meeting mythical/fictional characters as if they were real people is the least bit odd (granted, they ''are'' in Hell, but it's still pretty weird.)

* VillainousGlutton: [[AvertedTrope None of those damned for gluttony are fat or seen grossly overeating]]; instead, the image of a man with a man with food overflowing from his mouth continuing to fill his sack with food is used to describe the ever-growing corruption and envy of the author's hometown of Florence.

** The thieves know each other names, form in groups, and refer to each other as comrades, until one of gets turned into a snake. At that point, the still-sentient thief will seek out their friends and attack them, returning to their normal form while reducing their supposed comrade to a snake. The cycle repeats forever.

* YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm: Insofar as God is depicted at all, His depiction is in an extremely abstract fashion due to how far he is beyond human understanding. Dante has to literally go through Hell, climb up the opposite side of the world, fly outside the universe, bathe his eyes in a river of heavenly light, and pray for the intercession of the Mother of God and even then, he admits his memory provides an infinitely inadequate account of what He actually is.

* ViceCity: In contrast to the peaceful castle of Limbo, the last four circles of Hell are contained beyond the city of Dis. Guarded by harpies, within the walls of the cities are graves of fire, literal blood baths, the forest of suicides, and a desert where fire rains. Past that, there's a deep drop into the Malebolge (Evil Ditch) that leads even further down into Cocytus, a frozen lake made from all the evil rivers of Hell.

* CreepyCemetery: The first urban Circle Of Hell is a cemetery filled with fiery tombs that hold arch-heretics and their followers. The tombs are destined to remain open until the Last Judgement, allowing the rare passerby to hear the "sorry cries" the heretics create for the rest of the eternal life many of them denied.

* NobleDemon: Limbo is mostly populated by virtuous pagans who couldn't be baptized because they were born before the birth of Christ. So it's a pretty big deal that Saladin, a Muslim born several centuries after Christ, made it in.
(As did Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd, two famous Muslim philosophers better known in the West as Avicenna and Averroes.)

* PatriotInExile Dante portrays himself as a patriot who loves the language, history, and peoples of Italy and especially his hometown of Florence, but as the souls of the dead keep telling him, he is doomed to be exiled from there by his political enemies.

* FacialDialogue: In ''Purgatorio'' Canto 21, Virgil manages to say "Be still" to Dante with only his face, not wanting to reveal to the ghost they're who they are just yet.

* NobleDemon: Limbo is mostly populated by virtuous pagans who couldn't be baptized because they were born before the birth of Christ. So it's a pretty big deal that Saladin, a Muslim born several centuries after Christ, made it in. (As did Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd, two famous Muslim philosophers better known in the West as Avicenna and Averroes.)

Dante called his masterpiece merely ''Comedy'' as a perhaps-ironic nod to its good ending and how it was written in the vernacular; the adjective "Divine" does not refer to the work's religious setting. In fact, it was added later by people -- specifically Creator/GiovanniBoccaccio[[note]]who greatly admired Dante and wrote an early biography of him[[/note]] and Creator/GustaveDore, who famously illustrated the story in the 19th century.

* GoodShepherd: Saint Francis of Assisi is compared to a prince, a seraphim, and a husband faithful even in the face of death in his dedication to his vow of poverty. By founding the Franciscan Order and agreeing to be laid low, Francis avoided the arrogance of his wealthy compatriots and earned the praise of the choirs of Heaven.

** At beginning of ''Inferno'', Virgil tells the protagonist about how UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}} came to Limbo and took many of the Old Testament biblical figures to heaven, including Adam. Two-thirds of the way through ''Paradiso'', our protagonist meets Adam as he describes how long he had to wait in Hell before being saved.

** In Canto 9, Virgil tells Dante that shortly after his death, Erictho forced him to retrieve a soul from the "the circle of Judas", and it turns out that the lowest part of the Ninth Circle is named after Judas (Judecca).
** Halfway through ''Inferno'', Virgil explains that all the rivers of all deposit at the bottom to form Lake Cocytus, but stops describing it since they'll get there later. Needless to say, the last circle damns traitors to suffer in the bitterly frozen Lake of Cocytus.
** One of the gluttons in Purgatory mentions his sister has ascended ahead of him into Heaven. Surely enough, the first person Dante talks to in Paradise is Piccarda, sister of the glutton.

* SummonBinding: Virgil tells Dante of how the witch Erictho summoned his soul from Limbo and forced him to retrieve a damned soul from the Ninth Circle of Hell, only letting Virgil go when he successfully brought it back to the land of the living. He specifically mentions visiting "the circle of Judas", and it turns out that the lowest part of Cocytus is named after Judas (Judecca).

* SummonBinding: Virgil tells Dante of how the witch Erictho summoned his soul from Limbo and forced him to retrieve a damned soul from the Ninth Circle of Hell, only letting Virgil go when he successfully brought it back to the land of the living.

* BishonenLine: Souls become less and less human in appearance as the story progresses from canto I to C -- from physically human in appearance in Hell and Purgatory (though the damned often have their human forms [[BodyHorror disfigured and transformed in horrific ways]]) to ethereal faces in the first sphere of Heaven, shining balls of light with discernible eyes in the second sphere, and beautiful but [[YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm indescribable]] balls of light in the third through ninth spheres -- but when he reaches the Heavenly realm entirely beyond physical existence, the Empyrean, everyone is entirely human again. This is justified due to the souls in Heaven being all in the Empyrean: while in the various levels of heaven, Dante does not meet souls, instead, they communicate with him through projections, in a way that nowadays can be called telepathy.

** Fortunetellers have their heads turned around backwards.
** Thieves are turned into snakes and have to regain their human form by attacking others.
** The schismatics are cut apart by a demon with a sword, then all their body parts assemble back together in time for the demon to cut them up again, Specifically, [[UsefulNotes/TheProphetMuhammad Muhammad]] is split in half down the middle with all his organs hanging out. And he can still carry a conversation.
** Falsifiers are ravaged by terrible diseases with all that comes associated with it: scabs, open sores, pustules, bloated bodies...

* OutlivingOnesOffspring: One of the last people Dante talks to in Hell goes into detail about how he and his sons were trapped in a tower until they starved to death. For his treason, his sons died over the course of days and he could do nothing but silently watch.

* EvilIsDeathlyCold: Two Circles in use cold as part of their punishment:
** The Third Circle (for gluttons) is constantly bombarded by freezing rain, hail, and snow while being guarded by Cerberus.

** Those who betray hospitality have their soul switched out with a demon in Hell while the body continues to function normally. This doesn't make sense considering Dante is basing his theology off Saint Thomas Aquinas, [[http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1051.htm#article1 who went out of his way]] to say angels and demons could not relate to a body in the same way a soul could. Even if a spirit were to ever control a body, Aquinas says they wouldn't be able to do "vital functions" like eating or drinking, something the narrator remembers seeing one of the traitors doing post-possession.

** The whole purpose of Purgatory is to prepare penitents for the over-powering perfection of Paradise, which us puny post-fallen peons could not pretend to perceive pre-purgation. The process is visualized in the ''Comedy'' by a mountain that souls literally ascend.

* ConfirmationBias: InUniverse, Saint-Doctor Thomas Aquinas warns TheHero not to fool himself into thinking he can see the world perfectly as God does, for his perception passes on truth "like an artist who knows his craft but has a hand that trembles." If he fails to recognize the faults of his opinions, even the greatest genius will fall into the ranks of idiot philosophers and heretics, since "affection for one’s own opinion binds, confines the mind."

** The Third Circle (for gluttons) is constantly bombarded by freezing rain, hail, and snow

** Cacus was a fire-breathing giant in Greek mythology, but Dante depicts him as a centaur with a fire-breathing dragon on his shoulders and snakes covering his equine back.

*** Second, Dante can't help but feel pity when he meets his former master, Brunetto Latini, punished for some type of violence. Dante thanks him for teaching him everything about writing and poetry and remembers how Latini taught him that the secret to immortality was to [[GlorySeeker write brilliantly]]. Lattini reaffirms everything Dante says of him, even when Dante says he wouldn't have put Lattini in Hell, apparently not realizing that in life and now in death he lead Dante away from the true secret to immortality: giving one's self entirely in the Love that is God. So in perpetuating Dante's error and leading him away from the Paradise, Lattini continues in death to do Violence against God.

* AdaptationalSpeciesChange: At one point they find Nimrod deep in Hell for the crime of creating the Tower Of Babel. He's described as a 30 foot tall [[OurGiantsAreBigger giant]]. In the original story of the Bible, there's nothing to indicate he's anything other than a normal-size human.

* OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: Virgil often references the time when Christ broke into Hell, shook it to its foundations, and broke out several Old Testament figures to Paradise. It was so intense that even into the Eight Circle there's loads of structural damage, but Dante never describes it outside of proxies like Virgil and the rest of the damned.