Inferno Summary

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  • Social and historical backgrounds
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  • Bibliography
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• Cantos


  • VIII
  • IX
  • X
  • XI
  • XII
  • XIII
  • XIV
  • XV
  • XVI
  • XVII
  • XVIII
  • XIX
  • XX
  • XXI and XXII
  • XXIII
  • XXIV and XXV
  • XXVI and XXVII
  • XXVIII
  • XXIX and XXX
  • XXXI
  • XXXII and XXXIII
  • XXXIV
• Summary


  Brief overview of the key events and themes in each canto
• Commentary


  Detailed analysis and interpretation of the events and themes in each canto
• Glossary


  Definitions of important terms and concepts used in the text
• This study material covers the Inferno section of Dante's Divine Comedy
• The study material is presented by www.anki.com and includes flashcards for other subjects like Physics, Biology, Maths, German, and French
• The copyright for this material is 2024
• CliffsNotes Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno supplements the original work, giving you background information about the author, an introduction to the novel, a graphical character map, critical commentaries, expanded glossaries, and a comprehensive index
• CliffsNotes provides icons to highlight essential elements of particular interest
• Dante was born in Florence in May 1265
• Dante's family was of an old lineage, of noble birth but no longer wealthy
• When Dante was 12 years old, his marriage to the daughter of the famous Donati family was arranged, along with the amount of her dowry
• Dante studied at the University of Bologna, one of the most famous universities in the medieval world
• Dante met a 9-year-old girl named Beatrice when he was 10-12 years old, and she was the great love of his life and the greatest single influence on his work
• Dante's public life began when he fought bravely in a battle at Campaldino in 1289
• By 1295, Dante was completely involved in political causes, and was elected to the City Council that year
• Florence had two political parties: the Guelphs, who supported the pope, and the Ghibellines, who believed the pope should rule both secular and religious factions
• Dante was sent on missions to arrange peace between the two warring parties, and his opposition to the pope's interference to the unification of all the various city-states often brought him to be at odds with the reigning pope
• In 1302, Dante was exiled from his native city, never to return
• Dante began his great poem, the Divine Comedy, and it attracted a large and sympathetic audience
• Dante died in Ravenna on September 13, 1321, and he was buried with honors due him
• Throughout the Middle Ages, politics was dominated by the struggle between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire
• The Guelphs, of which Dante was a member, were mainly supported by the rising middle class and supported the cause of the papacy in opposition to the Holy Roman Emperor
• Virgil was considered the most moral of all the poets of ancient Rome, and his Aeneid was one of the models for Dante's Inferno
• In the figure of Virgil, Dante found a symbol who represented the two key institutions: the papacy and the empire, destined by God to save mankind
• At the age of thirty-five, on the night of Good Friday in the year 1300, Dante finds himself lost in a dark wood
• Structure of the Poem

  • Dante designed the structure using a series of mystical numbers
  • 7
  • 3
  • 9
  • 10
  • 33
  • 99
  • 100
• Dante believed some numbers had mystical meanings and associations
• Mystical numbers used in the structure

  • 7
  • 3
  • 9
  • 10
  • 33
  • 99
  • 100
• 3


  The number of the Holy Trinity: God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The number of parts of the Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso. The number of lines in each verse of each canto. The number of divisions of Hell. The number of days required for Dante's journey through Hell.
• 9


  A multiple of three; the number of circles in Hell.