The Greatest Sin Isn't Pride--It's Fraud: INFERNO, Canto XI, Lines 52 - 66
We've left the seven deadly sins behind. We got through lust, gluttony, avarice, and wrath, then dumped sloth, envy, and pride in favor of heresy, violence, and two types of fraud.Join me, Mark Scarbr...
14 Apr 202128min
The Sins Of Violence Explained (Sort Of): INFERNO, Canto XI, Lines 28 - 51
Virgil begins to detail his mappa mundi--or perhaps his mappa inferno--with a longer look at the seventh circle of hell, the next we'll encounter.He's already explained what's ahead: injustice and mal...
11 Apr 202132min
Mapping the Uncharted at the Beginning of the Age of Discovery: INFERNO, Canto XI, Lines 16 - 27
Settled in the shade of the tomb for a heretic pope, Dante hears Virgil's first take on the nature of lowest hell: malice, injury, the heart of evil itself, all bound up with force and fraud.Mappamund...
7 Apr 202123min
The Dazzle of Beatrice, The Stench Of Hell: INFERNO, Canto X, Line 121b, through Canto XI, Lines 15
Our pilgrim leaves Farinata's and Cavalcante's tomb hesitantly. Something about his encounter with the heretics is so profound, it stops the forward momentum of COMEDY for a time.What's ahead is the t...
4 Apr 202128min
Where Is My Son? A Thematic And Structural Overview Of INFERNO, Canto X
Why is Farinata in the sixth circle of the heretics in hell? And why is he damned in the first place?The answers may lie in the structure of Canto X of INFERNO. It may also lie in the nature of the se...
31 Mars 202132min
Repenting To A Heretic: INFERNO, Canto X, Lines 94 - 121a
We finish our time with Farinata with a discussion that gets stranger by the minute. There's definitely a camaraderie between our pilgrim and this Ghibelline warlord.The grander question? Is there a c...
28 Mars 202134min
How To Be Human And How To Quit Being Human: INFERNO, Canto X, Lines 73 - 93
After out time with Cavalcante, that passage about human loss and suffering, we now return to Farinata, our Greco-Roman statue--who becomes less so over the course of the strange, twisty passage.Join ...
24 Mars 202131min
Poetic Rivalry And Poetic Guilt: INFERNO, Canto X, Lines 52 - 72
In this passage from INFERNO, our poet (and our pilgrim) comes face to face with the suffering he caused. It takes a brave writer to face his fears head on.A shade rises up next to Farinata. This one'...
21 Mars 202137min
