Damning Lust, Then Confusing It With Love: INFERNO, Canto V, Lines 52 - 87
The pilgrim, Dante, has just asked his guide who is tossed in lust's whirlwind.Virgil answers with a list of the "greats" out on the wind: figures from antiquity, the Trojan War, and even medieval rom...
13 Dec 202039min
The Lush Poetry Of The Lustful: INFERNO, Canto V, Lines 25 - 51
Our pilgrim, Dante, turns from Minos to discover the hellish hurricane that's the punishment of lustful.It's hard to miss the lush language in this passage: verdant, almost overgrown, especially in a ...
9 Dec 202032min
An Interpolated Episode: An Introduction to the Seven Deadly Sins
Seven deadly sins: They almost seem like a cliché these days. But here they are: lust, gluttony, sloth, avarice, anger, pride, and envy.It wasn't always so in Christian doctrine.Nor in fact is it so f...
6 Dec 202019min
Minos, The Connoisseur Of Sin: INFERNO, Canto V, Lines 1 - 24
We've walked to the second circle of hell, where the winds of lust howl. But not yet. First, we must meet a connoisseur of sin: Minos. He determines your circle of hell. Not Jesus. Not Satan. But a fi...
2 Dec 202029min
An Interpolated Episode: A Look Back At The First Four Cantos of INFERNO
Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I look back over the first four cantos of INFERNO with an overview of where we've been and a discussion of the structure of the poem, COMEDY.I'll talk about some of the ar...
29 Nov 202031min
Cataloguing The Greats You Know And The Ones You Wish You Knew: INFERNO, Canto IV, Lines 115 - 151
Our pilgrim, Dante, gets to a vantage point where he can look across the "enameled" green to see the crowd gathered in and around Limbo's castle. He then lists off the greats: Trojans, Romans, Caesar,...
25 Nov 202031min
The Great Poets Of Limbo: INFERNO Canto IV, Lines 85 - 114
We follow our pilgrim, Dante, into Limbo. He sees four great shades coming toward him: Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. They welcome Virgil back and do something more shocking: They admit Dante to thei...
22 Nov 202030min
Virgil's (Mis)Understanding Of The Harrowing Of Hell: INFERNO, Canto IV, Lines 46 - 84
Our pilgrim and Virgil begin to walk across Limbo, surely the largest surface in hell since its the uppermost ring. In fact, it's at first like a plain or maybe a large campo in a medieval Italian tow...
18 Nov 202026min
