Canto Xxxiii: Dante’s Inferno Literature Review

Canto XXXIII depicts a particularly horrific scene, even for Dante’s vision of Hell. In Canto XXXIII, the narrator comes across a sinner who is gnawing on the bones of another man; both men were from Pisa, a city that was known in Dante’s time for its corruption. In this Canto, the reader meets sinners who have not yet died, but who have sins so great that their souls were forced to enter Hell before their bodies died on Earth. These men’s bodies are now the residences of devils and demons aboveground.
The structure of Canto XXXIII is reminiscent of epic poetry. It tells a story, a warning tale; the sinner who is gnawing the bones of another man is telling the speaker a tale that is so disturbing to the speaker that he recoils in horror. Structurally, the canto is very rigid, as it follows a set pattern that does not deviate at all. The first line is long, and then two short lines follow the longer line. In these three lines, the author conveys a complete idea; each triad of words may not form a complete sentence, but it does contain a complete idea. This is also reminiscent of the style of epic poetry, as though this canto was meant to be read aloud as a cautionary tale to those around the speaker. The narrator of the text has very little engagement in the sinner’s story, allowing him to speak all the lines of the text with minimal interruption.

References

Dante Alighieri, Hollander, R., & Hollander, J. (2000). Inferno. New York: Doubleday.