Dante Alighieri was born in Florence, Italy in 1265. In his life, he created two major books of poetry: Vita Nuova and The Comedy. The Comedy, which was later renamed The Divine Comedy, is an epic poem broken down into three books in each of which Dante recounts his travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.

The first book of The Comedy, Dante's Inferno, is an especially creative narrative. He narrates his descent and observation of Hell through the various circles and pouches. An excellent poet himself, Dante admired much about Virgil, revering him to such an extent that he turned him into the guiding character, the teacher to Dante the pilgrim, in the Purgatory and Inferno. Dante borrowed from Virgil much of his language, style, and content. While Dante improved upon Virgil's works in many respects, his changes in the theological content in particular, reveal the differences between the religious views of the afterworld/underworld of the two authors' respective time periods. Other writers that I have encountered describe Dante's extremely ordered otherworld.

A large portion of Dante's Inferno is merely an expansion of one book (VI -the Underworld) of Virgil's Aeneid. Though m

Virgil was also a major character in Dante's Inferno. For the first part of his journey, Dante needed a guide who knew about Hell, Virgil was the perfect guide. Virgil had been through Hell before and, therefore, knew the territory. Early in the poem, Virgil tells Dante that he is there because Heaven wanted him there and that he can take Dante only part of the way. (Virgil can't enter Heaven or see God because he lacked a faith in God) Someone "more worthy" will take Dante to God. I have seen writers interpret this as saying that man's reason is defined, while God is infinite. Man's reason and philosophy will get him started on the right way, but the ultimate way to God is guided by a higher power. Virgil is Dante's only friend and guardian spirit in his journey through Hell. With the help of Virgil's wisdom and guidance, Dante safely passed through the land of the dead, and can continue on in his journey to Heaven.

Virgil places high importance on this vestibule to delineate clearly one main difference between the Underworld and the outside: the first has an intangible, bodiless, and abstract quality to it, compared to the outside's concrete, physical reality.

Dante's Circles of Hell each provide a permanent image of justice, specifically Christian justice. Hell's overall physical structure reflects this idea of justice. Dante conveys a sense of appropriate justice with each new Circle of Hell: if you were false to others, you are punished likewise, and if you had been violent, you would have been punished in that way. This precision is a reflection of Dante's Catholic belief in God's justice. The punishments of Hell, being created by God, would only be rightly and justly fair, as well as reflective of his appropriate dislike of the sin that was done in life.

uch of Dante's Hell is original, he seemed to use the Aeneid as a base and the parts which he did extract from the Aeneid, he carefully altered for his own purposes and beliefs. In pursuing his Christian vision of the afterlife, Dante created an otherworld theoretically and visually different from, yet still remarkably similar to Virgil's Underworld. Dante, of course, structured his Hell

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Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)