Dante’s Inferno

Project Instructions

Objective

• After reading reviewing Dante’s personal value system, students will demonstrate understanding of their own system by creating a mini-Inferno that reflects their values.

Objective

• You will:

– Understand the requirements for the Inferno project.

• Show me by:

– Beginning your outline/brainstorming.

Inferno Project

In Italy, around 1300, lived a man who began questioning his own value system. Dante Alighieri was then 35 years old. What did he really believe? What seemed to him truly good, truly evil? He pondered, examined his conscience, and pondered some more; then sat down and wrote The Divine Comedy—one of the greatest poems in world literature.

Inferno Project

In the Inferno, Dante sees himself traveling through the nine circles of hell, watching with horror the sinners assigned to each circle. It is a graded hell, with the lesser sins punished near the entrance, and the greatest sins punished in the very bottom of the pit. Like most Europeans in the year 1300, Dante was a Roman Catholic, but his hell reflected his value system, not necessarily that of the church.

Inferno Project

In the Inferno, Dante sees himself traveling through the nine circles of hell, watching with horror the sinners assigned to each circle. It is a graded hell, with the lesser sins punished near the entrance, and the greatest sins punished in the very bottom of the pit. Like most Europeans in the year 1300, Dante was a Roman Catholic, but his hell reflected his value system, not necessarily that of the church.

Inferno Project

And this is what you are being asked to do in the assignment: create your own hell—a hell that reflects your values, your concepts of good and evil.

• It doesn’t matter whether you believe in an actual place called hell.

• It doesn’t matter whether you believe in eternal punishment.

• Simply assume the existence of both.

It does matter that you think seriously about the nature of evil.

Dante’s Value System

• Sins of the flesh seemed minor to him: lust, gluttony, anger—these deserved hell, but only Upper Hell.

• Sins of violence were more important; sins of fraud more important still, for fraud is violence against the mind and heart.

• And sins of treachery were the most important of all, for they are a kind of violence against all that is best in humanity.

Your Value System

You, living in the 21st century, may disagree with Dante’s value system.

• You may consider gluttony not a sin at all.

• You may be unconcerned with heresy and blasphemy.

• But you may wish to include instead other sinners—those guilty of prejudice, of selling drugs to children, of leading whole nations into war.

Your Value System

It is time now to explore your value system. Whom will you place in the first circle, in the fifth? Which evil, in your eyes, is the very worst, deserving Satan’s personal attention? Think carefully and well. Devise, too, suitable punishments; you should find it a challenging exercise in relevance!

Inferno Project

Create your own 5-level mini-Inferno that reflects your personal value system.

You will need to:

• clearly define which sins are punished at each level

• describe the contrapasso sinners in each level will experience

The final product needs to include an illustrated diagram and clear labels and descriptions.

But I can’t think of anything!

• Watch the news/read the newspaper

• Observe the way people interact with each other

• Go back to 4th grade and pick up your imagination because you apparently lost it…

By Beatrice Butler 10th Grade Medieval History

1974

Closure

For the rest of the period, work on both:

• Brainstorm some ideas for sinners and the corresponding contrapasso.