A Swarm Of Snakes And Literary Texts: Inferno, Canto XXIV, Lines 79 - 96

Dante the pilgrim has wanted a good, close look into the seventh of the evil pouches, the seventh of the malebolge that make up the great landscape of fraud in the eighth circle of hell. And boy, does he get what he wants!

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as the pilgrim and his guide, Virgil, slip down the wall and catch a glimpse of a nightmare of snakes, a tangle of them--that almost rivals the tangle of literary allusions the poet makes in a mere twelve lines.

Here are the segments of this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:08] My English translation of this passage: Inferno, Canto XXIV, lines 79 - 96. If you'd like to read along, you can find it on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[03:08] Delay, delay, delay--it's the growing tantric structure of COMEDY.

[08:47] The seventh malebolge, evil pouch: the snake pit of the thieves.

[10:31] But there's another theft afoot: Dante's. Literary theft. In a mere twelve lines, the poet steals as many bits from other works as he possibly can.