Breaking Every Text, Even Your Own: Inferno, Canto XX, Lines 100 - 130

We come to the end of the fourth evil pouch, the fourth of the malebolge, in the eighth circle of Inferno, the circle of fraud. And we go out with a bang!

Dante disses Virgil (who has already dissed Dante). Virgil rewrites yet one more classical story. We get a load of contemporary, sad-sack fortunetellers. And then Dante quotes himself to let us know that every text can be broken, even his own.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, in the literary fun and games that mark the end of Canto XX of Inferno.

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

[01:21] My English translation of the passage. If you'd like to read along, you can find it on my website, markscarbrough.com, under the header tab for Walking With Dante.

[03:26] The pilgrim's final bit of snark toward Virgil (in this canto).

[06:07] More sinners in the pouch: Eurypylus (along with one more rewriting of a classical figure) and Michael Scot (who only helped cause the Renaissance).

[07:42] Virgil defines his own work (the one that could be considered fraudulent in the logic of Canto XX) as "high tragedy."

[10:39] Other more sad-sack sinners in the pouch: the run-of-the-mill charlatans.

[15:32] Virgil's last bit of astrological knowledge--because how else would you end a canto about soothsaying?

[18:45] And the last word, which is the very one Dante has already proscribed.