We've Finished Inferno, Canto I: Here's a Look Back And Look Around The Entire Poem

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In this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE, we'll look back over Inferno, Canto I, the one we've just finished.

I'll start by reading it again. I want you to see its scope, its arc. Then we'll explore this giant piece of architecture that is Dante's COMEDY.

I'll go on for a bit about what makes Dante-the-poet so very unusual among us humans who like to fence our pastures.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I give Inferno's first canto a last glance before we continue to walk across the known universe, then pause to talk about how this whole poem is put together as a mind-bending structural edifice.

Here's are the segments of this episode:

[00:59] The whole of INFERNO's canto 1, read right through. If you want to see this translation, you can look it up on my website under the "Walking With Dante" header: markscarbrough.com

[07:51] The overall structure of Dante's COMEDY. Here, I'll explain those words "canticle" and "canto" to give you an overview of the poem.

[11:21] The stanza structure of COMEDY. That is, the form of the poetry, this thing called "terza rima," a form that Dante-the-poet invented for COMEDY.

[23:05] Even deeper in, the structure of the very lines of COMEDY. As if the stanza architecture wasn't complicated enough, Dante crafted the very lines to have a set number of stresses.

[26:54] Finally, permit me to talk about one of the ways I find Dante so astounding. Everyone fences in the world. You have to. There's too much beyond you. We have to discover Dante's fence, his pasture. But our poet is so much more than that--because unlike most of us, he proves again and again in COMEDY that he's willing to move the very fences he's installed around his imaginative pasture.